Huckabee, Baptists, and “conservatives”

December 20, 2007 – 9:27 am

Bob Novak, no friend of Mike Huckabee, wrote about Huckabee and the conservative movement (aka "conservative resurgence") in the Southern Baptist Convention. We focused on interviews with two of the leaders without that movement, Richard Land and Judge Paul Pressler:

The warmth in Texas and hostility in California reflects the dual personality of the pastor-politician who has broken out of the presidential campaign’s second tier. Huckabee can come across as either a Reagan or a Nixon. More than personality explains why not all his Baptist brethren have signed on the dotted line for Huckabee. He did not join the "conservative resurgence" that successfully rebelled against liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention a generation ago. …

Huckabee’s encounter with Pressler two months ago did not deter the judge from telling me this week much the same thing he said to the Journal’s Fund: "I don’t know of conservative appointments he made, and I don’t know of any contribution to the conservatives." After Huckabee’s warm greeting in Houston on Tuesday, however, Pressler told me: "I would never do anything to hurt him." But he did not go so far as endorsing Huckabee for president, and that sends a strong message to conservative evangelicals.

I would add that (political) conservative movement leader Morton Blackwell, also a Baptist who is thought to have advised Pressler during the Baptist fights in the late 70s and early 80s, also went with Thompson. Of course those guys have lost control of the Southern Baptist Convention. In the last election a "moderate" Frank Page won.

Now what is going on here? Generational change. Theological change. Two National Review writers get it. Ramesh Ponnuru writing at Time says:

Part of the reason for his campaign’s success may be that it reflects new currents in evangelical thought. Younger Evangelicals oppose abortion even more than their elders do, but they are also more likely to believe that the protection of the environment and the alleviation of poverty are moral concerns that demand a political response.

Byron York says:

Then Huckabee got into what is really the basis of his appeal for many voters. He’s tapping into that new sort of evangelicalism, that Rick Warren-style worldview that David Brooks and others have been writing about for a few years now. It is real, it is different from older-style evangelicalism, as well as from economic or national-security conservatism, and Huckabee has his finger on it

In both Republican and Baptist politics, Thompson represents the old conservative movement trying to keep power that it has in many ways already lost. Huckabee represents a new movement in American politics and American Protestantism. Who is winning? I refer you to the numbers.

Oh yeah, and that’s the way to look at that "Huck as the new Fred" meme.

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Romney is doing better in Iowa than you think

December 18, 2007 – 7:46 am

First, I want to say that I have no problem with what I am about to talk about, and I am not alleging anything conspiratorial. In politics, affinity groups are affinity groups and great things. Barack Obama will do better among African-Americans than other candidates. Joe Lieberman got huge electoral and financial turnout from Jews. And the Wall Street Journal talks about Mitt Romney’s support from Mormons:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says it has more than 22,500 members in Iowa in 68 congregations. Joseph Cheney, the president of one of seven "stakes," or geographical groups within the church, estimates that as many as 7,000 Mormons are likely to show up on caucus night, and that nearly three-quarters of the Mormons in the state support Mr. Romney.

This suggests that about 50% of the adult Mormons in Iowa will caucus for Romney. (Assuming that 70% of the 22.5k are adults, not an unreasonable assumption) That 50% number is extraordinary. In a November analysis of polling, a CBS analyst said:

In 2004 about 124,000 people attended Iowa Democratic caucuses, out of a statewide population of about 2,200,000 adults. Even if that Democratic turnout is matched on the Republican side (which might not happen, given the greater enthusiasm of Democratic voters this year), that would still mean a turnout of only 11 percent of the adult population. The hard part for polling is finding them in advance of the caucuses

In other words, the very high end of typical turnout is around 10%. IA Mormons are looking at 50%. Assuming that, under normal circumstances, Mormons participate in higher numbers, perhaps 20% would normally participate in the caucus, (just a guess) that would mean 2,800 votes. Romney will be beating that by at least 2.5x.

That means that Romney will be increasing the universe of caucus-goers by approximately 4,200 people. Increasing the universe is the Holy Grail of winning the Iowa caucuses, but most people don’t succeed. (Exhibit A is always the famed Youth Vote)

The upshot is that you can safely add 5% or so to Romney’s numbers in any Iowa poll. Furthermore, if the Romney campaign is smart — and they are very, very smart — they are trying to drive these numbers even higher. What if turnout was 70% not 50%? Then that would be the equivalent of adding about 7% to his numbers.

The bottom line is that Mitt Romney will win a caucus that looks close. Romney starts with 5-7% of the vote. Any attempt to play down Romney’s chances in Iowa is just a game, the expectations game.

UPDATE: The LA Times has a similar report about California.

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More thoughts on Romney’s speech

December 8, 2007 – 1:29 pm

I was not too impressed with Mitt Romney’s speech at the time. I wanted to give the speech several days to settle before I weighed in. Several things seemed clear to me.

The first thing is that Romney had a clear "comma problem". Ron Fournier at the AP wrote about it like this:

Indeed, there was intense debate inside the campaign about whether to deliver a religion address. Romney was torn from the start, telling advisers that he had a "comma problem." Political journalists always follow his name by a comma, the words "a Mormon," and another comma, Romney said, according to two advisers involved in the conversations. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they’re not supposed to reveal private talks.

"If I give a speech about Mormonism," he complained privately, "I’ll never get beyond the comma problem."

Romney had to get beyond the discourse in the media about his religion. And it succeeded at this. Prior to the speech, the question was "will his religion matter" and after the speech it was "it shouldn’t matter". For example, the Des Moines Register and David Broder. It is not that Romney’s faith will stop being an issue to some voters. It is that people will stop writing about it. That is not just good for Romney, but it is good for America. Romney has done the country a service.

Second, Romney tried to rejigger the lines. David Brooks captures it nicely:

Romney’s job yesterday was to unite social conservatives behind him. If he succeeded, he did it in two ways. He asked people to rally around the best traditions of America’s civic religion. He also asked people to submerge their religious convictions for the sake of solidarity in a culture war without end.

In other words, the battle is between people without faith and people with faith, without regard to what that particular faith is. There is an argument that this has become part of the public stance of a large part of the GOP. Of course, there are internal contradictions on this. Romney’s comments about Muslims. The Southern Baptists’ public statements about Jews. Etc. But it is a coherent position with wide appeal to the American people for good reason. Broadly, the ridiculous assault on Romney by the media about whether atheists have a role in America is helpful

Third, as I have long asserted, there is a certain advantage to Romney to this discussion. Properly framed, there is no reason at all that the Mormonism issue should damage him too much. As Dick Morris explains in this interview with Bill O’Reilly, Romney may want to focus on this because it sucks the oxygen out of other issues. The more that Romney can talk about this broader conflict between the faithful and the secular or real people and the politically correct, the better his chances are. If the topic is his integrity or his flip-floppery (or as Morris calls it, his "flip-flop-flip on abortion") then Romney has a lot of problems. Romney’s task is probably to keep the focus on this, while opposing campaigns try to move the ball towards his integrity and character issues.

Fourth, and complimentary to this, the guy got a 30 minute infomercial and a lot of op-ed copy dedicated to him. It made it hard for people to evolve messages much last week. That clearly didn’t hurt Huckabee, and Rudy Giuliani is bottoming out of, at least, this cycle of bad stories.

All in all, it could have been a good idea. There is little evidence that it is actually moving voters. Anecdotes are not positive. Polling will take some time, and it will depend on a whole lot of confounding factors like other stories coming out.

I will point out that this is not the timing that they wanted. As Peggy Noonan points out, this probably wasn’t the timing that they wanted:

In May he decided to do it, but timing was everything. His campaign wanted to do it when he was on the ascendancy, not defensively but from a position of strength. In October they decided to do the speech around Thanksgiving. Mr. Romney gathered together all the material and began to work in earnest. Then they decided it would get lost in the holiday clutter. They decided to go after Thanksgiving, but before Dec. 15. The rise of Mike Huckabee, according to this telling, didn’t force this decision but complicated it.

If Romney is the nominee, the histories will be revised to say that this was a great moment of American politics. No doubt about that.

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Romney’s speech

December 6, 2007 – 11:03 am

UPDATE: I’ve watched. The twitter traffic was positive for Romney. The comments that I have heard have not. Bill Bennett on CNN was pretty negative I thought.

I’ve read the excerpts of Mitt Romney’s speech. They seem pretty banal. If this is all it is, is it worth it?

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Is Romney closing on Mormonism?

December 5, 2007 – 11:54 am

Let me get this straight. A candidate has a religion problem. He is giving a big speech on religious liberty. And his supporters are dropping a movie, Article VI: The Movie. They also sent out a media advisory, the text of which is after the jump. But the text is the interesting part: (excuse the erratic formatting. It was in the text of the release)

Filmmaker Bryan Hall of Living Biography Media along with co-producer and former Assistant White House Press Secretary Reed Dickens will announce the release of the feature length documentary entitled, Article VI. The film is an intense discussion of the role of faith in politics intended to examine the national scrutiny of a candidate’s religion in the 2008 election. 

The filmmakers and representatives will hold a conference call with bloggers to discuss the film and its potential impact on voters in key primary states.  The film will be accompanied by an aggressive grassroots marketing campaign.    

So supporters of Romney intend to highlight his religion in the last several weeks of the campaign? When he has to win Iowa and South Carolina, two states whose nominating contests are dominated by evangelicals? In essence, going into Christmas, evangelicals are going to be presented with a large-scale discussion of Romney’s religion. How can that be good?

Advisory after the break Read More »

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Romney, religious freedom, and Muslim comments

December 2, 2007 – 11:51 pm

Last week, Mitt Romney was in a world of hurt because someone had alleged that he had said that he would not hire a Muslim into a senior position. At the time, I wrote:

This may open the door to a more open discussion of Romney’s religion. If he is discriminating on the basis of religion — perhaps even a wrong-but-politically-useful position in an Iowa Republican caucus — then why can’t other people drill down on his religion? Arguing "no bigotry" is a lot easier than arguing "bigotry for me but not for thee." A combination of hypocrisy and implausible repeated non-denials is good material for a feeding frenzy. At the same time as he’s getting drilled for other things. There’s a lot of bad synergy going on right now for Romney.

How does Romney now give a speech on "Religious Freedom" having advocated for excluding people based on their religion? (Yes, I know he denied having said it, but people kept coming forward to confirm the story of the people who heard him)

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The environment among conservatives?

September 25, 2007 – 8:42 am

Last week, I criticized my friend Robert Bluey’s reading of Michael Gerson’s position on immigration. My criticism was, on a broader level, that the conservative movement has very little capacity to understand conservatives who disagree with it on principal. More specifically, when deeply held beliefs begin to come into conflict with the increasingly interest group driven conservative movement agenda, the conservative movement struggles. This is, of course, where constituencies are gained and lost.

So what will happen with the environment? The Catholic Church is taking a strong position on global warming, H/T Andrew Sullivan:

The Pope is expected to use his first address to the United Nations to deliver a powerful warning over climate change in a move to adopt protection of the environment as a "moral" cause for the Catholic Church and its billion-strong following.

Will this have any impact on the conservative movement? Will this have any impact on Catholic voters in the US? (In Rob’s case, almost certainly not. But he didn’t care what his church said about immigration either) Is this growing disconnect going to matter?

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Evangelical, Republican Hispanics angry over immigration

September 4, 2007 – 4:01 pm

Recall that Catholic Hispanics are more likely to be Democrats while Evangelical Hispanics, especially Pentecostals, are more likely to be Republican. Of course, if they think that the Republican Party is a bunch of racists, the ball moves, or so says the head of a national Hispanic evangelical organization:

Mr. Rodriguez presides over the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, which is the sister of the prominent National Association of Evangelicals. He is plugged in enough to participate in weekly White House conference calls. …

The defeat [of the comprehensive immigration reform bill] has Mr. Rodriguez wondering whether "the GOP is the party of Jeff Sessions, Tom Tancredo and James Sensenbrenner or the party of George W. Bush and John McCain?" In other words, those like Mr. Tancredo who strongly opposed immigration reform or those like Mr. Bush who strongly favored it.

Right now, Mr. Rodriguez thinks, "xenophobia has triumphed over an appreciation for diversity. They completely abandoned us."

Hint to the GOP. Moderate evangelicals are swing voters, as are evangelical Hispanics. They gave Bush 1.8m votes. Those are not margins we can throw away.



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