Comments on Huckabee

Since I've just posted Star Parker's latest column on Mike Huckabee this morning, I wanted to be clear on my opinion of Huckabee.

I greatly respect Star Parker and her insight; if I didn't, I wouldn't be running her column here. However, I suspect that she, like many other good Christian folk, have signed onto Huckabee's bandwagon because he is a Christian, and he's pro-life, and he (as sad as it is to say this) is probably the best of the front runners right now.

But even Parker admits there is "some justification" to many of the things being said about him (e.g. that his conservatism is FAR from across the board) and says, "Do I agree with many of the criticisms in areas where he does want to turn to government? Yes."

The fact that Huckabee sees a far greater role for government than did our Founders makes me reluctant to support him in the Republican primary. When you throw in that he is soft on illegal immigration and has a weak spot in dealing firmly with criminals, I just can't get behind Huckabee even though he is pro-life.

But since we are still in the primary phase of our election process, I believe that now isn't the time to accept "good enough." Consider this:

RealClearPolitics has Robert Novak's latst column, which deals with Huckabee:

There is no doubt about Huckabee's record during a decade in Little Rock as governor. He was regarded by fellow Republican governors as a compulsive tax increaser and spender. He increased the Arkansas tax burden by 47 percent, boosting the levies on gasoline and cigarettes. When he decided to lose 100 pounds and pressed his new lifestyle on the American people, he was far from a Goldwater-Reagan libertarian.

As a presidential candidate, Huckabee has sought to counteract his reputation as a taxer by pressing for replacement of the income tax with a sales tax and has more recently signed the no-tax-increase pledge of Americans for Tax Reform. But Huckabee simply does not fit in normal boundaries of economic conservatism, as when he criticized President Bush's veto of a Democratic expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Calling global warming a "moral issue" mandating "a biblical duty" to prevent climate change, he has endorsed the cap-and-trade system that is anathema to the free market.

Huckabee clearly departs from the mainstream of the conservative movement in his confusion of "growth" with "greed." Such ad hominem attacks are part of his intuitive response to criticism from the Club for Growth and the libertarian Cato Institute for his record as governor. On Fox News Sunday Nov. 18, he called the "tactics" of the Club for Growth "some of the most despicable in politics today. It's why I love to call them the Club for Greed because they won't tell you who gave their money." In fact, all contributors to the organization's political action committee (which produces campaign ads) are publicly revealed, as are most donors financing issue ads.

We can and should do better than this, especially when there is a clear choice in someone who has a consistent record of being pro-life, and a consistent record of conservatism across the spectrum of issues, one who will not only say the right things, but has proven he will do them: Duncan Hunter.

If you're a conservative you owe it to yourself to not just listen to what Hunter is saying, but check out his record.