First Things Looks At Huckabee

First Things had a piece yesterday called Huckabee and Social Conservatives. It looks at the Huckabee campaign , social conservatives and the mistakes it made. Rod Dreher, who led the charge for the Dallas Morning News Endorsement of Huckabee, weighs in at his same named post Huckabee and the social conservatives.

The Huckabee campaign no doubt made mistakes. The sad fact is so much of it dealt with money. If only we had a couple of million more what we could have done. Huckabee's tactics in South Carolina, where he faced a unexpected challenge from Fred Thompson that killed us in the northern counties, is all part of the story. We had to prime the pump to get those voters out.

However despite the tactical mistakes Huckabee made people should be questioning why he was forced into a corner. Huckabee was being attacked by the National Review, the Club for Growth, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and other forces non stop. If you wished Huckabee could have contiuned his earlier theme of speaking to a broader audience like we saw that in Iowa nd New Hamphsire, then where were you engaging his ideas and sending a few bucks

I always felt a kinship to the Brownback effort . He too was talking in Huckabee terms but the Catholics blogs and other influential forces were silent. It is a great irony that Evangelicals were picking up on the Catholic themes of Catholic subsidiarity that both Huckabee and Brownback were promoting while much of the Catholic intellectual folks were AWOL.

In the First Things piece it is argued that Huckabee did not handle his natural law arguments very well. Well I agree. However where were the Catholics to explain that evangelical code he was saying to a broader audience?

Huckabee in fact returned to much broader themes that made social conservatism appeal to a broader audience. We saw that in his great Super Tuesday victories. This largely occurred because he went under the radar. I think it was apparent that the "smart" folks were shocked how well he did. Again if we had only another million we might have won the winner take all state of Missouri and perhaps Oklahoma. The race could have been very different.

While I agree with much of the piece and perhaps some mistakes Huckabee did. What is left unsaid is perhaps how people in especially in the Catholic political realm should have been engaging Huckabee when was speaking in much broader terms. The same goes for Sam Brownback. That is perhaps the real and tragic story.