Marc Ambinder sees a “conservative counter-revolution” breaking out on talk radio and the blogosphere wherein the “same forces that joined to force the White House to withdraw Harriett Miers’ Supreme Court nomination” are ganging up against Mike Huckabee’s surging presidential campaign.
Rush Limbaugh, still the most listened-to talk radio host on the planet, has taken to calling Huckabee the “Huckster.” Not even Mitt Romney, in his most profane of moments, goes there.
Limbaugh theorizes that the media is rooting for Huckabee because they know he’s the kiss of death in the general election. And he has compared Huckabee unfavorably to Jimmy Carter — as a snake oil salesman in Southern Baptist garb who later sold his soul to liberals.
Not having listened to Limbaugh in years, I’m surprised he’s so passionately against Huckabee. Indeed, I had to do a quick Google search to verify that he opposed the Harriet Miers nomination.
The two debates are not quite the same. The opposition to Miers was that she seemed to have been picked for her loyalty to President Bush rather than her legal mind, whereas the reaction to Huckabee is much more multifaceted. Fiscal conservatives think he’s too liberal on spending, social conservatives think he’s too liberal on immigration, and libertarian conservatives think he’s too religious.
Still, there are similarities. In both cases, conservative intellectuals rebellied against someone we perceived as unqualified for the office to which they’re aspiring. Miers had a fine career, all the more remarkable for a woman entering the legal profession at a time when that was unusual, but she hadn’t demonstrated a sharp judicial philosophy. Huckabee was presumably a fairly competent governor but he seems not to have any grasp of conservative principles beyond “What Would Jesus Do?”
My guess is that Huckabee’s fate will be the same as Miers’. But there’s a rather important difference. Supreme Court nominees are voted for by the United States Senate and elite opinion, especially that of leaders in the legal community, is incredibly influential. Presidential nominees, by contrast, as selected by the most enthusiastic partisans. In this case, Rush Limbaugh’s opposition will be much more important than that of the blogosphere.
