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The Republicans at large would have gagged on their lunches if Huckabee had gotten the nomination in 2008 or next year. From a cultural, class and education background, he is simply not one of them. He is not drawn from America's ruling class.
The down to the Supreme Court election of 2000 was an all preppy boy affair: G.W. Bush, Andover, Gore, St. Albans. 2008, we deviated from the norm, pitting Harvard Law/Columbia (Obama) against The Naval Academy (McCain). But wait, both McCain and Obama had attended prep schools (Episcopal High School:McCain), Punahou School (Obama). The pattern of privileged education, which money most often buys, can be found in virtually all presidential elections of this and the last century. Before that, coming from parents with money was the historical equivalent. Money doesn't make class, but it does define it.
In America, one must appear to be socially elite, at minimum, to get the support of the dominant factions of the Republican party, which consists in the main of the business owners and corporate executives who make up the upper half or more of the party, for whom and by which the party is, after all, organized.
We claim to be a nation where everyone has, according to their abilities, a chance to accomplish anything, but this is one of our treasured national mythologies. Even Democrats who have the stains of “lower” birth on them, like Truman and Bill Clinton, get much rougher treatment than others. They didn’t call Clinton “Bubba” without motive. It was a way of lowering him or reflecting the upper class view of this upstart.
To be a Republican nominee, you really need to be a person with at least a third generation's standing among the moneyed classes. Fourth generation is even better. Others need not apply. Son of a president, governor or senator counts well, too. Reagan was to some degree the exception, but he had a personal elegance and the lovely burnish of both being a former actor and one who had turned against the Democrats when high taxes hacked away at his actor's pay checks. Reagan was not of the ruling class, but he spent more than half of his life working for it (G.E.) and attending the social affairs of the rich.
Huckabee didn't have a prayer. His failure to develop any coherent policies and approach to government probably derived from the fact that it can't be done, using the strict guidelines of hostility to the Federal government itself that make up the current Republican mantra. Republicans don't want a \"low born\" boy to grow up to be president of the U.S. It is an affront of their basic world view.
The Republicans despised the idea of Bill Clinton of Arkansas in the White House, born of a gambling, drinking mother and a deceased, drinking father, so they set out to prove he should not be there by making his every slip, in his entire life, into a sign of his unsuitability. They were determined to prove that no one from such a background should be president, so they schemed to make it true. In the name of embarrassing him, they embarrassed the nation, but no matter, they got what they wanted ultimately.
Republicans, at least the upper, ruling crust of the party, believe that only certain types of people deserve high office and, if possible, those people should be like themselves, in all their best qualities. Democrats are not immune to the same forces (re: the Kennedy fascination), but they would be more willing to accept someone with a Huckabee background than Republicans. All in all, the assumption remains that if you were smart enough to choose rich parents, you might be a good president.
Our political parties are social and cultural organizations just as much as they are instruments to elect candidates. The Republicans are organized on the principle that there are certain people who “deserve” positions of high leadership and certain people, mainly whole classes of people outside the realm of the well off, who don’t. Working hard, studying and developing superior ideas to solve problems, and a record of proving your capabilities, is not nearly enough. The Republicans exist to reenforce and vitalize that belief of the inherent class structure among people. It brings comfort to many, because it strengthens the idea that they, the rich, have money because they deserve it, being superior human beings.
The Democrats hope to build a more just society, even while they, too, favor those with so called elite educations and good family backgrounds. The Republicans believe a more just society can only result by leaving their money alone and helping them get more of it. Working class Americans who vote Republican do so on social/cultural or tax issues or because they aspire to join the wealthy who have traditionally ruled the party.
All of this is threatened, of course, by the tea pot revolt and by the push into power by the far, far right in the Republican group. Is it possible that the Republicans are now going so far to the right that they might be abandoned by their stalwart wealthy supporters? The problem is similar to one faced by the Democrats with Africa-American voters: where else would they go? Rich Republicans, in the main, are not about to become rich Democrats.
There appears to be some possibility, however, of a political realignment in America similar to the period when the south and southwest left the Democrats for the Republicans. The Ryan “budget” proposals, which have been called a suicide note by some commentators, might be the force which starts the break.
How long will the right, consisting in large measure of the corporate and business elite, allow their party to hold up the Federal government with the threat to shutdown the whole funding process? The current blackmail form of national politics, a repeat of the tactics taken when the Republicans last took the House by storm, is not something that is designed to promote stability and calm, which business people almost always prefer.
Doug Terry, 5.16.11
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