One implication of Mike Huckabee’s "win" at Ames is that he is getting media attention as a potential first-tier candidate. In Bloomberg this morning he went after Mitt Romney and the whole Wall Street phenomenon.
First, Romney:
In a veiled dig at Romney, 60, Huckabee said his record on social issues is unblemished.
“There are no, sort of, questionable moments or affiliations whatsoever in terms of issues that really can become very defining,” he said, citing “sanctity of life, Second Amendment and same-sex marriage.”
In his Massachusetts campaigns, Romney said abortion should be “safe and legal,” supported gun control and promised to be a strong advocate for gay rights.
Perhaps more importantly, Huckabee is trying to build space for economic populism. First he talks about the problems faced by "middle- and low-income Americans" And then he bashes Wall Street:
Huckabee said he is the only Republican “talking openly about the need to address issues” like the environment, rebuilding the nation’s roads and bridges and the need to focus more on middle- and low-income Americans.
“If the Republican Party becomes the wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street, we’re going to kill our chance of being elected next year and maybe for a generation to come,” he said.
Jim Antle at the American Spectator notes that:
[T]he fusion of economic populism and social conservatism has generally been a losing strategy in Republican politics
I would note, however, that there are fewer economic conservatives in the party than there used to be.
