Huckabee on the Lessons of His Campaign for GOP | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008

Clinton Agonistes
Eleanor Clift 5/9/2008 12:00:00 AM
The Clintons know it's over. The bad news was written all over the Big Dog's face as he stood behind his wife, slack-jawed and weary, as she vowed to continue her fight for the White House. Her narrow win in Indiana coupled with a crushing defeat in North Carolina has made Barack Obama the presumptive nominee—and transformed Hillary into the Democrats' version of Mike Huckabee, the GOP candidate who overstayed his welcome on the campaign trail. The difference is Huckabee was genial throughout, never really attacking John McCain. But Clinton lingers on, only ratcheting up her attacks on Obama and running the risk that she will weaken her fellow Democrat for the fall without advancing any plausible scenario of winning the nomination herself.
Talking Tech
Steven Levy 2/25/2008 12:00:00 AM
There used to be a standard gambit when politicians addressed issues of information technology, particularly when their audiences were nontechnical: I think all this computer stuff is amazing—even if I can't figure how to turn on the darn things! Heck, I'm the kind of person whose VCR still keeps blinking 12 o'clock. This was thought to be a sentiment that would create a bond with the average voter, who presumably shared a similar confusion when it came to those newfangled contraptions.
CAMPAIGN 2008
Barack Obama: Front Runner
Michael Hirsh 2/19/2008 12:00:00 AM
Wisconsin, a state hitherto best known for beer, cheese and the Green Bay Packers, may earn a place in history as having held the primary that finally tilted the race for the 2008 Democratic nomination to Barack Obama. In a decisive victory that showed just how dramatically Obama has cut into Hillary Clinton's once strong support among whites, women and blue-collar workers, the Illinois senator on Tuesday defeated his rival from New York 58 percent to 41 percent. Obama also won overwhelmingly in Hawaii.
CAMPAIGN 2008
New BFFs?
Suzanne Smalley 2/14/2008 12:00:00 AM
They often looked ready to trade blows in the debates. Just a few weeks ago, Mitt Romney called John McCain a liar for allegedly distorting Romney's position on the Iraq War. For his part, McCain seemed to revel in leading the other Republican candidates in ganging up on Romney, whom he didn't even try to pretend to like.
POTOMAC PRIMARY
Perfect Game
Arian Campo-Flores 2/13/2008 12:00:00 AM
Before the polls even closed Tuesday night, Sen. Hillary Clinton was moving on. She scrapped a planned campaign stop in the Washington, D.C., area, where she was supposed to make a final pitch for her candidacy in the Potomac Primary, and instead focused on reaching out to voters in the upcoming contests of Wisconsin, Ohio and Texas. At her campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., she plopped down in a chair, wired herself with a mike and plowed through one satellite interview after another with local TV stations in those three states, according to a pool report. "We're going to work hard and campaign hard in Ohio," she told an interviewer from Youngstown, her voice hoarse and cracking. "I'm absolutely coming to Green Bay," she assured a Wisconsin station. Though she declared herself "very optimistic" and "excited," her uneasiness came through. "I think we have an uphill challenge," she told a Milwaukee anchor, referring to the Wisconsin contest next Tuesday. "I'm the underdog in that race."
CAMPAIGN 2008
So Much for a Warm Welcome
Eve Conant
Ann Coulter has made controversy her currency, outrage her oeuvre. And a lot of currency it is: over the past decade, Coulter's earned a huge amount of money from an unbroken streak of six best sellers, each an angry diatribe against liberals, most featuring her slim blond figure on the cover. Coulter Inc. has helped inspire a cottage industry of imitators, books that all seem designed to feed off the frustrations of the angry right. ("Liberal Fascism," by Jonah Goldberg, is the latest to hit it big.) But Coulter has a subspecialty all her own: uttering remarks so off the charts, so contrary to every norm of civil discourse, that they attract national news coverage. A few months ago she declared on TV that Jews need "to be perfected," and suggested that America would be better off if it were all Christian. Last week Coulter attacked her own party's presumptive nominee. John McCain, Coulter said, was a traitor to conservatives, so much so that she'd campaign for Hillary Clinton if he were nominated. Was there anything the Arizona senator could do, NEWSWEEK e-mailed her later, to change her mind? Would she really stump for Clinton? "I don't know," she wrote. Then she added: "McCain could invent a time machine, travel back in time" and take back all his liberal-leaning votes in Congress. "Short of that," she said, "the only thing that would work is if he put a gun to my head, but since McCain is also against gun rights, that's out." (McCain backed a measure to close a gun-show loophole on background checks, but is otherwise supportive of gun rights.)