Ross Douthat tackles the question of why Mike Huckabee was hated by the conservative establishment, while Sarah Palin was beloved. Huck suggests it was looks over ability, Ross suggests it was Palin-bashing by liberals, and I agree with both, though even more with Huckabee. Palin was clearly a dolt from the beginning--ambitious on the level of Richard III but without two brain cells to rub together, Palin was a buffoon from the beginning of her time in the public eye. Huck looked silly from time to time, but he was obviously more qualified than Palin for high office. And that's why he didn't get it.
You see, Huck winning would have shifted the meaning of Republicanism by quite a bit. Huckabee had little love for the moneycon wing of the Republican Party and little love for the neocon wing, while being very much a proponent of sociocon enhancement in the party's establishment. Now, the grassroots of the GOP is predominantly Huck-loving and socially conservative, but the party's establishment is far more neocon- and moneycon-friendly. Huckabee clearly wanted to take the Republican Party in the direction of a European Christian Democratic party, which fuses social conservatism with moderate-to-liberal stances on domestic and economic issues. Since he was essentially mounting an offensive against the party establishment, the establishment fought him as hard as they could. It is regrettable that Huckabee didn't succeed in gutting his party's establishment--even if he'd lost the election (as he most likely would have) he'd have been able to remake the party in his own image after having engaged in some creative destruction.
Palin, on the other hand, is a blundering idiot. Her record isn't too different from Huck's, but it's obvious from watching her that she is stupid, so the same establishmentarians that objected to Huck's record saw someone they thought they could directly control and accepted her. It's not unlike how bureaucracies work in The Wire, in which smart and talented people are ostracized because they act independently of the bureaucracy, while incompetent morons (like Stan Valchek) are promoted because of their willingness to toe the company line. With Palin, folks like Bill Kristol saw a perfect blank slate that would appeal to the social conservative base, as Huckabee did, but because Palin was out of her element she would be easily moldable and reliant on folks like Kristol. The fact that she did immediately become the target of fundie love and liberal scorn only crystallized (sorry) the wisdom of the strategy. It might even have worked, had Palin been better able to fake some modicum of policy knowledge so as not to make her untenable to moderates. This was the fatal flaw in the strategy, though it was a bit unexpected as she at least seemed to know what she was talking about when she was in Alaska.
In short, Huckabee was rejected by the establishment because he threatened their control, and Palin was accepted by them because she didn't.
