Making Mischief for the American Bipolarchy

As I write, I'm listening to CNN's rebroadcast of yesterday's ABC Republican debate. A few minutes ago, by my time, Mike Huckabee failed an intellectual test when he insisted that the rights of Americans derive from God and not from government. One would like to ask him, then, why we have a government. He might find himself compelled to answer that God, for all his omnipotent reputation, has proven a poor guarantor of human rights in this world. Statements like that have disqualified Huckabee in many minds, and a while back I myself claimed that Huckabee had disqualified himself by committing to a national abortion ban. Realistically speaking, he had only disqualified himself from my vote, which he was never likely to get. Now, I find myself more willing to overlook the occasional disturbing remark, because I want the Arkansan to go a long way in the Republican race, and that's because I think that the closer he gets to the nomination, the closer we get to schism in the conservative movement, if not the Republican party itself.

George Will published a hysterical column on Huckabee this weekend. He equates the former governor with John Edwards, calling both of them populists, which from the pen of George Will is like your neighbor's word that you're a child molester. The columnist is in a naked panic over the possibility that "Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee's desire to 'take back the nation for Christ," will shake off the leadership (described by Will as a collaboration with) "limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison." I'm not sure to whom Will thinks he's referring, since the only Republican I know who might literally express such a desire is Ron Paul. It becomes clear that Will himself is unsure of what he means. Check this out:

Huckabee fancies himself persecuted by the Republican "establishment," a creature already negligible by 1964, when it failed to stop Barry Goldwater's nomination, The establishment's voice, the New York Herald Tribune, expired in 1966.

To repeat: there is now, and has not been for 40 years, any such thing as a "Republican establishment." In which case, why does George Will expect anyone to listen to him, or any paper to publish him, or ABC to let him share air with George Stephanopoulos? Yet here he is in my Sunday paper, and on my television, saying: nobody here but us grass-roots! I think Huckabee's people have a better sense of things. They might well paraphrase the old Pogo comic strip and say to Mr. Will: We have met the enemy, and he is you -- you and Rush Limbaugh and anyone else who says we aren't real conservatives, anyone who presumes the right to say who's a conservative or who's a "populist" or whatever scare-word they want to hang on us. If the big tent of modern American conservatism collapses, it isn't because Huckabee is pulling out the poles.

To George Will, populism is anathema to conservatism. Philosophically, I might agree with him, except that modern American conservatism has always piggy-backed atop a strain of populism that rouses the rabble against an alleged cultural elite. But I suppose that would be cultural populism, if we can draw such distinctions, while Will's beef is with economic conservatism. Just as Mitt Romney and others have affected outrage because Huckabee dared to ascribe an "arrogant bunker mentality" to the Bush administration, so Will would excommunicate the Arkansan for failing to show the proper reverence toward the rich. As an objectively recognizable conservative Republican, Mike Huckabee hasn't been an especially militant class warrior, but he's apparently said enough to disgust the august Mr. Will, who has this answer to laments for the "shrinking middle class":

Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 -- because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder."

As Chico Marx is said to have said: Who are you going to believe? Me or your own eyes? For the record, Stephen Rose is not a right-winger but a "progressive" who apparently wants to help Democrats find new ways to appeal to voters. Here's a sample of his output that features stats similar to those Will cites. I leave it to economists and statisticians to refute them, but I doubt they'll have much difficulty. In any event, there are plenty of Democrats who also abhor populism because they associate it with forms of bigotry. What this tells us is that, for good or ill, populism is one of the forces most likely to tear either party in the Bipolarchy, or both, apart.

Coming back to George Will, he closes the case against Huckabee by revealing a sense of outrage at expressions of religiosity that I had not noticed much before:

Huckabee says "only one explanation" fits his Iowa success, "and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people." God so loves Huckabee's politics that he worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons?

Granted, it sounds a little egotistical on Huckabee's part, but the man is running for President, after all. But to be fair, he's only expressing the same faith in divine favor that you hear from the old lady whose arthritis was cleared up by Jesus Christ. Neither Huckabee nor the old lady likely thinks that they enjoy God's particular favor. But don't you wonder what Will makes of the present President, who is known to believe himself particularly favored by God? Any argument made against Huckabee on this ground has go to go double against W, who does control nuclear weapons. Shall we impeach him, Mr. Will?

The punch line of this hilarious column is that it ends with a ringing endorsement, of a kind, for none other than Barack Obama. To an extent, Will is rooting him on the way I'm rooting for Huckabee; as the Arkansan makes mischief for the GOP, Obama makes mischief for the Clinton dynasty. Better yet, in Will's view, Obama is "refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fighting mock-heroic 'fights' against fictional villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country."

We'll hold Will to that opinion should Obama continue on to the general election. Should Huckabee be Obama's opponent, would Will endorse the Democrat? That possibility is another reason to wish for such an event. Frankly, I want anything that would unsettle old unquestioned loyalties and throw traditional party affiliations into question. Barring the emergence of a powerful alternative-party movement, that's the best outcome we can hope for in 2008, but believing this shouldn't stop us from pursuing all alternatives, and encouraging everyone else to do so.