Mike Huckabee has undeniable political skills and a clear appeal
to social conservatives, but the media have gone way overboard in
trying to portray him as a potential consensus conservative
candidate, if only he had the money and name recognition.
When Sean Hannity interviewed Huckabee after the debate last
night, Hannity said the only bad thing he had every heard a
conservative say about Huckabee was a comment he made on
immigration. Meanwhile, David Brooks engaged in some more
whitewashing in his ode to Huckabee in a recent NY
Times column when he wrote that "each of the top-tier
candidates makes certain parts of the party uncomfortable. Huckabee
is the one candidate acceptable to all factions."
Huh? The Club for Growth, a prominent group of economic
conservatives, finds Huckabee so unacceptable due to his fiscal
record in Arkansas that they created an entire Website to
attacking him called "Tax Hike Mike." He received an "F" from the
Cato Institute in their annual fiscal report card of governors, ranking him sixth from last.
Also not to the liking of small-government conservatives and
libertarians, there's his anti-smoking and obesity crusades and the
nanny-statism that goes along with it.
Then there is foreign policy. Several people I spoke to at the
Value Voters Summit--who loved Huckabee--were concerned that he was
too soft on national security. Huckabee is aware of this
perception, which is why he spent the early part of his speech at
the conference to speaking about Islomofascism, and probably why in
the debate last night he called it "the most dangerous enemy we've
ever faced." Conservative hawks will need to hear a lot more to
become comfortable with him.
This doesn't even get into the ethics
problems he had as governor of Arkansas.
My point is not to pick on Huckabee. And if somebody wants to
argue that in a general election against the Democrat, Republicans
need an economic populist who can appeal to the middle class, or
that he'd be fine on foreign policy, okay. But the reality is that
there are plenty of conservatives who are hostile or at least
uncomfortable with Huckabee's candidacy, and to portray things any
differently displays either ignorance of the subject matter or
intellectual dishonesty in an effort to shakeup the campaign
narrative by promoting a likable character.
topics:
Foreign Policy, Fascism, Immigration
