Posted on 01/06/2008 9:51:23 AM PST by Kaslin
WASHINGTON -- Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement's two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee's desire to "take back this nation for Christ," have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call "fusion," each faction has respected the other's agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.
He and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee lament a shrinking middle class. Well.
The Tearing of the Conservative Fusion By George Will Sunday, January 6, 2008 Send an email to George Will Email It Print It Take Action Read Article & Comments (393) Trackbacks Post Your Comments
WASHINGTON -- Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement's two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee's desire to "take back this nation for Christ," have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call "fusion," each faction has respected the other's agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.
He and John Edwards, flaunting their histrionic humility in order to promote their curdled populism, hawked strikingly similar messages in Iowa, encouraging self-pity and economic hypochondria. Edwards and Huckabee lament a shrinking middle class. Well.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee removes his microphone after a interview at a hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire, January 4, 2008. Mike Huckabee's surprising victory in Iowa on Thursday turned the Republican race for U.S. president upside down, but his path to the party's presidential nomination was far from certain. REUTERS/Carlos Barria (UNITED STATES) Related Media:
VIDEO: 'I Love Iowa'
VIDEO: Huckabee Wins GOP Iowa Caucuses
Economist Stephen Rose, defining the middle class as households with annual incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, says a smaller percentage of Americans are in that category than in 1979 -- because the percentage of Americans earning more than $100,000 has doubled from 12 to 24, while the percentage earning less than $30,000 is unchanged. "So," Rose says, "the entire 'decline' of the middle class came from people moving up the income ladder." Even as housing values declined in 2007, the net worth of households increased.
Huckabee told heavily subsidized Iowa -- Washington's ethanol enthusiasm has farm values and incomes soaring -- that Americans striving to rise are "pushed down every time they try by their own government." Edwards, synthetic candidate of theatrical bitterness on behalf of America's crushed, groaning majority, says the rich have an "iron-fisted grip" on democracy and a "stranglehold" on the economy. Strangely, these fists have imposed a tax code that makes the top 1 percent of earners pay 39 percent of all income tax revenues, the top 5 percent pay 60 percent, and the bottom 50 percent pay only 3 percent.
According to Edwards, the North Carolina of his youth resembled Chechnya today -- "I had to fight to survive. I mean really. Literally." Huckabee, a compound of Uriah Heep, Elmer Gantry and Richard Nixon, preens about his humble background: "In my family, 'summer' was never a verb." Nixon, who maundered about his parents' privations and wife's cloth coat, followed Lyndon Johnson, another miscast president whose festering resentments and status anxieties colored his conduct of office. Here we go again?
Huckabee fancies himself persecuted by the Republican "establishment," a creature already negligible by 1964, when it failed to stop Barry Goldwater's nomination. The establishment's voice, the New York Herald Tribune, expired in 1966. Huckabee says "only one explanation" fits his Iowa success "and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people." God so loves Huckabee's politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons?
Speaking of delusions, Edwards seems unaware that the world market sets the price of oil. He says a $100-a-barrel price is evidence of -- surging demand in India and China? unrest in Nigeria's oil fields? No, "corporate greed." That is Edwards' explanation of every unpleasantness. Mitt Romney's versatility of conviction, although it repelled Iowans, has been a modest makeover compared to Edwards' personality transplant. The sunny Southerner of 2004 has become the angry paladin of the suffering multitudes, to whom he shouts: "Treat these people the way they treat you!" Presumably he means treat "the rich" badly -- an odious exhortation to one portion of Americans, regarding another.
Although Huckabee and Edwards profess to loathe and vow to change Washington's culture, each would aggravate its toxicity. Each overflows with and wallows in the pugnacity of the self-righteous who discern contemptible motives behind all disagreements with them, and who therefore think opponents are enemies and differences are unsplittable.
The way to achieve Edwards' and Huckabee's populist goal of reducing the role of "special interests," meaning money, in government is to reduce the role of government in distributing money. But populists want to sharply increase that role by expanding the regulatory state's reach and enlarging its agenda of determining the distribution of wealth. Populists, who are slow learners, cannot comprehend this iron law: Concentrate power in Washington and you increase the power of interests whose representatives are concentrated there.
Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee -- an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic "fights" against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.
As an evangelical christian who already has a good pastor in the pulpit and does not need or want one in the whitehouse, I agressively repudiate Huckabee and his social justice leanings.
I don't like Huckabee, but it's hysterical to see the GOP establishment start mouthing the same impieties of the Left, who said the same thing about Dubya.
I wonder what George Will really thought of President Reagan.
Excerpt:
Believing that his life was saved by divine intervention after the nearly fatal assassination attempt, Reagan wrote: ‘I’ve always believe that we were, each of us, put here for a reason, that there is a … divine plan for all of us. I know now that whatever days are left to me belong to Him [God].’"
Every candidate tears the fusion. That’s the problem some of us have been pointing out for months now. I find Huckabee more acceptable than most of the others. I guess it all depends on how many other Republican voters agree. Looks to me like quite a few of them do.
Yes, Hunter is still running, or maybe walking is a better term. I saw a picture of him walking alone down a snowy street in NH. To see this fine man dismissed by the Party insiders and the media makes me feeling like either crying or snarling in rage. Utterly tragic for the whole country. In a way, it was appropriate the he wasn’t in the debate. None of the other candidates deserve to be on the same stage with this 24K gold conservative patriot.
All that matters.
If the Demonrats win. Roe will never be overturned in any foreseeable future.
So many people have been turned off and disgusted by the “who’s really gonna go to heaven” battle in this party that folks have chopped their noses off to spite their faces. They have literally helped Obama and have hurt the pro life cause. Maybe they didn’t mean to, but unfortunately they have. I say “thanks a lot folks” you forgot to keep a keen eye on the ball and realize none of what we want can be decreed by the POTUS.
Not really. If you go back and look at his record, McCain actually has a pretty solid pro-life, socially conservative record. Not as solid as Fred's, but a lot better than what we could expect from Romney or Rudy.
Hunter is a fantastic conservative leader. And that is why the “other faction” undermined his campaign. They want to force us into to Rudy McRomney.
It IS a shame. Hunter is a good man, and he’s being totally dissed by the party and the MSM. They’re trying to do the same to Fred, but at least Fred has the visibility that comes with being an actor on a popular TV show, and being a Senator for 8 years. Hunter was a Rep. for a largely ignored district in CA and little known outside his own district and the state GOP, and hence, doesn’t even have those benefits.
Not a big fan of George Will - for one, he’s boring, just like the game of baseball he always shills for - but as a fundamental Baptist, I am certainly no fan of Huckabee, either. Hick is a socialist. He’s pro-life, but so what? As President, Huck would work for economic policies which largely drive the abortion industry engine (welfare —> illegitimacy —> abortion mills), so even his pro-life stance is negated by his non-pro-life causing economics. Fredhas the pro-life credentials, without the Huck’s unfortunate socialism.
I’ll concede your point. But John McCain is not running for Senate, he’s running for President. And the President nominates justices on the Supreme Court. A President who does not want Roe v. Wade overturned is not going to be nominating the likes of Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, or Alito.
"Obscure district?" All congressional districts have the same population, and San Diego is a large metropolitan area. Anyway, Hunter is not some obscure back-bencher. He got the fence built along the Calif. border. He was Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and was Reagan's point man in getting Congress to pass antimissile defense and IRBM deployment in Europe. Most of the candidates are completely unqualified on national defense issues. Only McCain even comes close to Hunter.
Actually, that IS a good point. Mind you, I’m not a McQueeg supporter anywise, so I shan’t be voting for him anywise....
Under the doctrine that conservatives call “fusion,” each faction has respected the other’s agenda.
The evangelicals were getting used, and occasionally thrown a bone. Then the Reps decided they would just go ahead and cram a Guiliani or a Romney down the social cons throats. The truth is it was the corporate conservatives who betrayed the “fusion”, and are now paying the price.
That's great.....but, without looking it up, can you tell me who the repsentative(s) for Kansas City is(are)? How about Tucson? How about Columbus, OH? How about Louisville?
Anyway, Hunter is not some obscure back-bencher. He got the fence built along the Calif. border. He was Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and was Reagan's point man in getting Congress to pass antimissile defense and IRBM deployment in Europe. Most of the candidates are completely unqualified on national defense issues. Only McCain even comes close to Hunter.
I didn't say he hadn't done anything while in the House, just that he is largely unknown outside his district - regardless of what he's done. That's why, tautologically enough, most people out there who aren't FReepers have no idea who he even is.
I'd have to agree. For all the whining and complaining from some quarters (even here on FR) about Huckabee and his Evangelical, social conservatism, the fact remains that it is the country-club/corporate/FisCon types who have been most active this cycle in jamming their views and their candidates (Romney, and to a certain degree Giuliani) down everybody else's throats.
Sounds reasonable to me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.