A lot of us are lately charmed by Mike Huckabee, despite his economically disastrous views on trade, taxes and greenhouse gas regulation. Some of us conservative realists who support Our Man have contemplated him openly as 08 running mate.
WSJ's John Fund makes us think carefully about this today, noting that Huckabee is not necessarily well respected by the southern conservatives who know him best.
We grant several qualifications as we read this article. One is that anyone whom the perpetually angry Phyllis Schafly finds objectionable has our prima facie endorsement, and the Anti-Hillary characterizes Huckabee as a Judas to conservatives. Another is that in certain circles in the South (e.g. the Southern Baptist Convention) the term "conservative" has become at once so extreme and so indiscriminate in its application as it make it impossible to know what members of such circles mean when they say Huckabee is no conservative.
However, Fund tempers our enthusiasm for the socially, geographically and temperamentally balanced elegance of a Giuliani-Huckabee ticket with the reality that Huckabee enthusiastically supports economic policies that would make people poorer than they are at present and the likelihood that Huckabee's positions are rooted in things other than the politically conservative intellectual tradition of Smith, Burke, Hayek, Kirk, Buckley, and Friedman.
Huckabee might not really balance Rudy's ticket, in other words. He might differently unbalance it.
1 comment:
His name is Huckabee . . . What else needs to be said?
Vote for for a man with two manly names: Vote Ron Paul.
Post a Comment