Mike Huckabee is a spoiler. Ask any Republican who either supports Mitt Romney, or simply opposes John McCain, and they will tell you. In fact, Romney himself fanned the flames of derision by "calling on Mike Huckabee to drop out of the race..." and "expressed concern that Huckabee will peel off enough conservatives to deprive him of victory over McCain in Super Tuesday's Republican nomination contests..."
Huckabee, of course, went and won five states on Super Tuesday to Romney's seven, which perhaps will serve to reduce the cries of spoiler! coming from the Romney camp. As the likelihood of McCain getting the nomination comes closer, the spoiler tag may become permanently affixed to Huckabee, as it has to Ralph Nader.
The tagging of a candidate as a spoiler, and using the term in a derogatory manner, has no place in our political system and is born out of anger and ignorance. I should know; I readily applied that tag to Nader after he (in my eyes) stole enough of Al Gore's votes in Florida in 2000 to swing the state in Bush's favor. I had feared that he would do just that when I saw that he was on the ballot. Any support that he got was obviously going to detract from Gore's. He had no right to ruin the election just to serve his own massive ego.
Sometimes I'm astounded by my own ignorance.
The concept of a "spoiler" in politics is flawed in several ways. First, in the case of Florida, the assumption that if Nader hadn't been in the race, all of his votes would have gone to Gore is presumptuous. Who's to say how many of his supporters would have simply stayed home if their only options were Gore or Bush? Who knows how many would have written in someone, or voted for one of the other candidates. Plus, nobody knows how many contingency plans the Bush team had ready, to assure their candidate "victory."
More troubling, though, is the very notion that the votes that went to Nader (or any votes, for that matter) belonged to Gore. Somehow, he was entitled to all of the "liberal" votes. So how dare anyone take them away from him? Please. The point of a representative government is that the people get to decide for themselves who they want representing them. The idea that one person deserves the votes of a certain demographic is ludicrous. Nobody deserves our votes; they are supposed to earn them.
The other problem with the spoiler is the mainstream parties' response to them. Rather than finding out what is causing people to leave them and lend their support to third party candidates, the two major parties instead try to make the process more difficult for anyone not endorsed by either the DNC or the RNC. The same goes for inter-party fights, such as between Huckabee and Romney. Perhaps instead of calling for Huckabee to quit, Romney should have tried to figure out what it is about his campaign that is causing Republicans to support Huckabee instead (or McCain, for that matter.)
The only spoiler in politics is failed leadership.
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9 comments:
Hey Mike.....awesome post!! To me I wanted Huckabee to quit because I don't like looking at his fat ugly face. Ok I'm just kidding. sortof. I do think there is a sincere hatred for Romney by McCain and Huckabee. It may be the money issue, it may be the mormon thing, perhaps Romney is too arrogant, whatever the reason I wanted him out not necessarily for his votes, cuz evangelicals aren't going for Romney anyway, but it was one less person for Romney to fight with. McCain/Huckabee pile on is tiresome for my guy. And I can't stand the guy. I think McCain has been the GOP guy for quite some time based on electibility. this election is going to suck royal. No one to be passionate about......passionate about hating but not supporting. Ross Perot was the other spoiler for Bush 41....thanks for the great read! :) Nikki
Hey, Nikki. I remember Perot and his half-hour campaign infomercials. He was a riot! I think that he got as much support as he did because Bush 41 abandoned the hard line on taxes and other economic issues that the conservative base likes. He is a perfect example of what I was saying. Republicans should look at why so many of their voters drifted away from Bush, instead of just decrying Perot as a spoiler.
Thanks for the comment!
Q: If someone plays a game in "god mode" and wins is it really winning?
A. There are two ways to win: hocus-pocus or fair and square. Both ways achieve the same goal - a victory. I suppose it all depends on how much integrity you're willing to give up to achieve that victory.
(11-22-01) So Bush Did Steal the White House: A recently uncovered memo shows that the Florida judge in charge of last year's presidential recount was moving toward counting the "overvotes" that heavily favored Al Gore when George W. Bush got five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene to save the day. Continued here...
Hey, EvilPoet. One of the things that bothers me the most about the people running the Republican party is the "win at all costs" attitude they have. Who cares about rigging an election, so long as you win? Who cares about subverting the Constitution, so long as you gain power? Who cares what the people want?
RE: election 2000, I have no doubt that the election was stolen. The Bush machine had so many tricks in place that there was no way Gore was going to win. (Same thing happened in Ohio in 2004.)
Thanks for the comment.
funny......I think the same thing, only about Al and the boys.....paradigms. :Nikki
Hey, Nikki. Are you suggesting that Gore tried to steal the election in 2000, or that he had a "win at all costs" attitude?
If he tried to steal the election, I've never seen any evidence of it. Plus, if he did, he was either no good at it, or was simply out-played by Bush's team.
Regarding any win at all cost attitude, I would present the following excerpt from the NY Times article that you linked to on January 30:
"A New York Times investigation earlier this year showed that 680 of the late- arriving ballots did not meet Florida's standards yet were still counted. The vast majority of those flawed ballots were accepted in counties that favored Mr. Bush, after an aggressive effort by Bush strategists to pressure officials to accept them."
" A statistical analysis conducted for The Times determined that if all counties had followed state law in reviewing the absentee ballots, Mr. Gore would have picked up as many as 290 additional votes, enough to tip the election in Mr. Gore's favor in some of the situations studied in the statewide ballot review."
"But Mr. Gore chose not to challenge these ballots because many were from members of the military overseas, and Mr. Gore did not want to be accused of seeking to invalidate votes of men and women in uniform."
So what this illustrates is that the Bush team didn't care about the legality of the votes, they just wanted them counted. It also shows that Gore didn't want to exclude the votes, even though technically they should have been nullified, and it would possibly have given him the victory.
I'd say that's the exact opposite of a "win at all costs" attitude.
The republican establishment got the candidate it wanted this year, and they rejected conservatism. We'll see how this turns out.
Hey Mike....you know I could use the same article to dispute your argument...the title of the article itself renders a Bush win. Al's mistake was only wanting to recount the heavily democratic areas that supported him and the if if if if method of deciphering a chad was stupid, if that isn't voter tampering I don't know what is. We both know that most of the military votes go to Bush....why didn't Al want to recount ALL of the counties?? this is the dispute....count them all or count none. that is fair!! This nitpicking ifs ands or buts with regard to chads and dimples is voter manipulation.....voter intent decided by whom?? Al? Hey if George did steal the election then he is smart...smarter than Al and his cronies. amazing for a 2nd grade intellect!! but in reality it is over and it does proove my theory that dems hate the prez because of this......I think you have proven that point....dontcha think???? moving on to the new post!!! though these have been hard on me!! don't you know it has been a hard couple of days...give a girl a break!!! jk you know I enjoy conversing and you are always a gentleman........:)Nikki
Freadom, I was surprised to see McCain emerge as the front runner. I have my own conspiracy theory about that, but it will be interesting to see how it helps or hurts the Republican party.
Nikki, I totally agree with you about Al screwing up the challenge to the Florida votes. He should have asked for a statewide recount, no doubt about it. As far as the voter intent goes, if I recall, that's the wording in the Florida election law. Of course, such a process will result in varying interpretations of ballots from one person to the next, but that is unavoidable. The only way to get a truly consistent read of voter intent would be to have one person check all the ballots for the whole state.
Just a note, when I say that George stole the election, I actually mean that the people working for his dad (Jim Baker, for instance) stole it, not George. As for Dems hating George because of the stolen election, I can't speak for any Dem, I can only speak for me, and you know I will never forgive the people responsible for that. Take away our ability to elect our leaders and this ceases to be America. (But that's just my opinion.)
And I though I was taking it easy on you! Ha, just kidding. I'm glad to see you've still got the fight in you.
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