Henry Farrell on Huckabee’s chances of winning:
A sort of follow-up to my last post, which began from the assumption that Huckabee had zero chance of winning the nomination. But what if he does? NB that I’m wearing my Irresponsible Speculator hat, not my Professional Political Scientist one in saying this; I’m not the kind of political scientist who knows this stuff at all well in the first place, and I haven’t gone to the trouble of going through the relevant data and articles so as to partially educate myself. But if I were to argue against those who say that Huckabee just can’t win the Republican nomination, my case for the defence would go something like this.
(1) Part 1 of the case against Huckabee winning is that he’s self evidently clueless about international politics, and has bizarre ideas about domestic politics. But does this really hurt him with a Republican base which has been primed for decades to believe that book-larning and expertise are the tools of Evil Coastal Elites. Attacks on his lack of savoir-faire seem to roll off his back, or perhaps even to make his supporters more enthusiastic. Case in point: his ‘negative advertising without negative advertising’ press conference, which was widely portrayed by media elites as having cooked his goose, but which doesn’t seem to have hurt him one bit.