Huck Wins South, Bested by 7-year-old

It seems clear now, if it wasn't before, that the Republican nominee will be John McCain, and that the Republican ticket will be McCain-Huckabee...alas. (Oh, stop that.)

Regent University's Charles Dunn at The Chuck Dunn Report explains why in "The Key That Unlocks The White House Door." Since Nixon, no one has won the White House without a strong appeal to the South. Of the nation's five regions, the South has by far the most electoral college votes (189, followed by the Midwest at 124). The winner must appeal to southern concerns and demonstrate at least a credible Christian religiosity. Of the seven southern states that have held primaries so far, Huckabee has won five (all five that were in contention yesterday on Super Tuesday: AL, AR, GA, TN, WV) and come second in one (SC). The other two states (FL, SC) McCain won on his own. Huckabee clearly also appeals to Evangelical Christians.

Nonetheless, this Evangelical remains unimpressed by the southern Evangelical candidate. I always have the impression from Mike Huckabee that he is talking down to me. Seven year old Aleya Deatsch from West Des Moines found the same thing, according to the New York Times.

“Who is your favorite author?” Aleya Deatsch, 7, of West Des Moines asked Mr. Huckabee in one of those posing-like-a-shopping-mall-Santa moments.

Mr. Huckabee paused, then said his favorite author was Dr. Seuss.

In an interview afterward with the news media, Aleya said she was somewhat surprised. She thought the candidate would be reading at a higher level.

“My favorite author is C. S. Lewis,” she said.

I happen to know this girl, and if Mr. Huckabee had known that he was dealing with a homeschooled Orthodox Presbyterian, he might have said at least John Bunyan, if not John Owen.

VP Huckabee

Lucas Croslow writes:

I like Mike. Really, I do. But somewhere between Arkansas, Iowa, and his national campaign, I realized this is not a man who can lead the free world. One need not have personally known John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, or even Bill Clinton to say confidently: You, Mike Huckabee, are none of these.

Huckabee has been variously praised and disparaged for his everyman perspective on national issues. As the Iowa Republican Caucuses approached, the two-time Arkansas governor opined that Americans would rather vote for the guy they work beside than the guy who laid them off (an unsubtle reference to Romney, his businessman opponent). But being a likable guy won't fix Iraq, pay for Social Security, or reduce the federal deficit – just three of the major tasks the next president needs to accomplish. America needs a man of action, the kind that makes tough decisions and risks being disliked for them, not a buddy president you want to have a beer with after work.

The genius of the American constitution will carry the country through even an abysmal presidency. But it is open to question whether the Republican Party can survive another Bush-like embarrassment before the watchful eyes of the world and the liberal elite. Having squandered an historic opportunity to bury the Democrats beneath the rubble of the 2002 mid-term elections, the Republicans need a president who will restore confidence in the party, or else it's unlikely that Americans will again entrust the House and Senate to the GOP anytime soon. Huckabee is poised to repeat Bush's mistakes, not undo them, for a number of reasons.

First, to put it diplomatically, Huckabee lacks foreign policy experience. To put it plainly, he is clueless. The southern accent and country-boy speaking style that endear him to voters in his native Arkansas don't play so well at the national level, much less in foreign affairs. On one memorable occasion, good ol' Mike offered his "apologies" to Pakistan for the assassination of Prime Minister hopeful Benazir Bhutto. Such a misstatement is forgivable – even forgettable – when one is addressing the people of Missouri (despite sometimes-tense relations between the Tigers and the Razorbacks). It is simply unacceptable in the fragile diplomatic environment of the Middle East.

Furthermore, despite his more than ten years as a governor, Huckabee's economic credentials are almost as non-existent as his foreign policy ones. The centerpiece of his tax plan is a whopping 30% federal sales tax to replace every tax the IRS is currently collecting (the Huckabee campaign, by the way, is advertising this as a 23% tax, a number they derive through arithmetic sleight of hand). Even if the bizarre program were to make it into law, it wouldn't solve any real fiscal problems, such as the looming unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security, without a corresponding cut in spending – which would require discipline Huckabee has never demonstrated. Well, not never. He did run the New York City Marathon.

Huckabee's flimsy promises not to raise taxes wouldn't hold any more water in the White House than they have in the Governor's Mansion. He has refused to come out in favor of making the Bush tax cuts permanent, and his record is one of raising, not lowering taxes (according to the Club for Growth, Arkansans enjoy 37% higher sales taxes than when Huckabee took office, among other hikes).

But in spite of his glaring flaws, for many Republicans, Huckabee represents the last best hope of a socially conservative nominee in 2008. He's pro-life and against gay marriage, and many conservative voters are unwilling to compromise on these issues, even if it means nominating a candidate with no reasonable chance of winning the general election. Thus Huckabee has won the social conservative vote by default; he's simply in the right place at the right time.

Similarly, evangelicals are faced with a choice between a devout Mormon (Romney), a twice-divorced Catholic (Giuliani), a barely Baptist divorcee (McCain), and a wholesome, ordained Southern Baptist minister. Guess which one they're picking, in droves. Never mind that a vote for Huckabee is, in all likelihood, a vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama come the second Tuesday in November.

It's not entirely bad, though, that Huckabee is in the running. Many of the things that would make him a terrible president would make him a great Vice President. As a running mate he might draw evangelical votes that would otherwise be lost to hopeless third-party candidates, by softening one of the other less-religious Republican hopefuls. As vice president he could put a soft face on the president's domestic policies, without having a chance to really mess anything up. And hopefully he'd be too busy presiding over the Senate to issue any doltish apologies.

-- Lucas Croslow studies politics, philosophy and economics at The King's College in New York City and is a guest writer today for Principalities and Powers.

Would You Buy A Car From This Candidiate?

I read someone recently say that while he would vote for Mike Huckabee if he were running for a church office, he would not support him for president. Quite frankly, I would not even go that far. Rich Lowry, in "Huck Hoax: Why He Won't Break Out," gives even more evidence that the man "slippery and laughably unserious."

Huckabee's campaign has been run on, to invoke two of his favorite substances, duct tape and WD-40. When reporters asked who his foreign-policy advisers were, he cited former ambassador to the UN John Bolton as someone with whom he has "spoken or will continue to speak." But he never had. His advisers then said he had e-mailed Bolton, which he had - once, without ever following up. It was vintage Huckabee - slippery and laughably unserious.

Now Huckabee has gone from supporting the Bush amnesty plan on immigration and righteously declaring in a debate that children of illegals shouldn't be punished for the sins of their parents, to promising to chase them all - man, woman and child - from the country. It might be the most nakedly political turnabout any GOP candidate has made in the race.

The tragedy of Huckabee's campaign is that if he'd sat down two years ago and thought seriously about what it would take to become the next president, he might have been able to make much more of his winsome ways. Instead, he ran on a kind of lark, without carefully considered policy, without fund-raising, without organization. His warm persona and religious rhetoric have won evangelicals, but left other voters cold, despite the fanciful theories spun around his candidacy.

The especially sad part of this is that his popularity among Evangelicals as a presidential contender has confirmed for many of our fellow citizens that we are intellectually uncritical, easily duped sentimentalists. "His warm persona and religious rhetoric have won evangelicals, but left other voters cold."

Perhaps McCain...but Not If Huck's Coming Too

Among my other reservations about John McCain as president (the McCain-Feingold assault not just on free speech, but on political speech at election time!; the Gang of Fourteen; etc.), there is also this fondness that he and Mike "Yet-Another-Man-From-Hope" Huckabee have for one another and the likelihood which that presents of a McCain-Huckabee ticket. Having the Huckster just a heartbeat away from the Oval Office (bullet, stroke, bout with cancer--McCain is 72) is off-putting, to say the least.

Peter Augustine Lawler (Berry College, author of American Political Rhetoric: A Reader as several other fine books) reports this sober defense of Mitt Romney over at No Left Turns.

Oh, and here's Ann Coulter speaking for Romney and flailing the darlings of the Democratic Party who are his closest rivals for the GOP nomination. Go on. You'll have fun.

More Fair Tax Scrutiny

In case anyone is still taking Mike Huckabee seriously (polls show him sliding in South Carolina), let's return again to this "fair tax" idea.


I know a conservative economist whose quick take on the "fair tax" was positive. He said, "getting rid of penalties on hard work and entrepreneurship (taxing income and profit) and replacing them with incentives to be fruitful, to save and invest (the unintended consequence of a sales tax) makes a lot of sense."


But that "quick take" is too quick. Don't take it! Jerry Bowyer, chief economist of BenchMark Financial Network and a CNBC contributor, raises what strike me a fatal objections in "Fair Tax Flaws" (Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2008 -- not available from WSJ online; I've pulled it from RenewAmerica.us). Advocates argue that, all things being equal, the fair tax will end tax evasion, simplify tax collection, force illegal aliens to pay taxes, and grow the economy. But Bowyer's point is that it is unreasonable to expect all things to remain equal. If you change the tax system, behavior will change in predictable but inconvenient ways.


"People would simply switch from cheating on income taxes to cheating on sales taxes....Look at cigarettes. Organized crime sells smokes on the black market in jurisdictions that impose high cigarette taxes....Increase sales taxes to a combined state and federal 30%, up from a state based 6% now, and watch the dodging begin."


As a former tax accountant, he sees enormous complexities involved in business transactions (what exactly would qualify as one?), business-to-business transactions (to save 30% on costs, businesses will consolidate like mad), and transition rules (people have invested for retirement based on the present tax regime).


As for repealing the 16th Amendment which authorizes the federal government to collect income taxes, "It's hard to get good ideas through the ratification process; imagine how hard it would be to push this stinker."

After Iowa...What? (R)

So Iowa Republicans have given their blessing to a nice religious fellow who is so bipartisan and so hostile to the Republican establishment that he is almost indistinguishable from a moderate Democrat. I don't think that he will survive outside the sentimental religious atmosphere of that state, however. But should he win the nomination, it is certainly at least reasonable to advocate voting for Barack Obama on the understanding that if a clearly unqualified and incompetent President is going to screw up America and the world, it is better that it be a Democrat. Otherwise, who would step in to begin fixing the mess four years later?

Assuming that it does not come to that, whither do Republicans cast their eyes this side of the caucuses? Romney has suffered a body blow. He poured enormous time and money into this state. He goes into New Hampshire on January 8 a second place finisher nine points behind the Iowa winner having already spent 53 of his $62 million campaign fund (according to CNN).

That leaves the race open to (essentially) tied-for-third-place finishers Thompson and McCain, Mayor Giuliani, and of course Pastor Huckabee. It also leaves Republican voters almost as confused and undecided and somewhat disheartened as they were on January 2. Where is wisdom?

Start here. None of these men is Ronald Reagan. We are not entitled to a Reagan every time the top slot comes open. Reagan was rare. Accept that.

With that understanding, a voter's responsibility in a democracy is to exercise his franchise in such a way as to help elevate the best (most wise, virtuous, prudent) people into government.

Again, there is something to be said for helping to engineer a calculated loss for one's own party in certain circumstances. Mike Huckabee's nomination might be one such circumstance. Aside from that, however, after 9/11 the stakes are simply too high to play that game. You may have strong misgivings about one candidate or another, perhaps even deep hostilities, but he is safer than any three of the Democrats (with one exception).

Simply consider the most electable of the best candidates across the board. (It is not enough to be simply a good candidate. He must also be electable to merit your support. The candidate who has the best positions on what you think are the most important issues is not necessarily, on that basis alone, electable. There is more to becoming President and more to being President than policy positions.) The Democrats are so foolish in foreign policy, so depraved in social policy, and so destructive in economic policy that they disqualify themselves from consideration.

On Mike Huckabee, I have already said enough.

David Brooks has an insightful column on Mitt Romney entitled "Road to Nowhere." He puts his finger on why I find Mitt so dull. He's entirely market tested, "the party's fusion candidate." Having been nowhere in conservative politics, he emerges as the conservative candidate, a though a presidential contender can be restructured like a company and then re-marketed to consumers. The problem, says Brooks, is that, "In turning himself into an old-fashioned, orthodox Republican, he has made himself unelectable in the fall." He polls in the single digits among young people who are Barack Obama's strength. He does very poorly among people making less than $75,000. Obama did well in all income brackets in Iowa. Independents find him "inauthentic," whereas Barack Obama gives just the opposite impression. Brooks has more to say about a general "failure of imagination," but the bottom line is this: "His triumph this month would mean a Democratic victory in November." Romney is not a reasonable alternative.

Giuliani? I just shake my head. The word commonly employed at the end of the Clinton presidency was "tragedy." So much talent and so much opportunity squandered for such trivial and stupid gain. The same word, "tragedy," comes repeatedly to mind when considering all that Rudy Giuliani has to offer the nation alongside the mess that he has made of his life and that stands impenetrably between him and the Oval Office. For example, read "Old Habits: How the Giuliani Methods May Defeat Him" by Elizabeth Kolbert (New Yorker, January 7, 2008). As the Republican nominee, Rudy would have to fight a two front war: Obama on one side and his own past on the other. Fierce animals, both of them. Why would the party choose that unless it were absolutely necessary? It is not.

That leaves you with two candidates: Fred Thompson and John McCain. Neither one is Reagan. Neither one is the conservative dream. Both are eminently qualified. Either one would be better than any of the Democrats. Choose one.

In choosing, be mindful of the wise counsels of Peggy Noonan and Larry Lindsey.

Wise Words from Peggy Noonan

"This is my 2008 slogan: Reasonable Person for President. "

With these words, Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan begins her final assessment of the candidates and of our national leadership needs before the January 3 Iowa caucuses and the rapid movement of political developments from one tightly scheduled primary to another following that ("Be Reasonable: As Iowa sizes up the candidates, so do I," Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2007).

Peggy is a strikingly reasonable person. When you read her, you feel as though you are in conversation with a friend, regardless of your party affiliation. And whether or not you agree with her, you always find her conversation enjoyable, challenging, and profitable. I think that is why I feel inclined to call her "Peggy," rather than Noonan.

From an aerial, bipartisan perspective, she speaks for reasonable voters everywhere: "We just want a reasonable person. We would like a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane. We'd like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it."

Among the Democrats, she respects Joe Biden and Chris Dodd for their many years of experience in the Senate dealing with serious national security concerns.

Mitt Romney gets her nod. "Characterological cheerfulness, personal stability and a good brain would be handy to have around. He hasn't made himself wealthy by seeing the world through a romantic mist."

In Peggy's judgment, McCain is also sane. "Mr. McCain is an experienced, personally heroic, seasoned, blunt-eyed, irascible American character. He makes me proud. He makes everyone proud."

"Mike Huckabee gets enough demerits to fall into my not-reasonable column."

Obama may possibly have the character it takes to lead the nation in times of national peril, but he is too young and inexperienced. Those are two separate considerations. "Men in their 40s love drama too much. Young politicians on fire over this issue or that tend to see politics as a stage on which they can act out their greatness. And we don't need more theatrics, more comedies or tragedies."

Hillary? No. The next American president must be someone who, for reasons of character or of circumstance, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have not been: someone the nation can trust in times of crisis. Hillary Clinton is obviously not that such a person.

...[T]he next American president will very likely face another big bad thing, a terrible day, or days, and in that time it will be crucial--crucial--that our nation be led by a man or woman who can be, at least for the moment and at least in general, trusted. Mrs. Clinton is the most dramatically polarizing, the most instinctively distrusted, political figure of my lifetime. Yes, I include Nixon. Would she be able to speak the nation through the trauma? I do not think so. And if I am right, that simple fact would do as much damage to America as the terrible thing itself.

Though she had some respectful words for HRC, John Edwards gets an unbroken drubbing. "John Edwards is not reasonable. All the Democrats would raise taxes as president, but Mr. Edwards's populism is the worst of both worlds, both intemperate and insincere." Yes, that sounds right.

Giuliani "is reasonable but not desirable." She doesn't waste time explaining. Perhaps later.

Huckabee is Ahead...Among Democrats

Francis Bacon pointed out that it is less effective to tell your friend that a course of action is bad for him than it is to observe that his enemies will be pleased by his choice. In view of that, some have been drawing attention to how and why Mike Huckabee has been drawing good press from the Democrats.

Kimberley Strassel in The Wall Street Journal offered this interesting statistic:

Since the beginning of 2007, the Democratic National Committee has released 102 direct attacks on Mitt Romney. Rudy Giuliani has warranted 78; John McCain 68; Fred Thompson 21. Mike Huckabee? Four. The most recent of these landed back in March.

Democrats are supporting Mike Huckabee for two reasons. He's easy to beat and, should he win, he'll govern like a tolerably conservative Democrat. Let's take the second point first.

1. He has policies the Democrats like.
George Will, in his recent column, is blunt, but states the obvious:

Huckabee's radical candidacy broadly repudiates core Republican policies such as free trade, low taxes, the essential legitimacy of America's corporate entities and the market system allocating wealth and opportunity.

He calls it “a comprehensive apostasy against core Republican beliefs.” Huckabee’s response to challenges like this is to tell a joke or in some other way to deflect.

Mike Huckabee has attracted the favorable attention of the liberal National Education Association who are doing more to destroy the foundations of this country than any other organization, political or civil. In an unprecedented gesture, they have endorsed Gov. Huckabee for the Republican nomination.

In 2004, New Hampshire's chapter endorsed Howard Dean in the Democratic primary and no one in the Republican primary. Last week it endorsed Clinton in the Democratic primary -- and Huckabee in the Republican primary. It likes, as public employees generally do, his record of tax increases, and it applauds his opposition to school choice.

Do you think that ole Huck is celebrating that one on the primary campaign trail? His rivals should.

2. He is an opponent the Democrats love.
He has a record of corruption--Arkansas style--that rivals that of Hillary Clinton, and thus either neutralizes the issue in a contest against her or floors him in a match up against the relatively unstained Obama. In "Leap of Faith: Mike Huckabee and Little Rock Ethics," Strassel points out what has been widely reported:

In Arkansas, Mr. Huckabee was investigated by the state ethics committee at least 14 times. Most of the complaints centered on what appears to be a serial disregard for government rules about gifts and outside financial compensation.

There's a lot more where that came from. For example:

Most recent have been stories about his pardons and commutations, as well as the news that R.J. Reynolds contributed to Action America. Mr. Huckabee--who now wants a national smoking ban in public places--responded that he never knew he accepted tobacco money, which has inspired a former adviser to claim Mr. Huckabee is being "less than truthful." What's next?

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Huckabee's Foreign Policy: Change the Subject

Here I am, going on about Mike Huckabee again. Well, the Iowa caucuses are just over the Christmas horizon and this guy is almost as threatening to out national well-being as Barak Obama is or as Jimmy Carter was.

Would the party of Ronald Reagan actually nominate a man who, prior to announcing his candidacy for the nomination, appears never to have given a thought to foreign affairs at all? And this while our soldiers are in the field against a lethal enemy.

At this point he does not even have a foreign policy adviser. If he does, it is a well kept secret.

He recently published an essay in Foreign Affairs to clear up this rumor that he thinks the world is flat and that it does not extend beyond North America. (Is he aware of Canada? He has made mention of Mexico, and of course he wants to close Gitmo so the Europeans will like us, but can he find Europe on a map?) Matthew Continetti at the Weekly Standard provides links to various assessments of that essay. It's embarrassing.

One of those responses comes from Stephen Hayes ("The Perils of Huckaplomacy") who also provides quotes from the affable but inept former Arkansas governor in response to questions from CNN's Wolf Blitzer at a candidates' debate on June 5. He was asked directly about the al-Maliki government and about Darfur. His answers are frightening only because so many people are taking this guy seriously as a presidential candidate.

I think there's some real doubt about that, Wolf. But I want to remind all of us on this stage and the people in the audience that there's a reason that this is such a struggle. And I think we miss it over here in the West. Today's the birthday of Ronald Reagan. We all would believe that Ronald Reagan is the one who ended the Cold War, and Ronald Reagan is the one who helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union. But there's a group of people who don't believe that, and that's the Taliban. They believe they brought about the demise of the Soviet Union because of the way they fought in Afghanistan. And what I want to just mention is that it is not the size of the dog in the fight, it is the size of the fight in the dog.

What? Nothing there about the government in Iraq and what to do about it. And is he comparing himself to the Taliban in their fight as the mujaheddin against the Soviets?

On Darfur, he immediately redirected the conversation toward what appears to be a proposed War on Poverty:

I think we have some role to play in it, but I guess what disturbs me even more, we have not even addressed the genocide that's going on and the infanticide in our own country with the slaughter of millions of unborn children. And we also have extraordinary poverty in this country. Yes, we ought to be involved. But you know something? There are a lot of people in America that don't think the only poverty is in Darfur--understand, there's poverty in the Delta. There are people who don't have running water, people that don't have access to medical care and don't have a decent school to go to and you don't have to go halfway around the world to find it. We've got it right here in this country.

Was one Johnson era not enough? Huckabee's foreign policy seems to be: get elected, then hope the subject doesn't come up.

Kyle-Ann Shiver at American Thinker gives the best summary of how sensible people should view Mike Huckabee as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

We are up to our necks in a war for our own survival, and I will not put my vote in the hands of a man who learned his methods for foreign policy in vacation Bible school. We need a fierce, street-fighting Commander in Chief without a single gullible bone in his body.

John McCain is looking better all the time.

Assessing Huckabee's Fair Tax

As the Iowa caucuses move closer and Mike Huckabee rises in the polls, discussion intensifies over his Fair Tax proposal. Here is some of it.

In today's New York Sun, Amity Schlaes calls it a Scare Tax. She shows how the 23% rate is actually 30% on each purchase, whether a DVD or a house. With that sort of surcharge, she foresees a black market developing. Though the idea includes canning the IRS, we can expect some other form of tax police to enforce the Fair Tax. Go to, "Scare Tax, Not Fair Tax," December 17, 2007.

Rich Lowry is also critical. In "Huck's Draft Tax Plan: A Silly Political Ploy" (NRO December 4, 2007), like Amity Schlaes he does not think that the sixteenth amendment will be repealed. The tax plan is premised on that. Otherwise, instead of a national sales tax replacing the income tax, it would be simply added on top of it. Lowry cites the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimating the tax being as high as 57%. He responded to Ken Hoagland of FairTax.org with this.

FYI, the sixteenth amendment to the constitution (ratified 1913) reads like this: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

Bruce Bartlett, in "Dianetics, The Tax Plan" (The New Republic, December 13, 2007) focuses on the connection between the Fair Tax backers and the Church of Scientology, a religion invented by science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard. He also has an assessment in the Wall Street Journal, "Fair Tax, Flawed Tax" (August 26, 2007), with only a passing reference to Scientology.

The editors at the National Review also give it the thumbs down. "Republicans cannot win a national election without the tax issue. If they ran on the national sales tax, Republicans would be taking one of their natural strengths and making it into a liability." ("Fair Tax, Foul Politics," NRO August 16, 2007)

David Tuerck of the Beacon Hill Instititute and of the Suffolk University economics department backs the Fair Tax , but I found his brief defense in the New York Sun ("On Taxes, Huckabee Leads") to be without much substance. (You get one chance, buddy.)

The Tragedy of Christian Compassion

"wise as serpents" - Matthew 10:16

Mike Huckabee is offering himself as a superior candidate for the office of President. He is doing this partly, and perhaps mostly, on the basis of his Christian faith and Christian character. His decisions, unlike those of his competitors, will be guided by compassion, as they were when he was the governor of Arkansas.

Of course, there is much to say for compassion. Before he wrote his book on compassionate conservatism, Marvin Olasky wrote The Tragedy of American Compassion on the way well-intentioned, but ill-informed and thus misdirected compassion has brought us into the spiraling dependency of our present inefficient and ineffective entitlement mess. Compassion is not a sufficient moral guide. It is a passion, a feeling. As such, it needs to be tutored, informed and wisely directed.

Gov. Huckabee appears to have heapin' helpin's of compassion, but is somewhat deficient in wisdom. Consider the following.

• Under pressure from then governor Huckabee, the Arkansas parole board released rapist Wayne Dumond from prison on condition that he leave the state. Shortly thereafter he raped and killed a Missouri woman. Read about it here (Arkansas Times) and here (National Review). Dumond's vigilante castration just after his arrest in 1985 as well as his Christian profession of faith appears to have influenced the governor's heart.

• As governor of Arkansas, he supported extending state taxpayer-funded college scholarships and in-state college tuition rates to the children of illegal aliens, i.e. students graduating from Arkansas high schools who are in the country illegally. His rationale for this is that we should not "penalize the children for the crime of the parents." But there is only so much money available for state college education, and every dollar that goes to an illegal alien, regardless of how well he or she performed in high school, is a dollar that is denied to a legal resident. That compassion is idiosyncratic, not intelligent, and thus not godly for Christian leader.

The more we get to know this man, the more examples of “the tragedy of Christian compassion”* come to light.

President Jimmy Carter was a man with a good heart who believed that good intentions were sufficient for good public policy. Niccolo Machiavelli was not a Christian, nor particularly compassionate, but he offers a wise critique of blindly sentimental Christian ethics.

A prince, therefore, so as to keep his subjects united and faithful, should not care about the infamy of cruelty, because with very few examples he will be more merciful than those who for the sake of too much mercy allow disorders to continue, from which come killings or robberies… (The Prince, chapter 17; Mansfield translation).

Of course, Machiavelli advocated making these judgments with no regard to justice apart from the appearance of it. But Christian statesmanship requires more than just a good heart. It requires a good mind: a good understanding of justice and righteousness, and a prudent judgment as to how to bring as much good as possible out of generally bad situations.

Candidate Huckabee would perhaps make a good pastor. But he lacks characteristics that are essential for wise and effective political leadership.

*I am indebted to my colleague, David Tubbs, for coining this phrase. Of course, he was playing on the title of Dr. Olasky's influential book.

Governor, You're No Ronald Reagan

Mike Huckabee was on the Don Imus show yesterday. Not exactly in the spotlight, because it's radio. But when you are speaking on the radio, your words themselves come under special scrutiny because there is nothing to distract from them. Power Line has an excellent analysis of the whole sorry affair.

Pastor Mike made the mistake of comparing himself to Ronald Reagan. He did this because Imus compared him to Sen. John McCain, the candidate with the most foreign policy experience, and asked why we should take seriously the candidacy of a governor with little or no experience at a time when international dangers are a prominent national concern.

Because it's radio, you have to picture the foot approaching the mouth:

Neither did Ronald Reagan [have much foreign policy experience]. Ronald Reagan came as a governor, he had been an actor. But ten years after he was sworn into office, there wasn’t a cold war, the Berlin wall was down, and there wasn’t a Soviet Union.

He says this as though Republicans do not remember the map of Reagan's life and how in detail he accomplished great victories for economic and political liberty. Huckabee suppresses (or forgets -- how can you forget?) the fact that after leaving the stage, Reagan thought deeply about the nature of communism and about how most effectively to deal with the Soviet threat to our national security. But Republicans who will decide the nomination will have noticed this omission, and will surely consider in light of that what is lacking in a Huckabee candidacy.

Huckabee then went on offer the foreign policy experience that any governor brings to the White House: "trade missions," "cultural exchanges," dealings with multinational corprorations when courting business, and the extensive "travel" that the job involves these days. Talk about damning with faint praise. The very fact that he would offer these as qualifications to be Commander-in-Chief in an age of terror and nuclear proliferation to rogue states is sufficient evidence of his disqualification for the office of President.

This can only help John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in the long run (as neither one is even attempting to do well in Iowa).

Power Line then goes on the compare Huckabee more convincingly to Jimmy Carter on the basis of his naively and dangerously moralistic approach to governing in both domestic and international affairs. You must read this. As Gov. Huckabee climbs in the polls, especially in Iowa, we are finding it increasingly reasonable to ask whether Hillary Clinton or Michael Huckabee would conduct a more prudent foreign policy. That's disturbing.

It seems that Huckabee and Obama, in practice, could be indistinguishable in their foreign policies: essentially a revival of Carter's moral crusade without any regard for prudence. Today's Power Line tells us that on an October 2006 Imus show, Huckabee endorced the James Baker Iraq plan, viz. draw down the troop levels and ask Iran for help. Bad call! You're gone!

For my own comparison of Mike Huckabee to Jimmy Carter and (as if that were not bad enough) Bill Clinton, go to "Fred, Huck and Rudy Part II."

Huck Flips Romney. Let's Not Flip for Huckabee.

Today we learned that as the Iowa Caucuses draw near, Gov. Mike Huckabee has flipped Mitt Romney in the polls, pulling ahead with 29% support over Gov. Romney's 24%.

But George Will remains uncharmed. Here are a couple of selections from today's column:

Mike Huckabee's candidacy rests on serial non sequiturs: I am a Christian, therefore I am a conservative, therefore whatever I have done or propose to do with "compassionate," meaning enlarged, government is conservatism. And by the way, anything I denote as a "moral" issue is beyond debate other than by the uncaring forces of greed. ...

Huckabee combines pure moralism with incoherent populism: He wants Washington to impose a nationwide ban on smoking in public, show more solicitude for Americans of modest means and impose more protectionism, thereby raising the cost of living for Americans of modest means.

The Apostle Paul told the Corinthian church in the first century, "consider your calling, bothers: not many of you were wise by worldly standards...but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise..." (I Cor. 1:26f.). Mike Huckabee seems to fall into that category. He could be a lot worse, but it is increasingly clear that he would need to be a lot better in order to be seriously considered for the Republican nomination. Folks, we have enough well-meaning blunderers associated in the public mind with our religion. Let's not add this one.

Republican YouTube Debate

In an earlier post, "Will the Republicans YouTube?," I predicted that, "Because this format lends itself too easily to politically awkward situations, and because it draws attention away from the candidates to the clever or shocking videos themselves, I do not expect that the Republicans will follow up with their own version of it." It seems, however, that either CNN learned a lesson from the absurdity of the first YouTube debate among the Democrats, or the Republicans successfully negotiated everything bizarre and disrespectful out of it before consenting.

I found the debate itself revealed a lot about the candidates. The minor candidates were self-consciously minor, except for Ron Paul who seems genuinely unaware that he is minor.

If the winner of this sort of event in the one who came across most consistently and convincingly as a president for our times, then John McCain was the clear winner. Since 2000, I have not trusted him, but last night he commanded my respect. On every question, he was tough, honest and seasoned with experience. Straight talk is what he gave us, and there was no sense at any point that he was posing, i.e. adopting a rehearsed posture. The contrast with the rest of the field was striking. Of course Ron Paul is also genuine, but McCain faced him down as well and put him in his place on the Iraq question. There no shortage of kowtowing on the stage to various video interrogators and invisible constituencies. But McCain was having none of it. Even on the question as to how many guns each candidate has and what what kind, he made it clear that boasting on this point was beneath him. On several occasions, the Arizona Senator spoke quietly and deliberately, but firmly and with "battered authority" to an opponent, and you knew who was the lion in the hall. He did not confront the only other lion, however: the prince of Gotham.

Mitt Romney gave some good conservative answers, but behind them displayed his reflexive big government approach to public affairs. In response to a question from a father and son regarding "black on black" crime, he first suggested strengthening the family (good answer) and then spoke of improving schools, which are not a federal responsibility, and then of putting more police on the streets, which again is none of the federal government's business. In another answer, he said he would sign a bill banning abortion nationwide, but again that is not a federal responsibility. Rudy and Fred got that one right.

Romney also revealed his liberal undergarments when, confronted with the words of a younger Mitt Romney that he looked forward to the day when gays could serve openly and honorably in the military, his line was that because we are at war, this is not the time for that to happen. Oh? Does he foresee a time when there will never be any more war? If we were to realize his beautiful vision during peacetime, we would have those homosexuals openly among the troops in the next war. So his point is that he doesn't want the Republican party to know how liberal he really is just yet.

Huckabee is no better, and perhaps worse. The Arkansas Baptist revealed his own statist instincts, but also a heart that may be too soft to be entrusted with the executive authority. I would feel safer placing the sword of state in the hands of an obviously unredeemed and unrepentant Rudy Giuliani than entrusting it to this jokester who, though he appears to be genuinely concerned to love his neighbor, does not exercise good judgment in how to apply that principle as defender of public peace and security.

As he made a point of mentioning a few times that he is a Baptist minister, it occurred to me that if he is going to take that calling and ordination seriously he should either take a church or comparable ministry or resign his ministerial office. There is no place for a clerical king in America (or anywhere for that matter).

Fred Thompson came a cross as a convincing president, but nothing to make you jump up and cheer. No fire. His negative ad went over like a lead balloon. It was inappropriate for the occasion.

Rudy Giuliani opened poorly by attacking Romney for his alleged "sanctuary mansion." He seemed petty and disingenuous. The mention of the Politico story on his misuse of public funds for his adulterous trysts with Judith Nathan was a nasty foretaste of what was all over the newspapers this morning, and may grow to larger proportions in the months to come. Why do they do these things?

Lastly, let me note that a very scary looking fellow confronted the candidates on whether the believed every word of the Bible to be the word of God, holding up a black leather Bible, presumably King James Version. Those who answered -- Romney, Giuliani and Huckabee -- did a pretty good job, though Romney seemed to choke on the phrase "every word" (my godly little 8 year old girl asked, "Why is that so hard to say?"). But they should have objected to the question itself, even to the manner in which it was asked. (There was similar moment in the Democrat debate. See "The Dignity Issue...and Courage.") There was a menacing tone to it. Do we require this of our nominee, not only that he support Christian moral positions, not only that he profess the Christian faith, not only still that he convince us that he is born again, but even that he believe that every word of the Bible is literally true? And if he asks what exactly that means, he clearly cannot be trusted with public authority. In a country where evangelical Christians are a minority, that is simply delusional. We should thank the Lord of mercy that we have as much influence as we do in one of the two parties, and work prudently and winsomely to secure liberty for godliness and to make the world as good as we can for ourselves and our neighbors.

Bad Press for Huckabee

Mike Huckabee appears to be the media darling in the mainline press. That can't be good.

He is getting bad press, however, with new sources that are favored by the Republican party base.

The editors at National Review Online ("Right Questions, Wrong Answers," Nov. 19, 2007) say, essentially: "Stay away from this man!"

What Republicans need is a new domestic policy to address today’s concerns. Unfortunately, what Huckabee offers by way of solutions is a mixture of populism and big-government liberalism; the common theme of his policies is that they are half-baked.

Robert Novak, in "The False Conservative" (Nov. 26, 2007), regards him with horror. "Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but he is a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate." Novak also has critical words for the evangelicals who are backing this candidate simply because he satisfies the litmus test on abortion and one or two other social issues. I share his concern.

The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the last generation always contained an inherent danger if these new Republicans supported one of their own. That has happened now with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus tests of social conservatives but is far removed from the conservative- libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

There is more to governing wisely than taking the right stand on a few certainly important social issues of great moral consequence. You have to be able to protect the nation from foreign danger. You also have to be able to keep people in prison who belong in prison.

Fred, Huck and Rudy Part II

 

There is a sympathy developing among Evangelicals toward Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, former baptist minister, and presently just-passed-into-double-digit-support candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

But Pastor Mike is no evangelical dream. And he's no conservative fantasy either. John Fund entitled his Wall Street Journal article "Another Man From Hope," and he means that in the worst possible sense. Huckabee is "hard right on social issues but liberal-populist on some economic issues." Betsy Hagan, Arkansas director of the conservative Eagle Forum remembers that, as Governor of her state, "he was pro-life and pro-gun, but otherwise a liberal." Phyllis Schlafly, president of the national Eagle Forum, adds that, "He destroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas, and left the Republican Party a shambles." Blant Hurt of Arkansas Business magazine: "He's hostile to free trade, hiked sales and grocery taxes, backed sales taxes on Internet purchases, and presided over state spending going up more than twice the inflation rate." This does not look good.

Fund learned from Southern Baptist minister Rick Scarborough of Vision America, a Huckabee backer, that "When conservatives took over the Southern Baptist Convention after a bitter fight in the 1980s, Mr. Huckabee sided with the ruling moderates." He quotes Paul Pressler who led the conservative revolt within the SBC saying, "I know of no conservative he appointed while he headed the Arkansas Baptist Convention." Bill Clinton was a Southern Baptist of the "moderate" variety. Oh, and wasn't Jimmy Carter one of those too?

Fund reports a former top Huckabee aid saying, "He's just like Bill Clinton in that he practices management by news cycle. As with Clinton there was no long-term planning, just putting out fires on a daily basis. One thing I'll guarantee is that won't lead to competent conservative governance."

Perhaps these are just enemies telling tales. But those are a lot of tales. And John Fund has impressed me a reliable man. Quin Hillyer at The American Spectator, in "A Tale of Two Candidates," reports that Huckabee has a thin skin, a wicked temper, and all too many moral parallels with the other Man from Hope.

He used public money for family restaurant meals, boat expenses, and other personal uses. He tried to claim as his own some $70,000 of furniture donated to the governor's mansion. He repeatedly, and obstinately, against the pleadings even from conservative columnists and editorials, refused to divulge the names of donors to a "charitable" organization he set up while lieutenant governor -- an outfit whose main charitable purpose seemed to be to pay Huckabee to make speeches. Then, as a kicker, he misreported the income itself from the suspicious "charity."

Huckabee has been criticized, reasonably so, for misusing the state airplane for personal reasons. And he and his wife, Janet, actually set up a "wedding gift registry" (they had already been married for years) to which people could donate as the Huckabees left the governorship, in order to furnish their new $525,000 home.

It seems that former Arkansas governors have to be held to a higher standard of scrutiny. Once burned, twice cautious.

What we learned from Jimmy Carter is that there is more to good government than what seems like an Evangelical profession of faith. Some would say we learned that from George W. Bush as well (though we got two good Supreme Court justices and a few critically important vetoes out of him, all of which were closely related to that Christian faith).

In fact, an Evangelical Christian faith may not even be necessary for good government. Though there is no forgiveness of sins without saving grace in Christ (Ephesians 2:8-10), the Lord also gives common grace and distributes it quite liberally. This is why there are lots of decent and kind people who are nonetheless dead in their trespasses and sins. This is why there is much wisdom to be found in works by non-Christians like Plato and Locke, and even Machiavelli and Nietzsche (in many respects more than can be found in Christian authors). We don't read them only to "know what the enemy is thinking" and to understand the pagan darkness from which Christ saved us and where Western civilization has taken its wrong turns bringing us to our present sorry state. Common grace is also what God gives to the non-Christians who, despite their ungodliness of one kind or another, are nonetheless concerned and able to govern for the common good, i.e. as statesmen, punishing evil at home and repelling it abroad. Was Ronald Reagan a Christian? Was he born again? It's debatable. It is also irrelevant.

Mike Huckabee may be a Christian, but he should not be the first choice of conservative Evangelicals for their President.