Huckabee Shines As GOP Forum Truants Devastate 2008 Prospects

The empty podiums spoke the loudest.

The Republican Junior Varsity All-American presidential forum tonight on PBS featured by far the most intriguing ideas and exchanges of any of the GOP or Democratic debate sessions to this point as the horserace element didn’t dominate the 90 minutes.

Who is the clear winner? Hard to say. Probably former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee who cemented his reputation for genuineness (and the mettle for an away game). This is sort of obvious, as well. Huckabee was the only candidate on the stage with an outside chance of winning and as a result was the only Republican with anything at risk.

The runaway loser in the African-American and Hispanic centered forum is the Republican Party itself as four leading GOP White House contenders were no-shows. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney were conspicuously absent from the debate – with empty podiums serving as exclamation points to this inexplicable dissing.

In fact, the first several minutes of the forum focused solely on these absences

Here’s Huckabee: “Frankly, I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed for our party.”

In many ways he seemed like some average American white guy apologizing to a black neighbor for an aunt’s racist joke at a barbecue.

Here’s U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.: “I apologize for the candidates who aren’t here. What they’re doing is sending a message of narrowing the base.”

If any of the political truants get their party’s nomination – which is likely unless Newt Gingrich makes a late entry and sprint or Huckabee comes from the middle of the pack – the Democrats will have these opening moments to play over and over and over in TV and radio ads from Miami to Cleveland. Moreover, two of the leading voices in African-American media, Tavis Smiley and Tom Joyner, were hosts. Think they’re going to forget this? Or, let their millions of listeners and viewers forget?

Not only will these absences injure the Grand Old Republican Party in African-American and Hispanic communities, but they also will affect white independents, the latte-drinking, book club types who are self-absorbed to the point of voting based on self-identity. They don’t want to be identified with a party that is now sweating intolerance as if its members were huddled in a boiler room.

All of that said, this was the most interesting debate of the primary process so far because I heard things tonight that made me think, made me question some long-held beliefs – which is what the Big Four Republicans should have been in Baltimore at Morgan State University trying to do. One of the reasons I always loved to watch the Indiana Pacers’ Reggie Miller play is he stepped up his game before an away audience and earned their respect. That would be a big start for the GOP. Even George W. Bush is smart enough to get this.

As for the ideas, one that emerged was from Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo: instead of giving D.C. statehood, have Virginia annex half of the city and Maryland the other half.

Former ambassador Alan Keyes also noted that residents of D.C. who don’t like their lack of representation in Congress can move. Sort of harsh. But sort of right.

The most striking philosophical exchange involved Darfur. Texas Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian-isolationist Republican, called for the United States to pull back its troops from all areas where there is not a national interest, which would mean, in his view, no boots on the ground in Africa. “Feel good” reasons are not enough for U.S. involvement. Writing off the desire to stop genocide as simply “feel good,” as if it were a decision to drop a few coins in the Salvation Army man’s basket outside the Hy-Vee in Carroll, Iowa, made Paul look more cold and calculating than any character Ayn Rand ever imagined.

“I couldn’t disagree more with that answer,” said Brownback, who has often said “a child in Darfur is as sacred as a child in the womb” in making his “pro-life” case.

And here’s Keyes.

“If somebody’s being hurt somewhere in the world, somebody in America grieves for them,” he said.

Keyes and Huckabee had a fascinating difference on a question of race, with Keyes, an African-American, downplaying race as a factor and Huckabee acknowledging it as a root cause with a force unusual from a Republican.

“I don’t believe there is this deep divide between blacks and whites,” Keyes said.

Not so, says Huckabee, who said a disparity in hiring often stems from outright racism, from employers looking at a black face and preferring the white one waiting for the next interview slot.

“That’s something government can’t change but leadership can certainly speak to,” Huckabee said.

A dynamic that struck me tonight is that true-believing evangelicals, which is a fair description of Huckabee, have a window of opportunity to reach black and Hispanic voters because these pols view race in Christian terms and can truly connect with this audience — and if nothing else show that their faith is stronger than the many cultural messages that make so many white people uncomfortable around minorities at best and ugly racists at worst.

Brownback, whose own immediate family is of mixed race, strikes me as someone who could make some inroads for his party as well as with minorities, not on the scale of a president but in day-to-day work in the Senate.

One of Brownback’s ideas for helping underprivileged areas is to allow for the creation of flat-tax zones he argues would give incentives to business development. There are clear problems with going that route in terms of moving to a regressive tax. Brownback also called for opening a National African-American Museum on the Washington Mall.

Huckabee showed real strength in the area of crime and the courts, noting the disproportionate number of minorities in the criminal justice system.

The nation, Huckabee said, doesn’t have a crime problem.

“We have a drug and alcohol problem,” he said.

He called for more drug treatment and less incarceration.

“We have to quit locking up all the people we’re mad at and lock up the people we’re afraid of,” Huckabee said.

Ron Paul went further.

“We need to repeal the whole war on drugs,” Paul said. “It isn’t working.”