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Nov. 19, 2009
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Nov. 18, 2009
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JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 23, 2007 / 11 Mar-Cheshvan 5768

The joy of Huck

By Rich Lowry


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told a gathering of social conservatives in Washington last weekend, in a boffo speech that received repeated standing ovations, that "it's important that the language of Zion is a mother tongue and not a recently acquired second language."


Not only is Huckabee a native speaker, he is a surpassingly silver-tongued one. By the time he finished his speech, with a stirring peroration invoking biblical underdogs beginning with David ("that little shepherd boy with five smooth stones"), the audience seemed ready to follow this presidential long shot into the lion's den.


Huckabee's speech had echoes of Howard Dean's fiery call to the faithful at a Democratic National Committee meeting in 2003; to paraphrase Dean, Huckabee was saying that he's from the social-conservative wing of social conservatism. That Huckabee has a pure social-conservative pedigree helps him in a race where none of the major candidates do, but much of his appeal is in the sheer nothing-to-lose joie de vivre of his candidacy.


Huckabee is in that golden campaign space once occupied by Pat Buchanan in 1992 and 1996 and by John McCain in 2000 — dark-horse candidates unencumbered by large staffs or expectations who can afford to act on gut political instincts and enjoy themselves in the process. Buchanan and McCain both were rewarded with upset victories that made them major factors in the nominating contest, and Huckabee — moving up in Iowa — could yet enjoy a similar moment.


With almost no organization, Huckabee lives off his words. In oratorical talent, he's something of a cross between Billy Sunday and Ronald Reagan. He rose to the leadership of the Arkansas State Baptist Convention on his speaking ability. As governor, he didn't have a speechwriter, and there was no such thing as an advanced text. His staff got reporters copies of his annual state of the state addresses by doing a quick transcription of his off-the-cuff remarks.


Huckabee shines in the verbal contests of the debates, and his wise-cracking, guitar-playing persona ingratiates him to journalists. But for all his eloquence, what Huckabee lacks, fundamentally, is a message. Unlike past long-shot crusaders like Buchanan and McCain, there is no new direction in which he wants to take the party. He has different mood music than his rivals — acknowledging middle-class anxieties and sounding nationalistic notes — but these are more rhetorical riffs than part of an integrated worldview.


"I don't want to see our food come from China, our oil come from Saudi Arabia and our manufacturing come from Europe and Asia," he said in his Washington speech. There is so much foolishness in that one sentence it is hard to unpack: We import a mere 3.3 percent of our food from China; we're not going to be independent of foreign oil in 10 years as Huckabee promises; and foreign manufactured goods, by keeping prices low, are a boon to the middle class that Huckabee champions.


Lines like this are just part of Huckabee's act — an act not in the sense of being inauthentic, but in the sense of being literally a rhetorical roadshow. Pundits now say that Huckabee has made the Republican contest a "five man" race. This is overkill. Without organization, money or an agenda, Huckabee is very unlikely to win the nomination. A presidential candidate has to be more than a performer. As one top social conservative says, "He's not running for Toastmasters."


But he could be running for vice president. He's a natural fit for Rudy Giuliani. If Huckabee wins an upset in Iowa, he will deal a potentially mortal blow to Giuliani competitor Mitt Romney. If Giuliani becomes the nominee, he will have to shore up the social-conservative base. A vice-presidential nominee with impeccable social-conservative credentials will be a must, and one like Huckabee — an incredibly talented communicator with crossover appeal to the media — will be a plus.


As for Huckabee's presidential campaign, it's a blast. Enjoy it while it lasts.

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© 2007 King Features Syndicate

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