James Joyner, earlier today: [1]
George Will [2] closes a subpar (by his standards, at least) column on the silly populism of Mike Huckabee and John Edwards with this praise for Barack Obama:
Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee — an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic “fights” against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.
Will seems to be joining the growing chorus of Republicans, even conservative ones, who claim they would vote for Obama over Huckabee. Michael Totten [3] is the latest blogger I’ve seen make that assertion. Stephen Green [4] seems to be leaning that way (and may have stated so outright [5], although his archives are FUBAR as the moment). I’ve seen a handful of others in recent days, although their names escape me.
One wonders how many will actually follow through on this, in the unlikely event that Obama-Huckabee turns out to be the general election matchup? I suspect most partisans will ultimately find a way to rationalize holding their nose and voting for whomever gets the nomination.
Right now, Obama is drawing praise from the likes of George Will, Peggy Noonan [6], and Stephen Hayes [7]. But Glenn Greenwald [8] and John Cole [9] figure that the Republican flirtation with Obama will dissipate and turn into rage quickly if he’s the nominee. While overstated, they’ve got a point: Both parties have a way of painting the opponent as devils and stoking the flames of fear.
Well, We’ve already discussed Greenwald and his paranoia. What we have NOT mentioned here as yet, is the Populism of Romney, and Huckabee and of McCain, as well. You see, the trouble of all this is that Huckabee and Romney are trying to stake out the same populist territory that Obama is trying to claim. McCain, meanwhile, with the exception of the war on Terror is trying to swing left of the whole lot of them. Unfortunately this goes to something that I have spoken to in the past. Namely, when Republicans try to play the populist, and in the doing, swing left into that which has traditionally been Democrat territory, why would people bother voting for Republicans at all?
And as for Will, he’s been on the edge of losing his conservative creds for some time now. Can we point to this column to suggest he’s lost them outright, now?