Posted on 11/20/2008 8:39:13 PM PST by Delacon
We've seen a lot of social conservatives upset over today's intemperate attack by Kathleen Parker (Note: she was unnecessarily contemptuous, but her point that "the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs" is worth serious consideration).
Well, I am a libertarian, so let's talk about the Kathleen Parker of the social conservative crowd: Mike Huckabee.
This week, Huckabee called libertarians the "real threat" to the Republican Party...
In a chapter titled "Faux-Cons: Worse than Liberalism," Huckabee identifies what he calls the "real threat" to the Republican Party: "libertarianism masked as conservatism." ... "I don't take issue with what they believe, but the smugness with which they believe it," writes Huckabee, who raised some taxes as governor and cut deals with his state's Democratic legislature. "Faux-Cons aren't interested in spirited or thoughtful debate, because such an endeavor requires accountability for the logical conclusion of their argument."
We've come quite some way since 1975, when Reagan said "I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism."
Oh, and it happens that Huckabee does, in fact, take issue with what we believe. In May of 2008, Huckabee called blamed election losses on Republicans being too "libertarian" (this is obviously some strange usage of the word "libertarian" that I was previously unaware of), accused us of being un-American (my response to that is unprintable, but I would be glad to say it to his face if he wanted to repeat his comment to my face) and then proceeded to make the standard, cartoonish Democratic argument against libertarianism.
The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it's this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it's a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says "look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don't get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it." Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it's not an American message. ...
If you have a breakdown in the social structure of a community, it's going to result in a more costly government ... police on the streets, prison beds, court costs, alcohol abuse centers, domestic violence shelters, all are very expensive. What's the answer to that? Cut them out? Well, the libertarians say "yes, we shouldn't be funding that stuff."
Excepting the anarcho-capitalists (who basically aren't a part of the electoral equation, anyway), I don't know a single libertarian who says we shouldn't fund police, prisons or courts. Most libertarians who are aligned with the Right or the Republican Party are less concerned about the few billion that Huckabee describes here than they are about the few trillion other dollars the government is spending, or the uncountable additional costs of unnecessary regulation and legislation. (This is a perfect illustration of my problem #3 with Mike Huckabee, noted below)
So, let me boil down my problems with Mike Huckabee.
This is easily as contemptuous, as offensive as anything Kathleen Parker has written about social conservatives. So, yeah, a columnist express disdain for social conservatives. Cry me a river. We libertarians had a social conservative Governor and Presidential candidate call us the "real threat" and "smug", and brazenly misrepresent our views before calling our message un-American.
Social conservatives have to realize that they need the fiscally conservative, socially moderate/tolerant voters if they want to be a part of a winning coalition. The limited government message won revolutionary victories for Republicans in 1980 and 1994; it is the only viable organizing principle for the current Republican coalition.
Huckabee may believe libertarians are the "real threat", but his God, Guns and Butter agenda would destroy the Right far more effectively than the libertarian cartoons that exist in Huckabee's head.
Libertarian Ping!
Rudolph William Louis Giuliani
Michael Dale Huckabee
Ronald Ernest Paul
Willard Mitt Romney
These are the four, I will try to keep off the ticket.
None of these phonies will even use their first name.
Huckabee and Parker, two half-a$$ed, a$$holes fighting.
I’m not a libertarian either; I’m a small government conservative, which is to say, a classic liberal, and a social conservative as well. Huckabee doesn’t know how to distinguish between what he wants and what government ought to be doing.
If you disagree he thinks you’re going against the Bible.
And he was insufferable on the immigration issue.
It's genuinely difficult to determine which of the two should be more profoundly insulted by such a comparison. ;)
Ron Paul? :)
Libertarians are merely cheap liberals.
Totally agree. If we are going to shake the “stupid/hayseed/out of touch” label then social conservatives(since its their forte the social cons have to do it) are going to have to articulate positions on policy beyond “because the bible says so”.
When Huckabee entered the race, it was obvious to me he was a big-government social conservative. But honestly, everything else matters to me less than a true social conservative. God doesn’t bless a society based on their economic policies - he blesses them on their social policies. The problem is economic conservatism before social conservatism is putting the cart before the horse. Social conservatism begets God’s blessings, one of which is economic prosperity, which in our time appears to be a free market system. Not the other way around.
While I’m no big fan of Mike Huckabee, he does have a point about libertarians. One things that has annoyed me about the libertarianesque wing of the Republican Party (in some parts, they’re called RINOs) is the way they are so blatantly trying to sucker people into destroying the Republican Party by driving away the base for the sake of a few “moderates”. And face it - anyone who is fool enough to suggest that the GOP needs to dump social conservatism after seeing that social conservatism was the only winning brand of conservatism on 4 Nov deserves every bit of opprobrium that can possibly be poured upon their heads. The whole notion is infantile idiocy, and its being floated by a bunch of craven libertarians who would rather split the party because it supports a few positions they personally don’t like than work together on the 85% of things we DO all agree on.
I disagree but authors, historians and pundits have never agreed. Which comes first? Economic decay or moral decay? Ask yourself which situation would make me more suseptible to evil. Being poor or being rich? If I couldn’t feed my family then I would easily lie cheat and steal to change that. If I was rich, well I’d just have more toys and free time and give to more charities.
Exactly.
Conservatives without God - Nazi’s.
Liberals without God - Communists.
If there is no supreme moral force in the universe - if there is no real law and man is god - then anything is rational and nothing is rational and all behavior is equally valid - and the crowd always heads toward madness.
I have been rich and I have been poor. It doesn’t really have any effect on your morals either way. There is just tendency to choose different sin.
The guys and gals over at the National Review agree with you. We can’t/shouldn’t alienate the social conservatives. The fact is though that social cons helped us best back during Reagan(no social con) but they agreed with the concept of fusionism touted by Frank Meyer who said that social cons would be helped best if they let the small govt conservatives run things while all the time knowing that other cons would do nothing to run against social conservatives issues(would oppose liberal agendas). The fact is that you could ask any fiscal conservative whethor or not they agree with social conservatives on just about any issue and fiscal/small govt conservatives would say they agree. Best I can tell, the social cons should continue to do what they do best at the local level and let the fiscal cons work the big room.
The GOP is properly a blend of John Locke limited government classic liberalism, rooted and guided by moral principle.
You can’t separate the two or you go off the rails. And you can’t split the two because by and large they coexist in the same people. Your small government conservatives are by and large your social conservatives. There are exceptions, of course, people for whom one half of the equation matters more than the other, but for your average conservative the difference is one of emphasis. You can’t divide the GOP into separate camps because the same people wind up in both camps.
Huckabee isn’t insufferable because he’s a bible-thumper, at least in my view, since I’m a bible-thumper. He’s insufferable because he’s a big-government guy, a statist, masquerading as a conservative. I would hope he’s also a moral man, but to me thats basic, I expect that of a Republican. Its not a qualification for higher office, I expect that of anyone.
In other words my problem with Huck isn’t the hayseed, since hayseeds are the heart of this party. Its the statist masquerading as hayseed.
I’m annoyed by Huckabees’ populist nonsense as well as Parkers piety about supporting religious life in the GOP.
Neither one of them are doing the conservative movement any good by trying to drive away factions of the conservative coalition.
We should not and cannot simply ignore or put in the closet the openly Christian Republicans and we cannot become the party of populist party of resenting the rich and pretending that anything that is popular is automatically conservative and justifiable.
We are going to have five governors running in 2012 instead of 5 (or was it 15) Senators. Automatically that will give us an infinitely more GOP-like primary. This competing senator nonsense is for their party - not ours. We aren’t the party of lawyers and professional office-holders. And if a lifetime of being in office starts becoming a turn-on in our primaries then we really don’t deserve to exist since we’ve already become ‘New Democrats’.
(By the way, anybody else notice how the demoncrat party has essentially ditched all semblance of having a conservative wing (other than the months before each election when they have to lie in their TV ads in red states) and Soros has pushed everything and everybody who isn’t rabidly anti-war and pro-marxist into hiding??)
If this were the late 19th century, Huckabee would be traveling the countryside selling his own urine as a cure for impotence.
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