Mike Huckabee's Middle Eastern Hucksterism

Wednesday, 19th August 2009

First there was Mitt Romney and his plan to redouble his efforts to appeal to the Republican party's nationalist base; now Mike Huckabee is in Israel doing much the same thing. To wit, Huckabee rejects the idea of a two state solution entirely:

Speaking to a small group of foreign reporters in Jerusalem, Huckabee, seen as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, said the international community should consider establishing a Palestinian state some place else.

"The question is should the Palestinians have a place to call their own? Yes, I have no problem with that. Should it be in the middle of the Jewish homeland? That's what I think has to be honestly assessed as virtually unrealistic."

Granted, the prospects for a two-state solution - or any other peace plan for that matter - seems awfully distant right now. Indeed, while it's possible to construct a theoretical or conceptual "road" to a solution, the practicalities of building that road are a different matter entirely. In that limited sense, Huckabee is right that, at present, a two state solution is "unrealistic". Huckabee, however, goes rather further than that. Indeed, he goes further than any American President, of either party and takes a position that, startlingly, puts Netanyahu to Huckabee's left.

Where does Huckabee think a Palestinian state should be? He doesn't say. Uganda perhaps...

Perhaps Huckabee really means this. That's fine. But it's not very clever politics. Huckabee's problem is getting himself to be taken seriously by a party establishment that didn't have very much time for him in 2008. And since Huckabee is no friend to the GOP's corporate or libertarian wings he can't count on much support there either.

You could argue that this leaves him with little option than to maximise his appeal to his own base: the evangelical movement. But evangelicals (in as much as they can be treated as a group and with all the necessary caveats that doing so implies) also like to vote for candidates that they think have a chance of winning. (The same is true for African-American voters: Obama's support amongst black voters rocketed after he'd shown in Iowa that he could get white voters to support him.) That means that if Huckabee wants to maximise his chances, he needs to reassure non-evangelical voters. That doesn't mean he can abandon the religious right, but he can't be seen as the creature of the religious right.

This sort of stunt only increases the perception that Huckabee is not a serious candidate. This kind of "support" for Israel plays well with a certain part of the GOP base, but at the price of diminishing the seriousness with which other parts of the GOP coalition will treat Huckabee. There was a jokey quality to Huck's campaign last time. The way he's going he's not going to be very much more serious this time around either.

So, we still wait for a leading conservative or prospective 2012 candidate to do something other than reassure the base that he (or she) is One of Us. Perhaps giving the base what they want is the smart play right now and perhaps conservatives are right to think that Obama will overplay his hand, creating the opportunity for the GOP to return to power. It's still early days. But at some point some Republican is going to have to venture into the world beyond the base.

Of course, in Huckabee's case in this instance perhaps there's no actual politics involved. Perhaps he really means this. In which case he's still not doing his electoral prospects very much good.

(Just to be clear: there can't be any peace in the middle east until the Palestinian authorities make the first move. However, that doesn't mean that the continuing growth of Israeli settlements is anything other than an exceedingly unhelpful development that makes a proper peace agreement less, not more, probable. Still, the onus is on the Palestinians to produce the first of many "confidence building" measures.)

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ndm

August 19th, 2009 12:20am Report this comment

And was it only last week that we had Rep. Cantor, the ONLY Jewish Republican member of Congress, in Israel:

-- Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) took a swipe at President Barack Obama's Mideast policy in Jerusalem on Thursday, telling reporters he was worried about the administration's direction in its attempts to forge a settlement in the region.

-- "We're here to try and make things better; we are here because we are concerned," Cantor said. "We are concerned about what the White House has been signaling as of late in their desire to push through in terms of a Middle East peace plan."

I think it tells us a lot about the residual racism of the Republican Party that it has only one Jewish congressman?

Glenn Greenwald was also good on all this.

Sawcey

August 19th, 2009 1:40am Report this comment

Maybe splitting a country into several parts isn't the best, security-wise or boundary-wise.

It's like giving Shropshire to a band of terrorists.

The Sinai would do, perhaps?

Nicholas

August 19th, 2009 2:07pm Report this comment

In the case of the refugees, perhaps they could be absorbed into the Arab states they now reside, like Israel absorbed all the Jews that were expelled in the late 1940s.

ndm

August 19th, 2009 6:39pm Report this comment

-- In the case of the refugees, perhaps they could be absorbed into the Arab states they now reside, like Israel absorbed all the Jews that were expelled in the late 1940s.

So let's think. People whose ancestors have lived somewhere for thousands of years can be displaced by people whose ancestors haven't lived there for 2,000 years. Half of World Jewry already lives in the United States and I'm sure a good percentage of Israelis retain their American passports. Why don't the rest settle there? That is surely no less fair a solution than suggesting that Palestinian refugees take a hike.

Barry

August 19th, 2009 10:13pm Report this comment

The Arabs- Palestinians - have in principle and fact opposed every 2 state solution or Partition Plan since Britain invented the idea in 1937 ,following the precedent and then success of Ireland in 1922. It is one the these good ideas that UK people support for other people but the problem is on the ground - the Pals want the right of return which refutes the ideas of the 2 state solution. Israel would then be Arab or Pal too. Got it! So it is pipe dream for Euro intellectuals who know and understand little about the conflict to get excited about.

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