Retreat to the Fringe

Social conservatives and particularly crypto-socialist social conservatives (or “populists” if you prefer), are inevitably going to be a minority faction within the GOP. But to their great credit they themselves recognize this. The implications of that self-awareness are dire for Huckabee however.

Because their interests and perspectives are in many ways peculiar to themselves within the party, historically they’ve always been sensitive to their permanent political vulnerability. Thereby there is a tendency among social conservative voters to desert their insurgent leaders at the first sign of weaknesses (ala Pat Robertson, 1988). Weaknesses which could conceivably imperil their leveraged influence with the eventual broader party nominee and his regime.

As Mick Stockinger at Uncorrelated points out, these odd men out have smelled weakness on Huckabee and must soon begin their desertion from him to the establishment, in order to preserve influence. That’s because what the social conservatives are staring at now, is the prospect of being rendered completely irrelevant for the first time since perhaps 1976. Having supported the overthrow of the prevailing order in the Republican party by an extremist champion with a radical and unpopular agenda, only to watch him fail to seize control of the party, the coup plotters will soon be looking for ways to make themselves indispensable again.

Mick further suggests Huckabee may be forced into increasing reliance on his most radical advocates on the fringes (the fact that he’s ignoring Florida in favor of Georgia, is only the most general first acknowledgment of this new necessity). So, if you thought Huckabee’s views were unsettling up to now, they may be about to get much worse. As Mick puts it:

I think his loss in the gimme state was fatal, and while he can continue, the reality is that social conservatives who might have been disposed to vote for him, have to reconsider on the basis that if they go down with the ship, they’ll likely have a nominee who doesn’t owe them anything. Huckabee had no options beyond winning South Carolina and its too late in the game to broaden his message.
(Uncorrelated)

That limited message is also in large part the problem itself. Huckabee has used the language of the coup d’état when talking about his political campaign, and it’s not an invalid comparison. But like Robertson and other historical coup attempts in American party politics, our lengthy and punctiliously determinative nominating process has undone him.

It’s important to remember that historically what makes coups work isn’t their agenda, their political support, or their finances. A successful coup can have no agenda besides power itself and be led by a small organization of fanatics or opportunists, with little money. What makes coups succeed is speed above all else. A coup wins on the morning after, when the public wakes up to find the old order has been thrown down with one swift kick to the knees, while a new order has been stood up almost simultaneously. The words of Edward Luttwak, who wrote the definitive guide for the coup plotter:

If in the operational phase of the coup we are at any stage delayed, then our essential weakness will emerge: we shall probably acquire a definite political coloration, and this will lead to the concentration of those forces which oppose the tendency we represent (or are thought to represent). As long as the execution of the coup is rapid, and we are cloaked in anonymity, no particular political faction will have either a motive or an opportunity to oppose us.

In any case, a delay will lose us our principal advantage: the voluntary neutrality of the ‘wait and see’ elements, and the involuntary neutrality of those forces which need time to concentrate and deploy for action.
(Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook by Edward Luttwak)

It is a great and enduring tribute to our rather mean and maudlin primary process, that its very nature makes this essential speed impossible. The moment for seizure of the party apparatus that Huckabee stood before after Iowa, evaporated in the days and weeks that followed. While he talked the language of the coup, the democratic system that empowers the parties revolted against the notion that the minority opinion should be permitted to dominate and speak for the majority.

Of course, as Huckabeeists inevitably come crawling back to the establishment, their dream of transforming the party into a milder, Christian Abadgaran doesn’t die. The risk of an “ecumenical reform coalition” unifying Huckabee with McCain is extreme and needs to be resisted strenuously the moment it appears. McCain, given his long history of mutual antagonism with the religious right, is the figure most vulnerable to a threat of abstention from social conservatives. If prominent leaders in the Huckabee movement threatened to stay home because their hero was perceived by them alone to have been treated unfairly, it would have to be taken seriously by the McCain camp.

But it should be remembered that McCain is also perhaps the least vulnerable to persuasion for political expediencies too, as we have so often seen. With Huckabee now getting Chuck Norris to perform personal attacks on McCain, he’s not doing himself any favors either.