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Tuesday, January 29, 2008  Freebie for Bob: Huckabee Talks Like
Marxist  ...or at least like Martin Luther King and Bill
Clinton, which should close enough.  Dr. Mankiw directs my
attention to a diverting little study by Dartmouth professors
Bruce Sacerdote and Owen Zidar on our presidential candidates'
word choices (PDF alert!). The curious professors analyzed word
frequencies in the speeches of Huckabee, McCain, Romney,
Thompson, Giuliani, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards and compared
them with word frequencies in the speeches of Reagan, ML King,
LBJ, Bill Clinton, GW Bush, JFK, and Stalin.  On a scale
comparing candidate speeches to the words of Reagan and King,
ranging from 0 for Reaganesque speech and 1 for Kingly speech,
Huckabee scored a 1.466, highest of all the candidates, even
higher than Obama (1.051) and Clinton (0.751).  Shift the scale
of comparison to LBJ (0) vs. Bill Clinton (1), and Huckabee
sounds much more like his fellow Arkansian, sc