To Be or Not To Huckabee
say "Not" to Huckabee, but my opinion seems to be out of fashion with a chunk of Christian conservatives. A few days ago, I said that Huckabee reminds me of Jimmy Carter:
Jimmy Carter wore his folksy, unforgiving morality on his sleeve disguised as Christianity when it was just a method to intimidate people of lesser moral stature (anyone who disagreed with him). Like Carter, Huckabee loves government solutions. The government can make everything better, he believes. That stands in stark contrast to the considerable evidence to the contrary.I consider myself Christian, conservative with a long libertarian streak. The religious talk tires me. It's not that it doesn't matter, but I don't give a baboons butt that Huckabee may or may not have a theology degree. It doesn't sway me at all. In fact, it makes me more suspicious of him, if anything.
So, in the last week or so, other Conservatives (and even some Moderates) have expressed anti-Huckabee opinions. But will the primary voters care?
And a commenter replied:
I'm all for a humble president. I don't know much about Huckabee, but humility and folksiness reminds me of Abraham Lincoln. But maybe the era of that kind of president is long past. Who really cares about the 'regular' (small) people anymore?I'm a little worried that more than a few conservatives are worrying about "the little guy". Where did this come from? It seems manifestly liberal to expect the government to solve our problems. It's one thing that bothered me about George W. Bush's "compassionate conservative" as if it's a new thing that conservatives have compassion. Compassion comes from believing that people are capable of making their own best decisions. The government has never struck me as very compassionate--try to get your drivers license or Medicaid bill taken care of.
I'm hoping that Huckabee is this election's Howard Dean, but I'm afraid he might be the new Jimmy Carter. If you'll recall, Jimmy Carter won the presidency and managed to a lot of damage in a short amount of time. Please, please, let it NOT be Huckabee.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News. Come and visit, or better yet, link.
3 comments:
I feel quite honored that you quoted my comment. However, when I said 'who really cares about the 'regular' (small) people anymore?', I didn't mean that I expect government to solve our problems. I do expect them to help make America a better place to live for the regular people, and they should be smart enough to do that while empowering the people instead of enabling them. I consider myself a regular person, and I don't need anything from the government but good laws, protection from lawbreakers, and hope for the future. I'm quite cynical about our government and our country, and to be brutally honest, I think America is going down the tubes. Drugs, apathy, welfare, etc. What's the solution?(BTW, I'm not planning to vote for Huckabee)
My two cents.
GOP.org has, or had, a blog you can comment on. During the immigration furore it made for very interesting reading. Bear in mind most of the people writing in were rank and file republicans, but you'd swear you had stumbled on to the Pravda letters to the Editor page: Capitalist bloodsuckers driving down the wages of American workers, Wall St elite is selling out America, Big Business = globalism = treason. And so on, and so on.
Peggy Noonan, as usual, captured the mood beautifully in a piece she wrote back in 05 in the WSJ. ( "A Separate Peace", 10/29) I can't do justice to it, but the gist was that our elites, cultural, political, financial, intellectual, think the country is about to crash on the rocks, and they're all taking to the lifeboats.
So Huckabee is expressing something real. But to me he's a windsock, not a banner.
I can't speak for others here in the ranks of the republican disgruntled, but for me More Government is not the answer. That thinking has done enough damage. We'll have to mend the country community by community, from the bottom up. We're going to have to do the damn job ourselves. Hopefully, it will make us all better Americans for it.
Problem is, Huckabee is becoming The CHRISTIAN (TM) Candidate.
Howard Dean or Jimmy Carter?
More like Ross Perot if all those Christian Leaders (TM) like Dobson et al decide to (and have already called for) withdraw from the GOP and form a CHRISTIAN (TM) Third Party with a Pure Christian Candidate.
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