In a chapter titled “Faux-Cons: Worse than Liberalism,” Huckabee identifies what he calls the “real threat” to the Republican Party: “libertarianism masked as conservatism.” He is not so much concerned with the libertarian candidate Ron Paul’s Republican supporters as he is with a strain of mainstream fiscal conservative thought that demands ideological purity, seeing any tax increase as apostasy and leaving little room for government-driven solutions to people’s problems.Well, yes. That's what conservatism is. Conservatism sees "little room for government-driven solutions to people's problems" because they are generallly unfair and only make the problems worse.
What is Huckabee's definition of conservatism? Religious populism?
If you go to the full article, you'll see what may be The Club for Growth's best endorsement yet:
Among his targets is the Club for Growth, a group that tarred Huckabee as insufficiently conservative in the primaries and ran television ads with funding from one of Huckabee's longtime Arkansas political foes, Jackson T. Stephens Jr.The Huck is a nice guy on a personal level, but he's not someone I would want having power over my life.
UPDATE: In the comments at Hot Air, commenter rockmom writes:
Huckabee is the Jesse Jackson of the right.Heh.
Of course, that's not entirely fair to Jackson given what he was up to forty or so years ago.
7 comments:
"The Huck is a nice guy on a personal level, but he's not someone I would want having power over my life."
That about sums up my perception of Huckabee. He's definitely not what the GOP or the conservative movement needs.
NOABEE
sorry, I was going for a "NOBAMA" vibe
Great post! For the life of me, I cannot understand why the two major ideological wings of the conservative movement -- social conservatives and libertarians -- aren't more in sync with each other. The two wings need each other. Libertarians need social conservatives to remind them of the necessary role of law and government in protecting human life, and to remind them of the need for virtue in both private and public life precisely to prevent government-mandated "good behavior." As Edmund Burke once observed, human beings have to be ruled. They will either rule themsevles or be ruled by others, but they will be ruled. Individual virtue means that the person rules himself or herself. In other words, it is not license, but liberty.
Now, social conservatives need libertarians in order to prevent social conservativism from degenerating into a kind of nanny-state, Democrat-lite experiment. Think the New Deal but with more overt prayer.
They need each other. Do they annoy each other? Sure -- because by interacting, they provide boundaries to each ideology. But, to quote another great philosopher, Clint Eastwood, "a man's got to know his limitations." Social conservative and libertarianism help each other to see their limitations -- and they serve as a necessary corrective to each other within the conservative movement.
Goldwater got this, back in the late 50's and early 60's. Unfortunately, he choose to forget it in the 70's and 80's. Reagan got this. Frank Meyer got this. Why does't the modern conservative movement get this????
Mark, the reason they don't intersect more is because in many ways they are diametrically opposite. Social conservatives want government to intrude in personal lives and say what you can and can't do on a personal level. True Libertarians want government to leave them alone.
Your argument is like saying the Republicans need more Democrats in their ranks or vice versa.
Government has grown more under social conservatives like GWB than under any Democrat going back to the New Deal.
Except that it didn't grow because of social conservatives. It grew because of socialist Democrats and Rockefeller Republicans, both of whom love big government and the special breaks it can cut for those with influence.
I don't think that social conservatives, per se, are the problem. There are libertarians who identify, for example, with the pro-life movement. Let me name one such libertarian who was in the news awhile back: Ron Paul. Social conservatism is not incompatible with an overall commitment to small government. The sooner libertarians realize that, the better off the conservative movement as a whole will be.
Great post. I would add that I won't support Huckabee because of how he used the Christian faith in his campaign.
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