A New York RINO, The Audacity From Hope, And A Seasick Coalition

The conservative movement seems to be in a boat on rough seas, and I have to say, it is beginning to make me seasick, as I'm sure many others are beginning to get that way as well.  For months, we saw Rudy Giuliani dominate the polls, Rudy is of course noted for his socially liberal positions, and his favorable view of gun control.  It chafed a lot of social conservatives, pro-Second Amendment people and activists within those groups in a big way, particularly among evangelicals and Southerners.  I don't feel the need to go over Rudy's record in detail, because everyone knows it already.

There was serious feelings of alienation from these groups, rightly or wrongly, many felt as if the elite of the GOP were about to try and redefine conservatism again, as they had tried unsuccessfully to do with the Amnesty Proposal this summer.  As we've talked about before, this has put the entire conservative movement on edge. 

We saw how damaging the Amnesty fight was to the conservative coalition, and Bush isn't that much of a fighter, Rudy is all fight, he always has been, and always will be.  He probably could have BS'd and nuanced his way through that political minefield in any other year, but he's not gonna get away with it in 2008.  Not now, after the amnesty debacle.  Nobody in the conservative movement is in the mood for major compromise.

As a result, I believe the conservative coalition is on shaky ground, no one is happy with the direction the GOP is going. There have been threats flying from all sides from activists and voters threatening to stay home in 2008, and I think that if we don't find a good consensus candidate, threat of mutiny has been on the tip of many tongues, and those threats may turn into action.

However, there's been some recent changes in the campaign season, Rudy no longer appears to be the Chosen One for the GOP, and I'll explain why I think he's losing ground.  I believe Rudy has had to rely on the spectre of Hillary to keep him on the top of the GOP primary polls.  He's undoubtedly the fighter of the GOP field, and it will take a fighter to take on the Clinton machinery.  As long as Hillary maintained her aura of inevitability in the Democrat primary, Rudy would ultimately be safe. 

With all of Hillary's recent mistakes, most notably her support of Eliot Spitzer's failed plan to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, her aura of inevitability is damaged.  With that, the Obamassiah campaign has risen from the dead, and he now poses a bit of a challenge. 

With this opening, conservatives feel less need to compromise on principle, particularly social conservatives, and after months of feeling stuck with a candidate that they didn't like at all, now have an opportunity to pick their own candidate.  They've picked a silver-tongued, good humored self-deprecating Baptist minister named Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee is pretty much everything Rudy isn't.  He's the anti-Rudy.  Strongly pro-life, and strongly against gay marriage, he says he favors the Human Life Amendment and the Federal Marriage Amendment.  He's also got a good record on Second Amendment issues.  He seems more friendly compared to Rudy. 

Huckabee is probably most famous for his lifestyle change, where he lost over 100 pounds and got in good shape during his time as Arkansas governor, he's basically the political world's Jared from Subway.  Which leads us to the other side of Huckabee, which people have not been getting the chance to see. 

He's big on lifestyle changes, whether you want to be subjected to them or not.  I recommend you watch that clip from the Club for Growth, and the other videos they and articles they have out about Huckabee.  Huckabee is a big government Nanny Stater, and we all know Nanny Staters ultimately live to suck the joy out of your life. 

Huckabee wants to use the power of government to get people to quit smoking and get in shape, he notes that these sorts of things lead to chronic health problems and increased health care costs.  Which may be true, but do you want Big Brother dictating your behavior to you?  I don't, it might be appealing to use the gov't this way, but rest assured, it will come back to bite you, and you end up as miserable as the guy you screwed with your preferred Nanny legislation.  While this seems benign on its face, as the man does himself, when taken with his record of wanting to impose big bans on smoking, it makes you take a step back and realize that its not so benign. 

He's also a big government guy, and he raises taxes, as Rich Lowry notes here, the Club For Growth, a free market advocacy and thinktank group, has been keeping a record of Huckabee's record, and it isn't good.  Huck's big on taxes, and big on government growth.  He's worse than Bush, twice the government bloat, and none of the tax relief. 

Lastly, he's very pro-illegal, if you look at some of his rhetoric as governor of Arkansas, he makes George Bush sound like Michelle Malkin.  When a tough bill against illegal immigration was proposed in Arkansas, Huckabee's take on the bill?

Gov. Mike Huckabee Thursday denounced a bill by Sen. Jim Holt that would deny state benefits to illegal immigrants as un-Christian, un-American, irresponsible and anti-life.

"Un-Christian, un-American, irresponsible, and anti-Life."  Because the people of Arkansas don't want to pay for benefits to people who broke their laws, they get declared Un-Christian by St. Huckabee? 

If Huckabee wants to forgive illegals for breaking the law, fine, don't do it with the people's government and their funds, start his own mission, he's a minister, he knows how to do that.  And there's plenty more than that on his open borders/amnesty advocacy, but I thought I'd give you a taste, and let you do your own homework from there.  As you can see, he's got a sweet demeanor in public, but he's got a nasty side too.

I do this not to pick on Mike Huckabee, but because many people are jumping on the Huck bandwagon because they've finally got a candidate that looks strong and is more in line with some of their key domestic issues, and in their excitement haven't looked at his record.

Huckabee will alienate a lot of voters, much the same way that Rudy has, but in the opposite direction.  A lot of conservatives don't like compassionate conservatism, and has been stated by many, like Jonah Goldberg here, Huckabee is "compassionate conservatism on steroids."  I've said it at blogs I've commented at, Huckabee is basically a Democrat with a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other.  He views the government as one giant-ass mission church.

Besides Amnesty, one of my biggest problems with Huckabee comes from his dishonest rhetoric with regard to the Human Life Amendment, the FMA, and his FairTax proposal.  Its all shameless pandering, as Rich Lowry says in the piece I link above, the FairTax and dismantling of the IRS are never going to happen.  Lowry doesn't tackle these, but I'd also add the Human Life Amendment and FMA in there too.  They aren't going to happen, they just aren't, not in your lifetime, and probably not in mine either.

The three campaign promises Huck makes above are like phone sex hotlines for social and fiscal conservatives, the talk is titillating, but everyone knows that its not really a horny, nubile and attractive coed who wants to get freaky with you on the other end of that line.  Its fantasy, and chances are you aren't gonna like the bill that comes with it afterword.

So, where do we go from here, you ask?  No, not Ron Paul, shaddup!  Honestly, I don't know, and I wish I did.  The only thing I can think is to try and find someone who can offer some level of satisfaction to both sides, which would mean either Romney or Fred. 

Sadly, it looks like Mitt is gonna fail because people have hangups about Mormonism.  I'm not a Romney fan, but the fact that it looks like his religion is becoming such a problem is unfortunate. 

I'll admit, I like Fred the most out of the candidates, in particular, he's the only major candidate that strongly opposes amnesty, and he seems to favor more realistic approaches to issues like abortion and a decentralization of power, but his campaign has just been a disaster, and he hasn't shown the amount of energy that people want, he's doing a bit better, but I have my doubts.

As a movement we're in rough seas, and I don't know where we're going, or whether they'll get better.  Rush Limbaugh warned us after the losses in 2006 that things were going to get much worse before they got better.  This might be what he was talking about.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 03:54 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 1513 words, total size 10 kb.