ArcaMax

"Bumpkinizing," a term Leibovich attributed to David Wasserman of The Cook Political Report, is the process of deglamorizing a candidate to enhance his or her appeal to ordinary people by making the candidate look and sound as ordinary, down-home and folksy as possible.

There's nothing new about pols dressing down, hiding their advanced degrees and inserting a few more aw-shucks bromides that their granddaddy told 'em into their speeches. But in today's media age and soaring campaign costs, it takes skill to avoid overdoing the hayseed approach as much as to underdo it.

Ernst, for example, avoided the pitfalls of, say, Christine O'Donnell, who sunk her own folksy "I'm you" ad in Delaware's 2010 U.S. Senate race by opening with, "I'm not a witch." (Gee, that's a relief.)

Watch for a new wave of poverty snobbery to rise with the 2016 presidential race. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee leads the pack, testing the waters with his new book, "God, Guns, Grits and Gravy," a bold bunch of aw-shucks pokes at the liberal "Harvard and Hollywood folks" in their coastal "bubbles," far away from the good ol' decent heartland folks in the "flyover states."

In the past, I have praised Huckabee's peacemaker approach to today's polarized politics. "I'm conservative," he likes to say, "but I'm not angry with anyone." Nice. But after his nice-guy approach went nowhere in the angry conservative talk-radio world, I am disappointed to see him go full virtue-bully in his new book by attacking Jay-Z and Beyonce as examples of a "culture of crude." Really?

Really? Obviously Huckabee's trying to score points with his base by attacking stars who President Obama has praised in the past. But, as "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart pointed out in an on-air argument with the former Baptist minister, hasn't Huckabee listened to the lyrics of "Cat Scratch Fever," a hit tune by his own friend, rock star Ted Nugent?

Huckabee feebly tried to argue that Nugent's song was intended for adults. Tell that to Tipper Gore. She's been blasting Nugent, among others, for raunchy lyrics since the mid-1980s.

It's tricky to play the bumpkin in politics. In today's media age, there aren't as many rubes anymore.

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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.

(c) 2015 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.