“It’s gone,” said Ed Rollins, who once worked as President Reagan’s political director and recently became Mike Huckabee’s national campaign chairman. “The breakup of what was the Reagan coalition — social conservatives, defense conservatives, antitax conservatives — it doesn’t mean a whole lot to people anymore.”
I think it's true, as Will (I believe) said, that Romney is the only GOP candidate representing the old Reagan coalition of social conservatives, defense hawks, supply-siders and small-government libertarians. But there just aren't enough people left on the Right who are willing to accept that bargain anymore. Reagan is dead, and Romney represents the last gasp of classical Reaganism. If defense hawkishness is your thing, McCain's your man. If small government animates you, go Ron Paul. Social conservatives have Huckabee. If "Islamofascism" burns bright in your mind, Giuliani's your torch bearer. Romney tries to be all things to all people, and in a fragmented field that might be enough to win him the nomination. But he conspicuously lacks authenticity, and would stand to win only up against the most calculating and unlikable Democrat imaginable, Hillary Clinton. Romney is the purest expression of establishment Republicanism on the current scene, which to me is all the more reason to cheer for Huckabee, Paul, and even McCain.
But I think the real reason is simpler: as with blogosphere conservatives, mainstream conservatives are mostly urban sophisticates with a libertarian bent, not rural evangelicals with a social conservative bent. They're happy to talk up NASCAR and pickup trucks in public, but in real life they mostly couldn't care less about either. Ditto for opposing abortion and the odd bit of gay bashing via proxy. But when it comes to Ten Commandments monuments and end times eschatology, they shiver inside just like any mainstream liberal. The only difference is that usually they keep their shivering to themselves because they want to keep everyone in the big tent happy.
But then along comes Huckabee, and guess what? He's the real deal. Not a guy like George Bush or Ronald Reagan, who talks a soothing game to the snake handlers but then turns around and spends his actual political capital on tax cuts, foreign wars, and deregulating big corporations. Huckabee, it turns out, isn't just giving lip service to evangelicals, he actually believes all that stuff.
Thoughts