The Occasional Observer

Jonathan Alter at Newsweek wonders if he's the "GOP's Best Bet?"

The GOP is in a deep hole and keeps digging. Even after Mike Huckabee won big among attendees at last week's "Values Voters Convention," many evangelicals have been telling the former Arkansas governor—and onetime Baptist minister—that they like him but won't back him because he can't beat Hillary Clinton. They have it exactly backward. He may be the only Republican candidate with a decent chance to beat the Democrats next November.

Huckabee? Yes, Huckabee...

Huckabee comes across more hopeful than Giuliani, more believable than Romney, more intelligent than Thompson and fresher than McCain. He would hold the base and capture moderates drawn to his down-home style. His greatest asset is that he alone among the Republicans "speaks American." He connects to his audience with stories and metaphors and a geniality that can't be faked. "I'm conservative but I'm not angry about it," he likes to say, and it's true; his gentle mocking of the intraparty warfare that broke out during the Fox debate—likening it to a "demolition derby"—confirms the point. This was Reagan's secret, and it worked for Huckabee in Arkansas, where he won the votes of independents and Democrats.

Yep, the MSM is starting to recognize he's for a real and a threat to Billary.

Meanwhile, conservative establishmentarians like Nick Lowry from NR are also feeling the threat to their chosen GOP candidates, and going great guns to derail it (see Lowry's column in the Post). In the process, however, he is forced to admit Huck's talents (while ultimately concluding he's only running for VP):

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.

More pro-Huckabee punditry comes from conservative populist James Pinkerton of Newsday, who makes the case that the race is still wide open and Huck is the horse that's closing:

[In] the battle for hearts and souls within the Republican Party itself...Giuliani has the lead, though not by much. The folks at RealClear Politics.com have averaged out the most recent polls, showing Giuliani with 27 percent - 9 points ahead of former Sen. Fred Thompson. It's better to be ahead than behind, but if barely more than a quarter of primary voters support you, you aren't a very strong front-runner...

But now we come to the innermost ring. This ring is the hardest to quantify because the key metric - "buzz" - can't really be expressed in a hard number, at least not until Election Day.

But buzz is real, nonetheless. It's the juice that animates the activists, the folks who actually power a candidate to victory. As the American Revolutionary Samuel Adams put it centuries ago, "It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires."

So who, if anyone, is burning up the grass roots? A visit to the Values Voters Summit, convened last Saturday by the Family Research Council in Washington, provided the answer. The "hot" candidate, measured by standing ovations, was former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. As he said, "I am someone who comes not to the faith community but from the faith community."

And the Values Voters straw poll underscored the power of Huckabee's connection to these innermost voters: Romney won the overall balloting, including online "votes," but of the 1,000 or so activists who cared enough to be in the room, 51 percent endorsed Huckabee - compared with 10 percent for Romney, 8 percent for Thompson and virtually none for Giuliani.

So then is Huckabee the front-runner? Nope. Way behind in money and name recognition, Huckabee is still a dark horse. But he is a buzzing dark horse, lit up by that fourth, white-hot, innermost ring.