When Republicans have the White House, they obviously can't blame the government for everything. So they do something incredibly ballsy: They blame the American people for the decline of America. But the weird part is—unlike when, say, Jimmy Carter says we've gotten too soft and everyone gets mad at him—when Dan fucking Quayle says that fictional Murphy Brown's fictitious child is tearing America to pieces, we have actual discussions about how actual single mothers have let America down.
Mike Huckabee is making a calculated wager by attacking Natalie Portman for conceiving a child out of wedlock. Conventional wisdom says that in a time when the economy is still hurting, voters don't care about moral issues; Huckabee is launching a media test probe to see if he can start a dialogue about single parenthood that will drive the cycle for a few days. My bet is, if this sticks, he's going to start coming out swinging on a family values platform straight out of the Bush-Quayle early-'92 playbook. This could be smart; Gingrich has already proven he gets unpresidential and testy when faced with family values questions. Huckabee is the most solid family values guy the Republicans have (In theory, Mitt Romney should give Huckabee a serious challenge for that title, but a lot of the people who feel strongest about "traditional family values" also believe that Mormons are Satan's Earthly hand-puppets).
But we live in a very different America than the America of 1992. Sarah Palin is beloved by the religious right, even though her daughter would have been a perfect target for Quayle back in the day. The cultural landscape has progressed to the point where Republicans are forced to fight against gay marriage in the public sphere. It feels as though Republicans are just pleased to know that people are successfully having heterosexual sex at all, in the face of all these sodomy-and-abortion parties we're having out here in the Unreal America. (Hell, Huckabee himself has been more "reasonable" in the past about this same issue, praising unwed teen mom Jamie Lynn Spears for not having a child.) The Republican media response to Huckabee's charges have been half-hearted. Crazy Kathryn Jean Lopez at The Corner offered a half-hearted rah-rah, and at the time of this writing, Glenn Beck's The Blaze hasn't mentioned the Portman flap at all (while Huckabee's prior Obama-in-Kenya flap remains on the front page).
Huckabee is market-testing different political brands now. His Kenyan comments didn't seem to fly with anyone but the crazy birthers, and his Portman comments aren't getting the reception they would've gotten back in the day. Now we have to wait to see what new flavor of conservatism he's going to try out next.
