Huckabee Warns GOP Leaders They Are On The Road To Becoming As Irrelevant As The Whigs

Huckabee comes out against outreach to mainstream Americans

Last week we had a Whig history lesson here at DWT, and since then I've been deluged with e-mail from Whigs from every part of America. One Whig was sharp enough to figure out how to post a comment! Another (unposted) came from a Whig who read Ken's discovery that Tom Ridge was a paid lobbyist for Albania and went on and on about the recent Whig Party's relationship with Albania and its troubles in the Balkans.

So, of course, I was fascinated when CNN reported that Republican vice-presidential longshot Mike Huckabee declared that the GOP is at risk of becoming "irrelevant as the Whigs." I doubt either CNN or even Huckabee knows that the GOP was born out of the disintegration of the Whigs and that, in fact, Abe Lincoln, the last great Republican president, started his political career as a Whig!

With many ex-Republicans now fleeing back to the Whig Party, Huckabee may be touching a sensitive nerve that will come to haunt him and the rest of the left behinds.

In an interview with the California newspaper the Visalia Times-Delta, Huckabee said the GOP would only further decline in influence should it alienate social conservatives-- largely considered the most energetic and loyal faction of the party.

"Throw the social conservatives the pro-life, pro-family people overboard and the Republican party will be as irrelevant as the Whigs," he said in reference to the American political party that largely disbanded in the mid 1800s.

"They'll basically be a party of gray-haired old men sitting around the country club puffing cigars, sipping brandy and wondering whatever happened to the country. That will be the end of the party," he said in the interview published Thursday.

Huck was speaking disparagingly-- with Limbaugh's blessing-- about the cosmetic outreach being made by Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush and Eric Cantor to mainstream conservatives and GOP moderates horrified how their party has been taken over by the haters, bigots, Know Nothing extremists, and religious radicals. Huckabee may have been upset that the GOP Establishment didn't include him in the re-branding effort.

Meanwhile NY Times political analyst Carl Hulse reported that Republican members of Congress have finally seen the writing on the wall and that the GOP's lockstep obstructionist strategy has started to crumble. As we've being seeing more and more non-Southern Republican members of the House, back from visiting their districts, have realized that the public is not feeling any sympathy with all this sabotaging of Obama's change agenda.

Scores of House Republicans joined Democrats in recent days in pushing through measures meant to rein in credit card companies, increase federal resources to pursue financial fraud and crack down on predatory housing lenders-- all legislation opposed by top House Republicans. On the credit card and financial fraud bills, only a minority of Republicans ended up opposing them.

“It is hard to say we shouldn’t put in more stringent standards on mortgage lending, given what has happened in the past,” said Representative Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican who backed all three measures.

And yet Simpson is in one of the safest Republican districts in America. He won re-election last year with 71% of the vote, 205,777 to 83,878. McCain took the district with 61% and only two counties (of two dozen), tiny Teton on the Montana border and Blaine, went for Obama. Simpson is an affable Mormon dentist who rarely strays from the party line. But he was one of the 60 Republicans on Thursday who stampeded across the aisle and told Boehner, Cantor, Hensarling and Ryan, the architects of the obstructionist agenda, to shove it. The day before Simpson had joined 117 Republicans-- a majority-- in skipping across the aisle and voting with the Democrats on the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act, much to the chagrin of Boehner and the Limbaughist extremists, lunatic fringe America-haters like Steve King (IA), Pete Sessions (TX), Patrick McHenry (NC), Mike Pence (IN), John Shadegg (AZ), Jason Chaffetz (UT), Tom Price (GA), Michele Bachmann (MN), David Dreier (CA), Virginia Foxx (NC), etc.

The Republican willingness to join with Democrats on some legislation has come gradually but does suggest that the notion of bipartisanship is not the mirage some have declared it to be. If the trend continues, it could become problematic for the Republican leadership, especially if it is interpreted as a lack of confidence in the party’s opposition stance.

To many in the leadership of the radical right, there are more important fish to fry than protecting their pals, the predatory lenders. They are panic-stricken that the Democrats could pass real health care reform, something that could be another nail in the Republican coffin. “There is a truism in baseball and in Congress,” said Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 House Republican, who opposed the lending, financial fraud and credit card measures. “You can’t swing at every pitch. But where we think the interests of the American people require a strong unified opposition, we let our membership know that and we have a high degree of success.” In other words, thugs like Pence won't beat up on members like Simpson on issues that are overwhelmingly popular with voters-- like reining in the banksters-- as long as they remain solid on killing health care reform. And if they don't, the leadership knows they can always turn Limbaugh and Hannity and Coulter lose on them-- a death sentence for any Republican running for re-election.