The NYT’s explanation for why Huck won Iowa is a perfect example of what many evangelicals are talking about when they say that the NYT just doesn’t get them. Noting that Huck drew a third more evangelicals to the polls — 60% of the Republican turnout — than in years past, Michael Luo and David D. Kirkpatrick fail to quote any of them. Instead, they echo establishment G.O.P. talking points by pointing out that Huck’s “natural allies among Christian conservative leaders” don’t like him. By this, they mean Paul Weyrich, Jim Dobson, and Pat Robertson — precisely the people so many evangelicals have been saying don’t represent them anymore. But social movements make the NYT nervous — they need “leaders” to talk to, “opinion-makers.” That same mistake leads them to reproduce the talking points of economic royalists who falsely accuse Huck–an establishment outsider–of populist pandering. Only, that mistake plays in Huckabee’s favor — he may sound like William Jennings Bryan, but he’s proposing an economic program that in practice will be to the right of Ronald Reagan’s.