I hope Rudy proves to be a comeback kid in these godawful primaries, because I'd gladly suffer his incessant sputtering of "9/11" over Mike Huckabee's endless recitation of folksy epigrams. Give me a corrupt, big-city mayor defending his mistress-related malfeasances any day, over some rural Mr. Rogers' philosophizing through the audacity of corn.
Yes, Mike, we know "it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog," but that poor dog must be exhausted already. I certainly am.
Strangely enough, I find my sentiments are in the company of such ultraconservative journals as the National Review and Weekly Standard. It seems the hidebounders are in a panic -- indeed, one now commonly known in right-wing blogging circles as the "Huckabee Panic" -- because the Arkansas governor is quite unexpectedly threatening to hijack a few early primaries, thereby giving him the requisite boost to make it to the finish line.
My God, what a harrowing thought. How many times could Mike regurgitate his canine homily in 11 full months?
The NYT's political blog, The Caucus, summarizes the conservative journals' "startled" opposition to Mr. Huckabee in this way: They "seem to see in the former Arkansas governor an unknown quantity with suspiciously compassionate tendencies and little foreign policy experience."
That's their story, anyway, and they're sticking to it. They are mightily down on Huckabee as a "tax-raising, regulation-imposing, anti-business populist governor" with virtually no schooling in international relations; hence Rich Lowry of the National Review, for instance, has declared that Huckabee's selection as the party's nominee would "represent an act of suicide."
And Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard "said Mr. Huckabee’s understanding of foreign policy was rudimentary at best, and often 'sounded more like Dennis Kucinich than Dick Cheney'" (which seems more promotional than denunciatory, but that's another column).
At any rate, that's the buzz among many hair-on-fire, ultraconservative scribes. But on the face of it, the buzz seems labored, contrived and insincere. The other front-runners, Rudy and Mitt, have their own conservatively detested records of raising taxes, for instance, but Messrs. Rich and Hayes are hardly apoplectic about those boys.
Furthermore, Huckabee's touted domestic priorities include a "Fair Tax plan" that "would abolish the I.R.S and replace personal and corporate income taxes with a national sales tax" -- a regressive nonstarter that makes every hardcore conservative's heart flutter. He also "favors giving people the option to take their Social Security as a lump sum payment on retiring" -- a right-wing blast at the nation's most successful social program ever -- and "he opposes any kind of guaranteed health coverage," of course. Barry Goldwater would love him, just as Rich and Lowry love Goldwater.
As for Mr. Huckabee's foreign policy experience? Well, you tell me how a Massachusetts governor or New York City mayor racked up an estimable record along those lines, or how Huckabee's campaign mantra that "Islamo-facism is the greatest threat" facing America differs one iota from the ludicrously shallow analyses offered by Rudy and Mitt.
Nope, there's not a lick of substantive difference between Mike, Mitt and Rudy when you get right(ward) down to it. And that's what leads me to suspect that some conservative journals and right-wing bloggers are coalescing in opposition to Mr. Huckabee out of plain, naked, anti-Christian-fundamentalist bias.
I write that not in defense of Christian fundamentalists in politics. God knows -- I guess? -- that I have the same, deep-seated antipathy toward people who don't know Galileo from Darwin but nevertheless want to impose their primitive demonologies on others who've read more than one book.
No, I write that because I strongly suspect that conservative writers such as Rich and Lowry indeed share my bias -- and fears -- although they've been more than willing to exploit this crowd for what's going on several decades now. They want those fundamentalist voters, but also want to keep them in the closet, as an embarrassment, and they especially shrink from any of their embarrassing ballyhooers on the stump.
In short, the Rich and Lowry types are merely part of the somewhat more sophisticated brie-eating, latte-sipping, Volvo-driving and traditional Republican elite. They're finally getting -- maybe -- what's coming to them, and they don't like it. I don't blame them for that. I just wish they would be honest about it -- that they would openly condemn the regular hijacking of D. Eisenhower's party by delusional holy-rollers, rather than disingenuously assaulting their candidates on some economic waywardness or foreign policy inexperience -- and then be done with it.
Maybe then both sides could get off this religious kick and stop counting the number of angelic Huckakees on pinheads and get back to honestly debating the real ideological differences between real conservatives and liberals.