A Tale of Two Wall Street Journal Articles

December 15th, 2007 by Steve

Peggy Noonan used the pages of the WSJ to attack Huckabee for being a big government Republican running to become Reverend-in-Chief instead of president:

Mike Huckabee is in the lead due, it appears, to voter approval of the depth and sincerity of his religious beliefs as lived out in his ministry as an ordained Southern Baptist. He flashes “Christian leader” over his picture in commercials; he asserts his faith is “mainstream”; his surrogates speak of Mormonism as “strange” and “definitely a factor.” Mr. Huckabee said this summer that a candidate’s faith is “subject to question,” “part of the game.”

Here’s her conclusion:

The great question: Does it make Mr. Huckabee, does it seal his rise, that he has acted in such a manner? Or does it damage him? Republicans on the ground in Iowa and elsewhere will decide that. And in the deciding they may be deciding more than one man’s future. They may be deciding if Republicans are becoming a different kind of party.

I wonder if our old friend Ronald Reagan could rise in this party, this environment. Not a regular churchgoer, said he experienced God riding his horse at the ranch, divorced, relaxed about the faiths of his friends and aides, or about its absence. He was a believing Christian, but he spent his adulthood in relativist Hollywood, and had a father who belonged to what some saw, and even see, as the Catholic cult. I’m just not sure he’d be pure enough to make it in this party. I’m not sure he’d be considered good enough.

In a different WSJ article, Kimberly Strassel noted this of the Ron Paul campaign:

Mr. Paul shows that the way to many Republican voters’ hearts is still through a spirited belief in lower taxes and smaller government, with more state and individual rights.

It helps, too, if voters know you mean it. In nearly 20 years in the House, Mr. Paul can boast he never voted for a tax hike. Nicknamed “Dr. No,” he spent much of the time Republicans held a majority voting against his own party, on the grounds that the legislation his colleagues were trying to pass–Sarbanes-Oxley, new auto mileage standards, a ban on Internet gambling–wasn’t expressly authorized by the Constitution. He returns a portion of his annual congressional budget to the U.S. Treasury–on principle.

She provided a bit more perspective on big-government conservatives:

Mr. Bush got his tax cuts, but voters found out too late that he was no small-government believer. School vouchers were traded away for more education dollars. A new Medicare drug entitlement has added trillions to the burden on future taxpayers. Government-directed energy policy is larded with handouts to political patrons in the corn and ethanol lobbies. A lack of budget discipline encouraged a Republican Congress to go spend-crazy, stuffing bills with porky earmarks. Much of this was simply a Republican majority that had lost its way. But at least some of it was promoted by Bush advisers who specifically argued that “compassionate conservatism” was in fact a license to embrace government–so long as government was promoting Republican ideals.

She concluded in a manner similar to Noonan:

The men vying to lead the Republican Party might instead make a study of Mr. Paul. One shame of this race is that for all the enthusiasm the Texan has generated among voters, he hasn’t managed to pressure the front-runners toward his positions. His more kooky views (say, his belief in a conspiracy to create a “North American Union”) and his violent antiwar talk have allowed the other aspirants to dismiss him.

They shouldn’t dismiss the passion he’s tapped. If Mr. Paul has shown anything, it’s that many conservative voters continue to doubt there’s anything “heroic” or “compassionate” in a ballooning government that sucks up their dollars to aid a dysfunctional state. When Mr. Paul gracefully exits this race, his followers will be looking for an alternative to take up that cause. Any takers?

Another writer has recently voiced a similar opinion. Over at NRO, Jim Gerhaghty wants us to imagine what a Ron Paul presidency might look like. He concludes:

But if you think Washington is big and bloated and unresponsive and voracious in its appetite for ever-larger, ever-more intrusive government, Ron Paul is the guy who would throw a monkeywrench into the gears. Official Washington would grind to a halt; it’s hard to imagine any big expansion of government with a president who made Tom Coburn look like Robert Byrd. Four to eight years, of a broken record, “No, I’m vetoing it, it’s not in the Constitution… no, I’m vetoing that too, it’s not in the Constitution.”

You think about that scenario, suddenly every other guy in the race looks like the candidate of the status quo.

There are other parts of Paul’s agenda that are absolute dealbreakers for me – but thinking about this vision, well… I can’t deny that it appeals to some dark corner of my fiscal conservative psyche.

If I were the coroner charged with establishing the time of death of the Republican Party, I’d say it was November 9, 1994 — the day after the Republican Revolution provided a new Republican majority. The Republican Party simply wasn’t aware that it had already succumbed to a deadly political disease: The quest for absolute power.

To be sure, there are a few constitution-minded dinosaurs left within the party, hence the tag paleo-conservative. That party of small government is dead and anomalies like Ron Paul can be compared to post-mortem fingernail or hair growth.

Aside from Ron Paul, it looks like conservatives will be deciding between two theologies: Southern Baptist and Mormon. Never mind that both candidates have a long history of favoring government intervention in our wallets, abroad and with respect to social issues.

This election will pit Ron Paul against a long list of big-government Republicans. If Ron Paul should win the Republican primary, it will prove me wrong and Frank Meyer right. If any of the other candidates win, the party brand will be rightfully be: The Party of Big Government.

If the winner is Huckabee, the new GOP brand will truly be: The Party of Big Theocratic Government. It will become apparent to all that fusionism has failed and the only place the new GOP brand will be found is on the party epitaph.

Of course, as a Libertarian, I’ll obviously welcome this conclusion of the Republican Party’s painful death throes.

Final note: I still find it ironic that the party of “Compassionate Conservatism” and supposed Christian values actively supports torture.

UPDATE: James Joyner reports that Rich Lowry is jumping on the same bandwagon:

After many false prophecies, Dean circa 2008 has finally arrived. He is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Not because he will inevitably blow himself up in Iowa. But because, like Dean, his nomination would represent an act of suicide by his party.

I’m now torn between my support of Ron Paul and my hope that Huckabee is elected.  Imagine this slogan: Kill the GOP; Vote Huckabee!

Posted in Bad Republicans, Ron Paul, National Politics, Libertarian Party, Libertarian Movement




One Response to “A Tale of Two Wall Street Journal Articles”

  1. Bot wrote on 12/16/07 at 12:57 pm :

    Mike Huckabee was regarded by fellow Republican governors as a compulsive tax increaser and spender. He increased the Arkansas tax burden by 47 percent, boosting the levies on gasoline and cigarettes. The Arkansas Leader.com editorialized that Mike Huckabee raised more taxes in 10 years in office than Bill Clinton did in his 12 years.

    The Arkansas Ethics Commission held proceedings 20 times on the former governor. During his tenure, Huckabee accepted 314 gifts valued overall at more than $150,000, according to documents filed with the Arkansas secretary of state’s office. (He accepted 187 gifts in his first three years as governor but was not required to report their value.)

    Two months after taking office, Huckabee stunned the state by saying he questioned rapist Wayne DuMond’s guilt and that it was his intention to free the rapist, DuMond murdered a women in Illinois after Huckabee set him free

    Huckabee battled conservatives within his own party who were pushing for stricter state-level immigration measures, such as:.
    - proof of legal status when applying for state services that aren’t federally mandated
    - proof of citizenship when registering to vote
    - Huckabee failed in his effort to make children of illegal immigrants eligible for state-funded scholarships and in-state tuition to Arkansas colleges.
    In a1992 :U.S. Senate race, Huck advocated quarantining AIDS patients, and cutting AIDS research.
    Does Huckabee subscribe to his spiritual advisor Timothy LaHay’s views of the Rapture, United Nations, and a Palestinian state?” Huck’s use of the “Christian Leader” title and his attempt to denigrate Mitt Romney’s religion is a thinly-veiled attempt to impose a religious test in violation of Article Six of the Constitution.

    Mike fails on so many levels as a true conservative.

    The Huckster was the keynote speaker at an anti-Mormon conference in Salt Lake City. And he knows nothing about Mormons? And the “Christian Leader” doesn’t want to release his sermons?

    The moniker “Huckster” is well-earned.

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