After Iowa: The Challenge for Huckabee

Today is more important than yesterday. What happened in the Iowa Caucuses will have less to do with who wins New Hampshire than how the victory is utilized by the victors moving forward. Let's look at the challenges ahead for the Huckabee campaign.

For Huckabee, Iowa accomplished a few things. First, it established him, without question, as a first tier candidate and at least for now, THE front-runner. He would have been considered it all along if he had had some money in the bank. Second, it helped fix the problem to which I just alluded: it will help him raise some much needed money to strengthen his national organization in advance of South Carolina, Florida, and Michigan. Third, it put Romney squarely on the defensive. Given Romney's propensity (thus far) for negative campaigning, I predict he will implode.

So where does Huckabee go from here? If Romney loses New Hampshire, it's game over for Mormon Mitt. Huckabee will then likely have to contend with an emboldened McCain, who will likely have been endorsed by soon-to-be-former candidate Fred Thompson. Giuliani will still be around until Florida, but if he loses there, he'll bow out too--my guess is he won't be making any endorsements. That puts Huckabee in the same position George W. Bush was in after New Hampshire 2000: a virtual head-to-head match-up against John McCain.

Like Bush, Huckabee has strong credentials with evangelical voters, and McCain is simply mistrusted both by that demographic and conservatives at-large. Unlike Bush, Huckabee already has a natural appeal to moderates and independents, who view his populism as a breath of fresh air. But that brings us to the person who may be the Achille's heel of the Republicans (even though I am largely sympathetic to his economic ideology): Ron Paul. Especially if Romney and Thompson are out, Ron Paul will likely pick up some stragglers: people who liked him already but wanted to vote for a "more electable" candidate who still shared much of their economic agenda. If Romney and Thompson are out, that agenda is no longer represented, and many Republicans may hold out as protest voters through the end of the election, thereby delaying the certainty of the Republican nominee.

If this happens, it is bad new the Republicans, because if Obama steams ahead to successive victories and cuts off the fundraising ability of Edwards and Hillary (which, though unlikely, could very well happen given the present political climate), then he will be able to get a lot of more or less undisputed air time while the Republicans are still fighting amongst themselves about who will be the nominee.

So here is what Huckabee has to do, not only to win the primary, but to do it quickly enough that he doesn't have a late-starter disadvantage against Obama heading into the general election:

Huckabee started smartly: he pitched to his super niche, white evangelicals. Most evangelical voters are not rich Republicans--they are blue collar or middle class folks with a mortgage, a car payment, two kids, the prospect of paying college bills in a couple of years, who go to Sunday School every week. There are lots of these people in the country--but not enough to win a Republican Primary, and certainly not enough to win a general election. He needs to immediately shift his focus (though not all of his attention) away from his super niche.

He has now secured his natural audience: the people who should love him and be enthusiastic for him simply for who he is. His next audience should be the pragmatists: the people who will vote for whichever Republican they perceive can win in November. This is not a difficult sell, but it will require some explanation. Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Fred Thompson are conventional candidates. So is Hillary Clinton. They run negative ads, they play into the Conventional Wisdom, and they are focused too much on policy (bad policy, to boot). Huckabee has always played to his own strengths: personal charisma, charm, wit, abilities on the stump. He has to turn that into an asset that can be bought by the Republican primary voters.

He's folksy enough to appeal to the common guy but (much unlike the current President) he can not only string together a coherent sentence, but is among the most articulate speakers in politics today. This is a quality lacked by Obama and Hillary--there's nothing folksy about them. Their Ivy League pedigrees are looked upon with suspicion by people in The Heartland. Huckabee has to convince Republicans that this matters and that he is the pragmatic choice.

Additionally, he has to convince non-evangelical conservatives that the only way the Republicans can win is to nominate somebody who can secure the South (as a Southerner, a Christian, and former Governor he can do that) as well as win the key battleground states. Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Iowa will vote a for a Republican like Huckabee--they won't vote for a guy like Romney. As Huckabee himself said on Leno the other night "people want to vote for a guy who is more like a guy they work with than the guy who laid them off." A Huckabee candidacy will radically complicate the Democrats' agenda on so-called "kitchen table issues" in the upper Midwest and Pennsylvania.

After he has secured the pragmatists, he will likely have won over enough people to have the nomination locked up--and that's where it gets tricky. Then he has to minimize the impact of the people who actively dislike him--free market libertarians and social moderates. Part of this can be remedied by choosing a Vice President who is one (or preferably both) of those things.

Or, he could take an alternative route--pick a bipartisan Democrat Vice President and completely neutralize the independent vote. Sam Nunn and Joe Lieberman come quickly to mind.

More to come soon...