WI: Mike Huckabee Wins the 2008 Presidential Election

This is more of a WI than a challenge, but for the sake of discussion, let's say Huckabee comes on stronger at the beginning of the Republican primaries, winning the Iowa caucuses by a larger margin, winning the South Carolina primary, then building the requisite momentum to do well in the later contests. Furthermore, insert whatever your favorite POD to screw the Democrats in 2008 is - maybe John Edwards wins the nomination and his scandal breaks, maybe he becomes Clinton or Obama's running mate and the scandal still breaks, whatever. Maybe throw in Mike Bloomberg running as an independent, splitting the liberal/moderate vote. Point is, Mike Huckabee becomes president in 2009.

How would we expect a Mike Huckabee administration to go, given his strong social conservatism and relative economic populism? How would he handle the financial crisis and the Great Eecession? Healthcare? Social issues, especially the gay rights movement? Foreign affairs, such as the wars in Iraq and Iran, the broader War on Terror, relations with Iran, etc?
 
To be clear, it's really worth emphasizing the degree to which Huckabee relied on economically populist rhetoric.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mike-huckabees-bully-pulpit-economic-populism

I suppose the question would be whether he acts upon it in office or, in a manner similar to Trump, essentially cedes economic issues to traditional Republican policy wonks. How would either option translate into policy in the context of the Great Recession?

Also worth noting that, unlike Trump, Huckabee will probably be dealing with both a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House of Representatives. The only way I see Huckabee being elected in 2008 of all years (between the unpopularity of Bush, the economic meltdown, etc) is the Democratic presidential nominee bungling badly somehow. While that's certainly doable in the context of an AH scenario, it's only going to be a problem for the Democratic nominee - the Dems will likely still make gains in both houses nationally, though not to the same degree as OTL. (And given what will likely be Trump-levels of popularity among white Southerners, the GOP might eke out gains in Arkansas and/or Louisiana.) How would having to work with the Democrats affect the Huckabee Administration?
 
Maybe Huckabee wins South Carolina, which he came close to. He splits the anti-McCain vote more in Florida, so Romney crashes on Super Tuesday and Huckabee surges. He then wins the nomination. Maybe if he was against John Edwards he'd could win, or if the Jeemiah Wright scandal came out in October, not March, and Huckabee racialized the contest more.
 
Maybe Huckabee wins South Carolina, which he came close to. He splits the anti-McCain vote more in Florida, so Romney crashes on Super Tuesday and Huckabee surges. He then wins the nomination. Maybe if he was against John Edwards he'd could win, or if the Jeemiah Wright scandal came out in October, not March, and Huckabee racialized the contest more.

So what do you think a Huckabee Administration realistically looks like?
 
So what do you think a Huckabee Administration realistically looks like?

I'm not too sure. I lean towards thinking he'd be more of an orthodox Republican on economic issues in the end than a full-on populist. The stimulus would likely be more tax cut focused. If the financial and auto bailouts don't occur, the economy could enter a depression.
 
I think his fair tax idea is probably is going to be dead on arrival, if he really was ever going to commit to it.

I think he would NOT handle the AIG bonus controversy with any sense of chill. He was furious about it at the time if I recall. I can see populist, punitive taxation coming out of all of that. There might be more investigations of lending activity leading up to the crisis, and also of welfare abuse.

There probably will be a stimulus, but it won't be the decades old wishlist that it was in OTL and there probably would be some give and take involved. Huckabee's core priorities economically speaking are the protection of gerontocratic programs like Medicare and Social Security, but not the welfare state at large. The stimulative tax cuts are probably larger in this scenario, and the stimulative spending increases are probably smaller.

The Democratic Senate and House in 2009 were more heavily weighted towards the Blue Dog Coalition, so he'd probably have some people to work with on these issues despite the split branches.

I think our foreign policy becomes more pro-Israel but Iraq likely goes as OTL. I don't think Huckabee would intervene in Libya. Missile defense probably does not get pulled out of Eastern Europe.
 
I'm not too sure. I lean towards thinking he'd be more of an orthodox Republican on economic issues in the end than a full-on populist. The stimulus would likely be more tax cut focused. If the financial and auto bailouts don't occur, the economy could enter a depression.
The bailouts were already there by the time of the new administration. Bush signed off on the auto bailout in December and TARP came after the big crash before the election. I don't think that Huckabee would do anything about either, even if he could. If anything, he might try to prosecute some people on the financial side, but that is about it. A lot of talk and probably not much action. The bailouts were unpopular but needed.
 
I think our foreign policy becomes more pro-Israel but Iraq likely goes as OTL. I don't think Huckabee would intervene in Libya. Missile defense probably does not get pulled out of Eastern Europe.

What about Iran, though? On a scale of one to ten, one being "aside from rhetoric, Iran policy is almost indistinguishable from OTL in the 2009-2013 period" and ten being "he openly intervenes during the Green Revolution", where would Huckabee fall?
 
One big flashpoint of his Administration will be gay marriage. I don't think his 2016 run got much attention, but he basically become obsessed with opposing gay marriage to the exclusion of all other concerns. I don't know when he became so monomaniacal about that, but I assume even back in 2008 when he seemed more cogent, he would still have been in opposition, which would have put him at odds with the state governments that legalized it early. Also, he'd be able to give the GOP an overwhelming 7-2 advantage on the Supreme Court, which would butterfly Obergefell.
 
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Unfortunately, I don't know enough to answer the specifics, but Huckabee would have all the makings of a failed president. He could win in 2008 under exceptional circumstances, but people would still be sick of Republicans after the Bush Administration and Huckabee's own divisiveness would be bad for his approval ratings. The Democratic majority in Congress would fully doom him.
 
Unfortunately, I don't know enough to answer the specifics, but Huckabee would have all the makings of a failed president. He could win in 2008 under exceptional circumstances, but people would still be sick of Republicans after the Bush Administration and Huckabee's own divisiveness would be bad for his approval ratings. The Democratic majority in Congress would fully doom him.

One of the reasons I find the scenario so fascinating is because you'd have a president immediately following Bush who exhibits many of the traits Dubya's critics really hated (the association with the religious right and the folksy Southern persona for those on the left, the "compassionate conservatism" for the right-wing/libertarian critics of Bush, etc), just dialed up to eleven. It'd be an interesting cultural moment, for sure.
 
One big flashpoint of his Administration will be gay marriage. I don't think his 2016 run got much attention, but he basically become obsessed with opposing gay marriage to the exclusion of all other concerns. I don't know when he became so monomaniacal about that, but I assume even back in 2008 when he seemed more cogent, he would still have been in opposition, which would have put him at odds with the state governments that legalized it early. Also, he'd be able to give the GOP an overwhelming 7-2 advantage on the Supreme Court, which would butterfly Obergefell.


Maybe not. The most likely POD is Kerry winning in 2004, so the Democrats own the botched Katrina response, Iraq implosion, and financial meltdown. But that also keeps the Court the same. Kerry appoints Democrats when Bush would have appointed Roberts and Alito. Huck appoints Republicans to the OTL seats held by Sotomayor and Kagan.
 
Unfortunately, I don't know enough to answer the specifics, but Huckabee would have all the makings of a failed president. He could win in 2008 under exceptional circumstances, but people would still be sick of Republicans after the Bush Administration and Huckabee's own divisiveness would be bad for his approval ratings. The Democratic majority in Congress would fully doom him.
So Carter redux?
 
I know that whenever it is questioned how Candidate X can win in a bad year for his party, one frequently gets the response "Never mind *how* he wins; let's just say *that* he wins." The problem with this is that *how* a candidate wins is relevant to what his presidency will be like.

For example, IMO the only way Huckabee or any other GOP presidential candidate can win in OTL--with the nation under a Republican president undergoing the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression--is through some monstrous last-munute scandal involving the Democratic candidate. [1] (No, the Edwards extramarital affair will not do. It was known to insiders by the time of the Democratic convention https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...a-victory-in-2008.353378/page-2#post-10741587 making his nomination for either president or vice-president very unlikely.) But if a last-munute scandal (and it has to be a *big* one if it is to counteract the effects of the economy) is what gives Huckabee the presidency, his election will be considered a fluke, and the scandal is unlikely to hurt the Demcoratic party's congressional candidates as much as it does the presidential candidate. The result is that you will likely have a Democratic Congress (even if not as heavily Democratic as in OTL--remember, the Democrats can actually lose several seats in the House compared to 2006 and still keep a mjajority) whose members will regard Huckabee as an accidental president and will be unlikely to cooperate with him very much. So it's not clear how much of his program he will be able to get through.

Of course with an earlier POD one can have a better economy in 2008, making a GOP president more plausible--and also a GOP Congress. But in that case the GOP would be less likely to nominate an alleged populist like Huckabee--and Huckabee would presumably run an at least somewhat different kind of campaign.

[1] A Bloomberg third party candidacy is unlikely, probably wouldn't get that many votes even if it happened, anf would probably take votes away from the Republicans as well as the Democrats.
 
For example, IMO the only way Huckabee or any other GOP presidential candidate can win in OTL--with the nation under a Republican president undergoing the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression--is through some monstrous last-munute scandal involving the Democratic candidate. [1] (No, the Edwards extramarital affair will not do. It was known to insiders by the time of the Democratic convention https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...a-victory-in-2008.353378/page-2#post-10741587 making his nomination for either president or vice-president very unlikely.) But if a last-munute scandal (and it has to be a *big* one if it is to counteract the effects of the economy) is what gives Huckabee the presidency,

So probably the scenario most conducive to this would be something that I had suggested for a previous scenario...

"Hillary Clinton does somewhat better in the final weeks of the primaries, leading to the first major party convention since 1976 with no presumptive nominee going in. Clinton narrowly wins the Democratic nomination over Barack Obama on the first ballot. However, she blunders by choosing some bland moderate (maybe Evan Bayh?) as her running mate. The sequence of events in such that convention ends with many African-American and young voters deeply unhappy, with the widespread perception in some corners that the nomination had essentially been stolen from Obama, coupled with many on the left outraged by the rather centrist, Mark Penn-style tone that the Clinton/Bayh ticket is sticking with going into the general election."

Throw in a scandal or two in the homestretch of the election season, and Huckabee may just have a fighting chance in November. But yes, I agree with you that in a "normal", all-other-things-being-equal scenario, Huckabee would have no chance, and conceded as much in previous posts.

his election will be considered a fluke, and the scandal is unlikely to hurt the Demcoratic party's congressional candidates as much as it does the presidential candidate. The result is that you will likely have a Democratic Congress (even if not as heavily Democratic as in OTL--remember, the Democrats can actually lose several seats in the House compared to 2006 and still keep a mjajority) whose members will regard Huckabee as an accidental president and will be unlikely to cooperate with him very much. So it's not clear how much of his program he will be able to get through.

But herein lies the question: would the 2009-2011 Democratic Congress, under the leadership of Pelosi and Reid, go full obstructionist for someone like Huckabee like the Republican Congress went for Obama in the 2015-2017 era, especially with things like Supreme Court appointments, or would they be at least nominally willing to work with him on some of the more economically populist parts of his program - perhaps to the chagrin of congressional Republicans?
 
But herein lies the question: would the 2009-2011 Democratic Congress, under the leadership of Pelosi and Reid, go full obstructionist for someone like Huckabee like the Republican Congress went for Obama in the 2015-2017 era, especially with things like Supreme Court appointments, or would they be at least nominally willing to work with him on some of the more economically populist parts of his program - perhaps to the chagrin of congressional Republicans?

I don't think they go full obstructionist, nor do I think Huckabee tries to bowl them over. Keep in mind his experience in Arkansas; he was very much used to working with Democrats out of necessity. The climate of the period required some give and take, and I think that they would really just end up arguing over how much stimulative spending and how much stimulative tax cuts, but the core Keynesian idea of tax cuts and spending increases in time of recession would not be seriously questioned. They might find some common ground on punitive punishments of bad actors in the financial crisis.

As for the Supreme Court, yes, that would be an area where there would be significant obstruction. Huckabee is very serious about overturning Roe v. Wade, and his picks would have to meet that threshold, along with a bunch of others that the Conservative movement would demand of him. There could be a substantial issue on that front between the White House and Congress. Huckabee's big appeal is that he knows that Conservatives regularly talk a big game and never deliver results to social conservatives, but he actually IS a social conservative and would try to deliver.

I don't think either side really had any big foreign policy disagreements. All agreed on a wind down in Iraq, support for Israel, the expansion of NATO, and opposition to Russia and Iran.
 
As for the Supreme Court, yes, that would be an area where there would be significant obstruction. Huckabee is very serious about overturning Roe v. Wade, and his picks would have to meet that threshold, along with a bunch of others that the Conservative movement would demand of him. There could be a substantial issue on that front between the White House and Congress. Huckabee's big appeal is that he knows that Conservatives regularly talk a big game and never deliver results to social conservatives, but he actually IS a social conservative and would try to deliver.

Well, who are some plausible Supreme Court nominees for 2009-2013 Huckabee Administration that the Democrats wouldn't find especially disagreeable?
 
I'll give this a try.

2004: Bush doesn't back down over the STELLAR WIND program, and this results in a mass resignation of FBI and DoJ officials led by Director Mueller; this is enough to get Kerry over the edge in New Mexico, Iowa and Ohio, giving him the victory in the EC but he still loses the popular vote.

2005-2006: President Kerry begins a pullout of Iraq, which begins to collapse into a civil war without the American presence. Republicans are able to retain and expand their majorities in both chambers of Congress in the Midterms. Hillary Clinton does better in her Senate campaign, and avoids going into debt as deeply as she did.

2007: Attempt at Immigration Reform passes in the Senate, led by a coalition of Democrats and establishment GOP figures like George Allen, but dies in the House. This provokes great anger in the Republican base going into 2008.

2008: Huckabee establishes himself as the Populist candidate in the Republican primary, winning Iowa (as per OTL) and then South Carolina after establishment front runners McCain and Allen got into a bruising fight over New Hampshire. Momentum is able to carry him from there to victory. On the Democratic side, HRC and Obama have a bruising primary that Clinton ultimately wins, thanks to getting the support of Kerry. As the fall campaign shapes up, Huckabee is able to take advantage over the split within the Democratic Party by selecting J.C. Watts as his running mate and hitting Clinton from her left on some economic issues; with the collapse of the economy and the matter of Iraq, however, the final outcome isn't ever really in doubt.
 
Considering that Mike Huckabee believes the U.S. Constitution should be amended so it matches "God's standards" instead of secular ones, I would be very concerned about his hypothetical presidency's treatment of civil liberties (including freedom of religion and LGBT rights). Sure, he would probably be unable to push through any constitutional amendments if Democrats controlled Congress and most state legislatures during his term(s) in office. But the fact that he holds such a theocratic mindset would be a cause for concern, and he could issue executive orders that are in accordance with that mindset.

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other, and how we treat the family."

Mike Huckabee
Campaign speech in Warren, Michigan (14 January 2008)
 
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