WHEN WE PAID pundits try to provide campaign analysis, we often strain to find historical analogies. Although I’m not asking for sympathy, please understand that it’s not easy. There have been only fifty-something presidential campaigns, and obviously those conducted in the horse-and-buggy era provide scant parallels to an election held in our own age of Al Gore’s wondrous intertubes. Besides, every one of these things is unique.
That said, I think I’ve found a near perfect parallel to the Huckabee ’08 campaign–Pat Buchanan in 1996. Buchanan stunned the world in 1996 when he defeated Bob Dole in New Hampshire. That result caused the Republican electorate to ask itself two questions:
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