The editors of National Review Online have a pretty damning analysis of Mike Huckabee today. Here's the heart of it:
Unfortunately, what Huckabee offers by way of solutions is a mixture of populism and big-government liberalism; the common theme of his policies is that they are half-baked. If an ill-considered slogan can be used to justify a policy, he is for it. He is a protectionist, because we need to have “fair trade.” He wants to put illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship, because we need them “to do jobs that are going unfilled because nobody here wants to do them.” Energy subsidies and farm subsidies must be increased, because they’re a matter of “national security.”
When he was governor of Arkansas, these instincts led Huckabee to move farther and farther in a statist direction. (Education policy offers a nice example of what happens when his statism and his social conservatism conflict: He opposes meaningful school choice.) The Cato Institute gave him a D on fiscal policy, noting that spending had increased at three times the rate of inflation during his governorship. Not surprisingly, Huckabee is the one Republican candidate who flinched when President Bush vetoed the Democrats’ proposed expansion of S-CHIP. He says he is against socialized medicine, but don’t look for him to resist the drift toward it.
2 comments:
Wow, there is next to nothing true in this article... he is not for amnesty. He is not a protectionist, he is for making the US a tax haven so as to be competitive in a free trade atmosphere. The Cato institute would have given Reagan an F for crying out loud in his time as governor of Cali... look up Reason Magazines 1975 scathing article on Reagan. The negative hype against Huckabee tells me one thing, the establishment of elites is threatened by Huckabee as it was by Reagan; and that is very good for America.
I'm the last person someone would call an "elite," and I think Huckabee would be a bad move for America.
I actually consider his propensity for tax hikes the least important reason I don't like him. His liking for social spending and growing government are more scary, and anyone who would call a bill to prevent social spending on illegal aliens "racist and bigoted", well, that hardly fits the definition of a conservative--more like a bleeding-heart liberal. And someone who would turn a convicted rapist loose on society is downright dangerous.
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