Palin, Huckabee and the GOP's 'Hick Factor'

By Sarah Posner, AlterNet. Posted September 9, 2008.

Why did the GOP choose a political neophyte to appeal to the religious
right over a seasoned politico? Fried squirrels and economic populism.
In a convention hall filled with ecstatic Republicans taking in Sarah
Palin's speech on Wednesday night, one observer seemed a little less
than enthusiastic. Mike Huckabee, the former Republican presidential
hopeful spurned by party leaders and religious right honchos, must
have felt like the hockey mom from Wasilla stole the thunder of the
Southern Baptist preacher from Hope.

Huckabee, it seems, represents "Real America" a little too much for
the Republican Party's taste.

On the surface, Palin's and Huckabee's appeals to the religious right
seem indistinguishable -- in fact, Huckabee, with a preacher's
background and experience in elected office, could possibly have had
an edge. Both can sling the red meat on abortion and gay marriage, and
both are equally comfortable talking God and country. Two weeks ago,
Huckabee was far better known to the religious right base than Palin
was; he had built a dedicated grassroots following through his failed
presidential campaign, and many of his followers participated in a
petition effort to convince McCain to pick him as his running mate.
But comparing the instant and unequivocal enthusiasm for Palin from
religious right heavies with the uphill battle Huckabee faced to wring
a belated endorsement from James Dobson points to something Palin has
that Huckabee doesn't -- or something Huckabee has that the Republican
Party just doesn't like.

At the heart of the Republican Party's marketing of Palin to the
general public is that she is a Real American Mom. Even though she
attends deeply conservative evangelical churches with theologies that
are alien and even alarming to outsiders, she is portrayed as someone
whose life is just like yours, who understands the daily turmoil faced
by Real American Families, and who will therefore engage in a pitched
battle to save you from unskilled community activists who operate in
the nether reaches of Real America doling out government handouts to
lazy welfare queens. (Yes, as conservative activist Richard Viguerie
was not shy to announce, "cranky conservatives" were responsible for
McCain picking "the next Ronald Reagan" as his running mate.)

The heart of Huckabee's appeal also was his regular-ness, with his
oft-repeated tales of using scratchy Lava soap as a child, his
mother's childhood in a house with a dirt floor, no electricity, and
no indoor plumbing and the fact that he was the first one in his
family to graduate from high school. He said that his family liked
eating fried squirrel. He was, as former Bush adviser Dan Bartlett
admitted to the heart of the business base of the Republican Party,
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a hick.

That's part of Real America too, but it's the Real America the GOP
wants to hide from public view, because it's the Real America it has
so completely screwed. It has cultivated its votes with racist
identity politics and phony paeans to Jesus. It has faked a love of
cultural habits like NASCAR and disdained arugula-eating elites, all
while the corporate lobbyists who wrote the laws that have sunk these
Real Americans into further economic despair dine at Washington's
finest restaurants. Mooseburgers might even push arugula salads off
the menus in those haunts if McCain and Palin are elected, but
admitting you've eaten squirrel is probably more embarrassing than
having to go to your lesbian sister's wedding.

For all their accusations of elitism flung at Democrats, the
Republicans despise the Huckabee part of their base. In Arkansas,
Huckabee has a long list of Republican enemies who were dismayed by
his record as governor, with his small acts of kindness to immigrants,
tax hikes to fix highways, and, as one Republican operative put it,
his "preacher mentality" in demanding that taxpayers "pass the plate."

In his presidential run, Huckabee spent time decrying the dominance of
Wall Street Republicans over Main Street Republicans and accused his
fellow GOP candidates of reading off the party's talking points on the
economy instead of talking about the concerns of Main Street. For
that, the GOP likely considered him a greater blasphemer than the
Mormon Mitt Romney, whom many of Huckabee's grassroots supporters
viewed as a silver-spooned interloper rolling in venture capital cash.

Sure, Huckabee's solutions to the economic woes of America's working
class, like his flat tax proposal and calls to shut down the Internal
Revenue Service, were amateurish and unworkable. Even so, Republicans
couldn't put his class warrior rhetoric on their presidential ticket.

Sarah Posner has covered the religious right for the American
Prospect, the Gadflyer, and AlterNet. Her new book is God's Profits:
Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters (PoliPoint
Press).