Kristol's Long Game

Okay, I think I've figured out what game Bill Kristol's playing by talking up Mike Huckabee. The theory, I think, is that the current GOP contest features a Romney versus McCain matchup and a Romney versus Huckabee matchup. If it ever becomes a McCain-Huckabee head-to-head, then McCain wins. Hence, talking up Huckabee helps McCain, the candidate Kristol wants to help.

But, seriously New York Times, this is the problem with taking Kristol on as a columnist. You need to read his work with a decoder ring to try to figure out what's happening.

Comments

Does that make sense, though? Huckabee already has his ticket punched for the next round - his Iowa win guarantees that he'll be a player in the southern primaries through February 5. Huckabee's concern now is preventing the party elites from rallying around an un-Huckabee - talking him up now *hurts* McCain.

Posted by Gabriel | January 7, 2008 2:59 PM

Though the particulars of each Timesman's 'game' might be different, what on earth makes one think that this feature makes him different from anyone else that works for the Times. Could someone think that anything in the Times is actually about giving readers an unvarnished picture of reality?

Posted by j mct | January 7, 2008 2:59 PM

My theory is that it has finally occurred to him that when Huckabee loses the nomination after being thoroughly and constantly trashed by the money- and neo-cons, a whole bunch of powerfully pissed-off authoritarian evangelicals might just stay home in November. So (the reasoning goes) somebody had better start saying something nice about Huckabee--not nice enough to be an endorsement, but nice enough to take the edge off of those attacks.

Posted by Tom Hilton | January 7, 2008 3:08 PM

Wrong Matt. Kristol is laying the frameowork for the PNAC to get in good with Huckabee in case of a Huckabee nomination. Sure a true believer like McCain would be better but another Bush wouldn't be so bad from Kristol's perspective.

Posted by Rob | January 7, 2008 3:08 PM

Where exactly is the Romney-Huckabee race going on right now? South Carolina? Nevada? Certainly not Michigan or Florida.

Posted by right | January 7, 2008 3:09 PM

Or else what Rob said, depending on whether you think Huckabee might win the nomination.

Posted by Tom Hilton | January 7, 2008 3:11 PM

Tom Hilton's theory makes a lot more sense.

Posted by right | January 7, 2008 3:14 PM

A combination of the Tom and Rob theory also makes sense. Kristol is hedging bets here - if Huckabee somehow manages to win, then maintain access. If he loses, hey no hard feelings.

Posted by blah | January 7, 2008 3:18 PM

It's good that MY puts up a post like this, 'cause it reminds me that he (and other liberals/progressives) and I have fundamentally differing attitudes about the opposing side's intentions.

The vast, vast majority of the time, intentions can be read like a book. Kristol was looking to write about Huckabee because there's a Huckabee boomlet. If you're a undecided/uninformed GOP NHer, his natural style and relative novelty contrast quite positively against Romney or McCain. You don't need a frickin' decoder ring, Matt.

I dislike it when this Kremlinology applied to writers (read the bizarre hate towards GFR) or to politicians (the insulting "dog-whistle" references.)

Posted by Klug | January 7, 2008 3:33 PM

I'll go for the combo: if Huckabee gets the nod, he'll be invited to the AEI and get shown that shot of the Kennedy assassination from an unfamiliar angle.

And Kristol's going to be the guy asking, 'any questions?'

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | January 7, 2008 3:34 PM

You wondered why the NYT hired Kristol? This is why: Kristol writes a column, Digby links, Drum links, you link, Kos links, Atrios links, Glenzilla links... bingo, NYT gets eyeballs and ad revenue. Mystery solved.

Posted by Chasm | January 7, 2008 3:37 PM

You figured this out? I thought I figured this out. In the comments to your first post:

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/01/the_electable_huckabee.php#comments

Posted by Bloix | January 7, 2008 3:50 PM

Another explanation is that there really is no merely logical explanation. Kristol is just starting out, so it makes sense for him to be unpredictable. Otherwise, why bother reading his column?

Posted by MattF | January 7, 2008 3:59 PM

I'm in the "buttering up the new kid for a future job" camp. In twelve months Kristol is going to need another teat to feed from once the NYT PTB realize that they are paying big for Michelle Malkin misquotes. And I've hated Kristol since he was a smug sweaty shill on This Week.

Posted by yellojkt | January 7, 2008 4:07 PM

McCain-Huckabee seemed obvious a while ago, and it's now old news

But what if Huck wns the nbomination? Huckabee-McCain isn't going to happen. Nor Huckabee-Romney

So to scare the bejeezus out of everybody, I give the the worst of both worlds: Huckabee-Giuliani.

All that's missing for the true hellish trifecta is the promise that they will make Larry Kudlow Fed chairman.

Posted by Gene | January 7, 2008 4:11 PM

Re Kristol's endgame and Mike Huckabee: You've got half of it. The other half is this: Kristol is always trying to sell himself to the Christian Right, to convince them that he isn't a pointy-headed secularist from the Isle of Manhattan, which of course is precisely what he is. Unlike fellow neo-cons like David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer, Kristol has never gagged on the Christianist agenda. He was to the right of Bush on the Terri Schiavo case!

Posted by Alan Vanneman | January 7, 2008 4:28 PM

Re Kristol backing McCain.

Although Kristol backed McCain in 2000, I thought he was backing Giuliani this time around.

Posted by SLC | January 7, 2008 4:55 PM

Peggy Noonan could have written his op-ed so much better, in far fewer words and with far more certainty.

Alan Vanneman is correct to point out the pointy-headed Manhattan intellectual thing.

Forget all that Strauss stuff about what he's up to. He's still at the confused point. He's trying to play anthropologist, at first dazed and confused, studying up, pointing out quotes he finds amazing from other Republicans like "He's not some kind of crazy Christian. He's an ordinary American," then concludes "I'm certainly not ready to sign up." He's asking himself, is this really the god Ronnie recreated that understands all this strange foreign flyover country stuff?

Posted by artappraiser | January 7, 2008 5:04 PM

Other Repubs are furious because Huck is playing with economic resentment. Apparently Kristol isn't. Maybe, looking down the road, he knows this is a card the party has to play if it's going to stay competitive. Huck has a knack for the approach, and as a Born-Again he needs some inoculation against being called anti-semitic. There you get Kristol. He could take Huck under his wing, the way he took Dan Quayle and ran him. Or so Kristol may hope.

Kristol advertises he's open for the position with his first column in the NYT. Tom Friedman is one of the two foreign policy thinkers Huck can name, so this place isn't such a bad choice.

Posted by kyle | January 7, 2008 5:37 PM

Way too complicated.

Kristol could be sincere, kissing butt, posting something provocative for his first. He could be playing some sort of neocon game of campaign twister. But I think he is correct no matter the motivation.

The motivation really doesn't matter except to the geeks.

I cannot fathom how McCain toasts Huckabee straight up. McCain has the press but the rest of the party will have to walk and talk very carefully or lose the evangelical vote that has propped up the south for a very long time. Huckabee's gonna get a lot of Republican primary votes on freebie buzz and Chuck Norris on YouTube.

Posted by Nat | January 7, 2008 6:12 PM

You're right. He does seem to be more comprehensible than Safire, though.

Posted by Adam Kotsko | January 7, 2008 6:55 PM

kyle - Huck has a knack for the approach, and as a Born-Again he needs some inoculation against being called anti-semitic. There you get Kristol. He could take Huck under his wing, the way he took Dan Quayle and ran him. Or so Kristol may hope.

Southern Evangelicals and black evangelicals have dislike of Jews' historical actions coupled with religious veneration for Israel and Jews' needed place for the end days.

White evangelicals love religious Jews but hate progressive Jews for the evil democides of communism they had a major role in. For the filth Hollywood Jews push through the media. Use of legal organs like the ACLU, for secular progressive Jews to engage in cultural & religious war against Christians, particularly evangelicals.
Black evagelicals detest the Jews for - they believe - helping fund and run slavery, for centuries of economic exploitation of blacks and other "oppressed" races here and overseas, attempt to run and manipulate blacks as "the brains and leadership of such groups as black unions and the NAACP (1909-1968), and for killing Christ. But also believe Israel must be protected for the Return and the Rapture.

Pastor Huckleberry is too slick to be openly anti-semetic. He has visited Israel 9 times and has had all the Israeli VIP indoctrination, VIP tours, and assurance that he will get the Zionist Gov stamp of approval for wealthy Israel boosters to donate to him.

Kristol and his fellow neocons have a somewhat odious reputation in Israel proper these days. The Israeli Left hates them for guiding Bush into the Iraq mess and further radicalizing anti-Israel elements elsewhere. The Likudniks are aware how Jewish the general American public sees the neocons and fear backlash against jews if the right wing fanatics get America into another catastrophic war with Iran. That Americans and others will see it as something the Jews initiated and can be blamed for. Thus their counsel to Israeli politicians and sympathetic US Christian Zionists like Paster Hucleberry is - "Don't get too close to the neocons" and tar us by association....Listen to AIPAC - not the worst saber-rattling element of the Straussians and their neo-Jacobin successors.

Posted by Chris Ford | January 7, 2008 7:56 PM

Need a decoder ring? I think you're trying to say that Kristol is the Times' Bob Novak.

Posted by Paul in NC | January 7, 2008 9:42 PM

Re Paul in NC

Comparing Kristol to Novak is like comparing Franco to Hitler. Kristol is only a moron. Novak is the personification of evil, the foul fiend himself in vaguely human form.

Posted by SLC | January 7, 2008 9:52 PM

But, seriously New York Times, this is the problem with taking Kristol on as a columnist. You need to read his work with a decoder ring to try to figure out what's happening.

Or, you could just do the obvious and not read his work at all.

I mean, honestly, what's wrong with you? Why would anybody invest time and effort in reading the opinions of someone philosophically committed to jerking you around?

Just don't read Kristol. Don't read him, don't try to figure him out, and for goodness sake, don't publicly discuss what he says.

It does you no good, and gives him currency.

Don't. Read. Kristol.

Posted by urbino | January 7, 2008 10:09 PM

How about this crazy notion, No one knows what will happen between now and November. Just like
eight years ago, who would have predicted the bizarre set of events that led to the 37 day long
after period of recounts, recriminations, etc.

Kristol's throwing out a long ball, is it likely who the hell nows? Huckabee could catastrophically
self destruct or maybe win the nominations (god help us)but so it goes. Hillary's likely to fall, but is Obama the natural choice to succeed. Having denied the tangible success of the surge to the very end; along with McClatchy; how truly
viable is your insight. You're right the Times offering of conservatives/ even effective libertarians has been slim; David Brook's declaring the "War is Over" as one small example.
But that's not your complaint. Fine, we should have gone into Waziristan; instead of Iraq. Is that your final answer. What if that situation had provoked an Islamist counter coup with Mssr. Katsulis' contacts in the JUI/MMA providing the fig leaf for a 'democratic regime'. Would it have been even really possible to disrupt AQ's weapons program significantly in that regard. Would Afghanistan, more likely resemble the Boschian
landscape of the 1st and 2nd Afghan Wars or something worse.

Posted by narciso | January 7, 2008 10:38 PM

Huckabee runs circles around any other candidate, oratorily. It helps that what he says is cohesive (for the most part - even the foreign policy things were way overblown, given his September speech which was really quite good). What's more, Huckabee's FairTax beats the "flat" tax flat out. And the caliber, and quality, of its research shows that it is, in fact, less regressive than the current plan.

Posted by Ian Repley, Ann Arbor | January 8, 2008 12:52 AM