“His support is very real. People are passionate. A lot of it comes from a big portion of the electorate who’s just angry and frustrated,” Huckabee said Friday on the “Steve Malzberg Show.”
“And I understand because I’m angry. Heck, I went on a campaign for Republicans in 37 states last year believing that if we got the majority in both Houses, that they would actually act like it — and they haven’t. I’m as frustrated as anybody and I understand where that anger comes from.”
Here’s the scene. A village is being sacked by barbarians nightly. Trump shows up, with a massive broadsword and beheads five barbarians the first night. People cheer. He does it the next night. People cheer, and say he should be the village’s leader. Then Huckabee jumps up and says, “I’m as angry as you are at these barbarians. Why can’t I lead?”
Huck’s appeals will fail. If he wanted them to work, he’d begin cutting down the enemies of the party, attacking the GOPe, and respectfully addressing Donald as a compatriot in that endeavor, as Ted Cruz did. Since Donald has seized the mantle of chief anti-establishment warrior, Cruz’s strategy is really the only strategy out there that won’t at this point seem like cheap mimicry. In Cruz’s case, it even looks like brilliant strategizing to back up the anti-establishment play, in the event something happens to Donald’s candidacy along the way.
I can get angry, but you’d never know it. I won’t tell you I’m angry, and if the problem is big enough, the most you will see is quiet brooding as I plot. I see this in Cruz and his strategy. Not showy, not ostentatious, just visible in the actions he takes.
I highlight this to show the difference between Huck and Trump’s rhetorical strategy. Huck appears to be trying to manipulate an alien race he has never studied. Donald play the crowd like a Harpsichord, using counterintuitive strategies you’d never even think of yourself.
One has a decent chance of being President, the other, not.
