The NYT’s Timothy Egan gives a succinct summation of the Republican fear of a Huck planet: “It’s okay to have faux rubes, a la Bush senior and his pork rinds, or George W. and his Midland malapropisms. But when something that looks like the real thing comes along, the Republican royalists get apoplectic. They were appalled at the recent YouTube debate because it looked like a parody of one faction of their party – complete with Bible-waving wackos, trigger-happy gun nuts and Confederate-flag enthusiasts.” As we now know, the Bush White House was never as genuinely religious as it pretended. Of course, Huck isn’t as genuinely working class as he pretends, either. Bush fooled social conservatives; Huck, so far, has fooled a few key economic liberals, particularly in the press corps, where he’s been anointed a “populist” so persuasively that the label can even be applied in a news article.