The Evil Genius of Mike Huckabee
I gotta give the Huckster credit.
When’s the last time we saw a member of the religious right who was fluent enough in the touchstones of the 60’s left to pull off a one-liner like this:
“I will confess this: If you play the spot backwards it says, ‘Paul is dead. Paul is dead.’“
Seriously. Here he is with a vote-for-me-and-baby-Jesus ad — a spot that has even religious conservatives with their noses out of joint — and Huckabee defuses the tension he’s created with a joke about the White Album?
As if to say, how much of a Jesus freak can I be if I also know how to play “Jesus is Just Alright”?
On a purely political note, whatever you think of the man, his team is doing an all-time great job of generating earned media from its ads. Between this and that Chuck Norris spot, I can’t think of anybody else whose ads even come close to this level of meta analysis and free Internet life.
UPDATE: It didn’t even occur to me in my post midnight blogging that the Paul in question is probably Ron Paul — who yesterday suggested Huckabee was a fascist — not Paul McCartney. Forget double entendre, it’s like a triple-backflip innuendo. Damn… I mean, darn, he’s good.