IN TRANSIT FROM DES MOINES TO MANCHESTER –On their last day of campaigning for the Iowa caucuses and with the New Hampshire and South Carolina tests looming, the
two bona fide Southern hopefuls in the Republican presidential field had
personas that meshed in important particulars and diverged in others.
Ditto with their destinies: Former Arkansas governor Mike
Huckabee famously finished first in GOP ranks, while ex-Tennessee senator Fred
Thompson managed a distant third. That’s the divergence; the mesh is that
neither is out of the woods, but both are still in the game.
No sooner had Huckabee finished off his up-from-nothing
miracle in Iowa than such bell cows of the Christian right as Richard Viguerie
were trying to disown him. Not for doctrinal heresies of the religious sort but
for deviation from the tax-cutting priorities of the Republican Party elite.
Viguerie, who a generation ago assisted greatly in fusing the social and
economic conservatisms of the Reagan era, essentially accused Huckabee – an
economic populist who dares to assail “Wall Street Republicans” — of sawing off
the economic leg of that coalition.
This refrain was promptly parroted by that cockatee of the
airwaves, Rush Limbaugh – prompting a brief back-and-forth between himself and
the candidate, who, unlike so many other name Republicans, doesn’t mind pulling
on such feathers.
Huckabee is a threat to an established order, and, just as
establishment Democrats, assisted by the establishment media, were able to kill
off Howard Dean’s hopes in 2004, so might the GOP hierarchy do likewise to those
of the Republican heresiarch – his first-place finish in Iowa notwithstanding.
As for Thompson, the line on him for several months has
been that the actor/politician from Tennessee had fallen way short of the
enormous ballyhoo of his advance billing and long ago flunked his audition.
Indeed, Thompson has played the role assigned him every way
but right. He has looked haggard, fumbled his lines, and done everything a
starring player shouldn’t. Coming from the same moderate tradition (and stable)
as fellow Tennessee Republicans Howard Baker and Lamar Alexander, he was billed
as a conservative’s conservative – the kind who could put to rest the fears of
Viguerie and Limbaugh and suchlike who see George W. Bush’s house of cards – and
thereby the party’s generational dominance of American affairs – hopelessly
aquiver.
However late in the day, Thompson has seemingly found his
motivation for such a role and learned to play it. That was the conclusion one
could draw from the barn-burner he delivered to a packed room at the West Des
Moines Marriott on Thursday morning, the day of the caucuses. So strong a
showing it was, so animated the reception from his audience that it seemed
obvious that Thompson, like one of those Miss America alternates, was a
potential standby in case of trouble with the GOP frontrunner.
Any frontrunner – be it Huckabee or the resurgent
John McCain or Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani or whoever. All he had to do was
survive by fnishing third in Iowa – which, by the skin of those thespian
pearly-whites, he did.
As if in recognition of their doppelganger status, both men
ended their appeals to voters in Iowa with overlapping thematics: “
Thompson: “This is a country where a country boy or
girl in Tennessee or Iowa or anywhere else can grow up and have a pretty good
chance at the American dream.
Huckabee: “If American can elect me as president, if
means that the dreams of this country can come true for anybody.
Thompson: “I’ve got a 100-percent pro-life voting
record. I’ve always been pro-life. That’s why so many right-to-life
organizations have endorsed me.
Huckabee: “I’m pro-life. It’s not a position that
the pollsters gave me last week. I’ve been saying this all my life. Check me
out. I’m not pro-life because I’m political. I’m political because I’m
pro-life.”
Thompson: “What you see is what you get I don’t
think I’ve ever been accused of flip-flopping or choosing my positions on issues
to win an election.”
Huckabee: “You need to believe that someone is
telling you the truth, who’ll be honest with you We need a president who
believes something and will do what he believes.”
Thompson: “Our best days are still before us.”
Huckabee: “I want the best generation to be then one
that hasn’t been born yet”
Thompson: “We need to unite as Republicans and reach
out and get some independents and Reagan Democrats.”
Huckabee: “We need to have [with us] not just a
Republican Party but we need a country.”
Thompson:Tonight is important…We’ve got to show them Let’s go out and shock
the world.
Huckabee: Tonight we can make a statement heard all
over the world. Your grandchildren will be saying, were you there that
night that guy nobody had ever heard of won the presidency?
And in fact: If Thompson recovers from his long limbo in
the presidential race and becomes his party’s candidate of last resort, he will
indeed shock the world. For that matter, if Huckabee can continue riding
his current star and build on his triumph in Iowa to be the nominee, that outcome,
too, will resound all over the world.
To repeat: There are differences between the men and differences
between the candidacies. That is the very point. Only one of them could have said this on
Thursday: “The big-government, left-wing, high-taxes, weak-on-security
Democratic Party is just salivating about taking the reins and the power just so
they can kinda roll to a welfare state. And we’re not going to let that happen”
That was Thompson the D.A., of course, heaping on the red meat, knowing what
his role is now. Huckabee, the ex-preacher, is smoother, milder, in a curious way genuinely ecumencial. When he jammed with a local rock band in Hennick on his first
day in New Hampshire after the Iowa vote, he ended up playing bass with evident gusto on “Put a
Little Love in Your Heart” and even on the old to-the-barricades stomper from Creedence, “Fortunate Son.”
He, too, knows what his role is.
Watching what happens to either of them from now on is
going to be good theater.
(Flyer political editor Jackson Baker, having followed the presidential-campaign circus out of Iowa, continues his reporting from New Hampshire for the next few days.)