Who Hearts Huckabee?

Ugh:

Two new polls yesterday showed former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has fallen into a statistical tie with a surging Mike Huckabee…The polls suggest social conservatives, uneasy about Giuliani’s moderate stances all year, are deciding that Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister who opposes abortion, deserves their vote.

In a race when even Pat Robertson has endorsed Rudy Guiliani, the manner in which Huckabee is improving his fortunes (by, for example, saying that gays lead unhealthy life styles) is positively retro. And perhaps the last gasp of the American Christian Right, at least in a Republican primary contest. After all, supporting an unelectable Huckabee is all fun and games until he succeeds in sufficiently damaging Guiliani and Hilary Clinton becomes president as a result. Then the fun ends.

Huckabee’s surge also appears to be the end of the fascinating story that was Mitt Romney’s candidacy. Since his campaign commenced, people who know nothing about conservatives and even less about Christians have speculated that the American Christian right could never support a Mormon as president. They were wrong, as always. It is Romney’s flip-flopping on social issues rather than his mormonism that has done him in. Once Huckabee became competitive, the option of supporting an “ersatz social conservative” was rendered somewhat unsavoury for the Christian Right. Too bad, but can you blame them?

Well, yes, actually, I can. Guiliani has always been vulnerable, and rightly so. Given time, I think Romney could have built upon a strongly religious base to have eventually beaten Guiliani. But Huckabee can’t. He can only help elect Hilary Clinton.

And: Isn’t this reader email to Kathy Shaidle from almost two months ago strangely depressing. Huckabee can’t win, but the Christian Right hearts him anyway:

They [the Christian Right] don’t want Romney because Mormons are evil. They don’t want Giuliani because Catholics are evil. They don’t want Thompson because he tells them to go screw themselves, so they’re left with McCain who hates them and Huckabee who can’t win. Their strategy is to hold the party hostage to Huckabee, but they’re already breaking down.”