"Reanimated and Ready: The Unstoppable Huckenstein" [View all]

[applegrove]

Reanimated and Ready: The Unstoppable Huckenstein

at the Daily Beast

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/31/reanimated-and-ready-the-unstoppable-huckenstein.html

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There’s no gentle way to say this, so let’s get right down to it: Mike Huckabee is leading the presumptive field of contenders for the Republican presidential nomination.

If, that is, PPP polling is to be believed. And why not? Chris Christie’s favorables are upside down. Marco Rubio bummed out the base by getting dreamy on immigration. Our latest eye-popping federal budget, the scourge of deficit hawks everywhere, was shepherded through by Paul Ryan. Bobby Jindal is twice as nerdy as Ryan and 10 times less powerful. Jeb Bush’s last name is Bush.

With a shortlist like that, there’s a certain twisted logic to the eerie return of America’s favorite onetime Arkansas governor and Fox News talk-show host. If the A-list is defined, for the moment, by its respective foibles, Huckabee offers something for every Republican to love. He’s thinner than Christie, smoother than Rubio, and warmer than Ryan. He’s got Jindal beat on the Southern thing—and Jeb too, so it’s not about race.

Back in 2008, when a novice Huck made the rounds on K Street as the Republican who knew how to beat Hillary, he had to strain to distinguish himself from the generic GOP pack of Dixie holdovers from the ’90s. Today, that crowd has faded from party prominence, and Huckabee’s political brand has changed with the times. Instead of a foil for Hillary—which, Satan willing, he may become once again—the Huckster is a patchwork creation of leftover Republican dreams, cobbled together in a dank experimental basement.




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