Giuliani-Huckabee contest could split GOP

Hardly anyone saw Mike Huckabee coming.

At best it seemed the affable ex-governor of Arkansas might be able to parlay his debate quips and Ames Straw Poll showing into the second slot on the Republican ticket. If the "Huckaboom" continues, he may be a legitimate contender for the first.


Not only do polls consistently show Huckabee leading in Iowa, but he appears to be surging in other key states like South Carolina and even Florida. He has even started eating into former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's lead nationally, cutting it to just 2 points in the RealClearPolitics average.

Huckabee is tied with Giuliani in an early December American Research Group poll; Rasmussen puts the Arkansan in the lead.

A Giuliani-Huckabee race may be a surprise, but for Republicans it would not be a welcome one. Ideologically and geographically, the two candidates are almost perfectly positioned to tear apart their party.

Giuliani, the Northeastern social liberal, is strongly favored by many fiscal conservatives and national security hawks. He is a tax-cutter who emphasizes supply-side doctrines in his ads, and many on the right hope his law-and-order record in New York will translate into success in the war on terror.

Writing in the Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery acknowledged Giuliani's deficiencies on abortion and other social issues but argued "in a time of national peril" such litmus tests are "a luxury we cannot afford."

By contrast, Huckabee, the Southerner and onetime Baptist preacher, is reliably conservative on abortion, same-sex marriage and the role of religion in the public square.

Addressing the evangelical-led Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit earlier this year, he was able to say he was "one who comes from you" rather than an outsider. Huckabee is also well to Giuliani's right on the issue of gun control.

While Huckabee may be everything to social conservatives that Giuliani isn't, others on the right have serious problems with his ascent. He has been pilloried as a tax-hiker who has been soft on crime and will be similarly weak on terror.

The anti-tax Club for Growth gives Huckabee its lowest marks and Giuliani its highest. Former Bush aide and ubiquitous conservative writer Peter Wehner panned Huckabee's recent Foreign Affairs magazine essay as "stunningly silly," "misguided" and "an unholy mess."

Both Giuliani and Huckabee had hoped to avoid directly challenging hostile Republican factions. Giuliani has emphasized his respect for social conservatives while moving rightward on both guns and abortion. Huckabee has taken the taxpayer protection pledge, embraced a controversial conservative tax reform plan and ratcheted up his rhetoric against radical Islam.

Pitting the two candidates against one another will complicate this rapprochement. Important parts of the Republican coalition will come away feeling shortchanged, no matter the outcome.

Throughout the Bush years, libertarian-leaning Republicans have frequently blamed evangelicals for the advent of big government conservatism. New York Post columnist Ryan Sager, a Giuliani supporter, devoted an entire book to the subject.

Now some social conservatives see hostility to their wing of the movement in criticisms of Huckabee. Redstate.com blogger Erick Erickson argued "it's a sad day in the conservative movement when the conservative intelligentsia has sustained harsher words for a socially conservative governor than a serial adulterer who has said this year that the government should provide assistance to poor women wanting abortions."

As his colleague Josh Trevino put it, "Probably without realizing it, and for reasons rooted in a generally inchoate frustration, one faction of the conservative coalition has roused itself to war against another."

It remains to be seen whether this war can be avoided.

But this much is clear: No matter what happens with Rudy Giuliani or Mike Huckabee, a significant number of fiscal conservatives seem uninterested in social issues and vice versa. That fact — and the inability of the Republican Party to produce a viable presidential candidate who satisfies all major factions — does not bode well for the future of the Reagan coalition.

W. James Antle III is associate editor of The American Spectator.