Friday, January 04, 2008

"Huckenfreude" and "Huckaboom? How about "Huckafucked"?

"Huckabee understands how middle-class anxiety is really lived. Democrats talk about wages. But real middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person’s lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has. In that sense, Huckabee’s victory is not a step into the past. It opens up the way for a new coalition." David Brooks - NYT

"I think sometimes the reason that our campaign is catching fire," Huckabee said in Burlington, "is because people had rather elect a president who reminds him of the guy they work with — not the guy that laid them off." USA Today
David Seaton's News Links
What impresses me about the Huckabee win is that the Huckabee campaign has come out of nowhere with no money. This is not the American Way (version - 2008). Hillary and Romney really have no message, only money and organization. Hillary, Obama and Romney are all bankrolled to the max, they are basically representing the money that grooms them. Money and organization have taken them this far. They have had to share the limelight with Huckabee, who up till now had nothing but message and personality.


Obama himself is his own message, a mixture of skin color and classy optimism: brown, upper middle-class. Both class and color could be winning advantages or crippling disadvantages; class could hurt him more than color if the economy continues to slide. Also, there is something not quite real about him, too perfect, too Sidney Poitier, and in a long campaign, reality has a nasty way of intruding.

Huckabee has come this far without money, only on message and personality. Having won Iowa this convincingly, Huckabee should start seeing some serious money. His campaign is being managed by the legendary Ed Rollins, National Campaign Director to Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election where Reagan won 49 states, so that means that when he gets the money it will be well spent and the up till now activist based organization will get professionalized in a flash.

Many Democrats think that Huckabee would be a pushover in the final run for President. They are dead wrong. These are people that thought Kerry was "electable". In fact, they are living in a country that has repeatedly voted Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush into office.

Short of of something cosmic and message destroying like marital infidelity or a pedophilia scandal, Huckabee, with a bit more momentum and a lot more money, would be practically impossible to stop. People are really that fed up with the status quo.

A lot of commentators have fun making up new words, riffing on "Huckabee", like "Huckenfreud" and "Huckaboom, etc, How about "Huckafucked" for a neologism? DS


For Republicans, What a Difference Five Days Might Make - Washington Post
Abstract: As the presidential race shifts to New Hampshire, the Democratic candidates are continuing the intensive organizational battle that defined their race in Iowa. But the Republican candidates find themselves confronted with what amounts to an entirely different race, with a different slate of top contenders, a new set of issues and only five days to sort it all out. The Iowa GOP contest became, in effect, a two-person race between former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, with Huckabee in the end overcoming his severe financial disadvantage to win easily. The race was dominated by the issue of immigration and the spectacle of a Baptist minister taking on a Mormon in a state with a large population of evangelical Christians. New Hampshire, however, presents a different two-man Republican showdown, this one between Romney and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who has focused most of his efforts in the state where he upset George W. Bush in 2000.(...) Obama, coming off a strong victory in Iowa, has not spent nearly as much time in New Hampshire, but his campaign has not stinted on its organization here. He has more than a dozen field offices, over 100 paid staffers, and a captain for every town and city ward. Obama has attempted innovative efforts to spread interest in a candidate that few in New Hampshire knew much about before he arrived in the state a year ago. The campaign organized book clubs for residents to discuss Obama's 1995 memoir and set up a statewide three-on-three basketball tournament in which residents could participate if they agreed to volunteer. The campaign also set up small groups of supporters organized not only by geography but by profession or interest -- lawyers, doctors, environmentalists -- and sent relevant surrogates to address them. Recently, the campaign has held meetings to train local volunteers on getting out the vote, and has been encouraged by the big turnouts in small towns. Added to this group will be a crush of out-of-state volunteers, including many students on break. Former senator John Edwards (N.C.), who in 2004 saw his campaign fade here, has invested more resources this time. He has 80 organizers in the state, but lacks the momentum he was hoping to build with an Iowa victory. Obama will be up against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's rock-solid organization, which benefits from widespread support across much of the state's Democratic leadership, as well as from the ties that the Clintons formed here in the 1990s. READ IT ALL

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I feel sorry for the whole USA once again. Seems to be the way of life, forever be condemned to walk the earth in hucksters shoes.. oops that was another church.

But seriously, H. is the most narrow-minded and ugliest retard that country may have ever produced. Should be great when xtian fundamentalism, creationism and concentration camps for abortionists become reality. This is the way the "West" is really self-destructing.