"Dems Beware," says David Sirota in a new column: "A GOP Economic Populist May Be Rising in '08"

Mike Huckabee campaigning in Iowa for the straw poll last Saturday

Since I've been casually ridiculing the pack of GOP presidential wannabes, I take note of a different view of one of them expressed in a new column by David Sirota, where he chides the NYT and virtually the whole of the MSM except the Rocky Mountain News for responding to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's second-place finish in the Iowa straw poll--

as an excuse to write not about the unique nature of Huckabee's substantive message, but to make the claim that the only reason he is getting ahead is because his "humor amounts to a style of politicking that many audiences have found engaging."

I'm not saying Huckabee isn't funny, but I am saying that he also has an extraordinarily different message than any of the other Republican presidential contenders - a populist economic message that may be shunned by conservative operatives and K Street lobbyists in the GOP-dominated Money Party in Washington, but likely has an appeal among rank-and-file working-class Republican voters. Though Beltway reporters are too insulated in their cliched views of politics to see how this economic populist appeal may be fueling Huckabee's candidacy, it is a phenomenon Democrats should be well aware of if they want to win the White House in 2008.

David quotes some Huckabee takes on jobs, trade, health care ("[his] language sounds more populist and more tough than many (if not most) Democrats in Washington"), and taxes as indicators of a message that (a) is wildly removed from the loony far-right ideology most Beltway-style Republicans are locked into, and (b) appears to have unexpected appeal to Republican voters:

Huckabee . . . is differentiating himself not because he's funny, as lazy Washington reporters would have us believe, but because he sounds like a mainstream American on economic issues. . . .

Unlike other leading Republican candidates who say more regressive tax cuts can fix bridges or who say Corporate America needs even more and bigger tax breaks, Huckabee is actually talking about the issues of corporate power and inequality that most people in the country understand is central to the challenges America faces.

I want to be clear - I think a lot of Huckabee's rhetoric is just that: Rhetoric. I say that because while he shows courage in actually talking about these issues that many other Republicans (and some Democrats) refuse to talk about, he supported many typical regressive Republican policies in Arkansas and on the campaign trail today he reverts back to failed right-wing ideologies when he talks about "solutions," offering up proposals that would actually make things far worse. . . .

Nonetheless, in a campaign setting where rhetoric is (unfortunately) everything, the real story about Huckabee's spurt is the story of populism's acendance and cross-party appeal. As a Democrat who wants to see Democrats win the White House in 2008, I shudder to think about a candidate like Huckabee using this posture to triangulate in a general election. You can, for example, pretty easily imagine him seizing the rhetorical mantle of populism against a candidate like Hillary Clinton - a candidate who brags about pocketing big cash from lobbyists, who surrounds herself with K Street mercenaries, who takes in more health industry money than any other lawmaker in Congress, and who appears on the cover of Fortune magazine as Big Money's handpicked candidate. . . .

[W]hether the elite Washington media ignores it or not, economic populism may end up taking center stage in both party's primaries - and that's a good thing. For too long, we've had a political debate in this country that seeks to avoid - rather than confront - the kitchen table economic issues that ordinary Americans face every day. Here's hoping Huckabee's rhetoric means that's changing.