Huck the hick is a hit

On Salon, Walter Shapiro convincingly explains the appeal of Huckabee in They Heart Huckabeeland^TM—aka Red America, and especially that portion of it found in Iowa:

The unified field theory of Huckabee also stresses the candidate’s moderate record and rhetoric about education, poverty and, until recently, immigration. Viewed from some angles, Huckabee is either a closet Democrat who opposes abortion (the Mitt Romney interpretation) or the true “compassionate conservative,” rather than the ersatz George W. Bush version.

But these explanations miss something potentially important. The miracle birth of the Republican candidate with the four-word name — Mike Huckabee Iowa Front-runner — has as much to do with social class as religion. There is nothing subtle about Huckabee’s celebration of his humble roots: He gleefully told 150 supporters (some more accurately described as acolytes) in Marshalltown Thursday morning that a “Republican muckety-muck” had recently declared that Huckabee was unelectable because he had a “hick last name.”

This makes sense to me: Huckabee is a very gifted in his delivery of plainspokenness, but he also vigorously and aggressively promotes down-home values that everyday folk can understand and identify with:

For example, as the CBS blog On the Road reports, Huckabee visited Guantanamo and found something there for down-home Americans (his demographic, and the people with whom he identifies)—to resent:

Asked about Guantanamo, Mike Huckabee said he had visited the facility and said it was “disappointing” that military personnel were eating meals that averaged $1.60 while the detainees were eating Halal meals that cost over $4 each.

“The inmates there were getting a whole lot better treatment than my prisoners in Arkansas. In fact, we left saying, ‘I hope our guys don’t see this. They’ll all want to be transferred to Guanatanmo. If anything, it’s too nice.”

So, bottom line: he’s connecting with jes’ folks—people for whom it is jes’ plain courteous to wish people Merry Christmas in a TV ad and who cares if there’s a cross floating in the background? It’s Christmas, isn’t it? Christmas is about Christ, isn’t it?

Why is anyone surprised that the plainspoken, hardworking, God-fearing Americans of Iowa and the rest of Red America—of whom there are lots and lots and lots—would respond to this? He virtually screams authenticity.

On the other hand, if this explanation doesn’t satisfy you, you might want to consider the cui bono-based conspiracy theory floated on The Corner today—that Bill Clinton is behind Huckabee’s rise!

A week or so ago a reader from Arkansas wrote in to offer his theory of how Mike Huckabee has gotten so far. He pointed out that Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee had always had cordial relations. He surmised that Clinton was grateful that Huckabee had not piled on during the impeachment hearings, or the various Whitewater-related investigations, even though, as his successor in the Governor’s mansion, Huckabee might well have known things the national and conservative media wanted to learn.

We all say that the Clintons would do anything to win, the writer noted. Who, he asked, is financing Huckabee? Where did Huckabee get the seed money to start the race, and to fly around, once he had begun to take off? Who would benefit most if Huckabee became the nominee?

Pick your poison, and get prepared to see more of Huck the Hick for a while.