Nov

No Candidate is Perfect

Let’s start from this premise: For the editors at National Review, or for most GOP voters, no candidate for president on the Republican side is perfect. Rudy on abortion and marriage, Mitt on health care, McCain on immigration, and Mike Huckabee on taxes and spending, all prompt concern.

Starting from that premise, I proceed to ask if any of those positions is disqualifying. For me, Rudy’s positions on abortion and marriage are majorly problematic. Life is an issue that takes preeminence above all others. I will generally associate myself with Hadley Arkes’ column in FIRST THINGS on the prospect of a Rudy nomination.

Brian doesn’t like Mike Huckabee because he’s allegedly a populist on economic issues. Perhaps that’s true. But I don’t see President Huckabee pushing for a tax hike. Frankly, I do not see him as outside the mainstream of Republican thought on economic issues. He is basically where the President and Senator McCain are at on immigration. A GOP House and a GOP Senate, including a lot of very good conservatives like Paul Ryan, Mark Green, and Mike Pence, voted for an energy bill to increase ethanol subsidies by arguing that it was a matter of national security. His education policy seems pretty in line with No Child Left Behind. There is a large segment of the social conservative base that supports tougher policies on smoking.

Moreover, I would direct you to a post by Red State and by Evangelical Outpost offering an alternative review of Huckabee’s fiscal record that is much more balanced than the Club’s. For whatever reason, the Club has decided to take Huckabee on head-on, and that colors their report (See this post’s PPS)

Is Huckabee a conservative in the mold of Bill Buckley? No. But the labels getting tossed around – “pro-life liberal,” “right-wing progressive” – seem unfair. Huckabee, and the compassionate conservatives like him (there will be another post another day about how neo-cons and compassionate conservatives both need to engage in rebranding that results in new labels for the same ideas), are in the mainstream of modern Republican thought. For the Club to use language about Huckabee in its report that mirrors what pro-lifers say about Rudy seems hyperbolic. Mike is not where I’m at on these issues, and it would be my preference to have a through-and-through economic conservative, but hey, politics is about choices and you make the best of the candidates you got (which for me ((this week)), means Mitt).

Plus, for me, I think Mike is right to say that the Republican Party needs to care as much about the guy on Main Street as the broker on Wall Street. That care does not lead me to the same policy positions as he has on these economic issues, but he’s absolutely right to point out that the GOP has an image problem on this front. Conservatives need to start making the policy case again that free trade, low taxes, and the free market helps the mill worker in Northern Wisconsin, if only enough to make that mill worker not feel like he’s committing job suicide by voting guns or life in the ballot box.

It should not surprise the readers of this blog to know that values issues are my bread and butter. Even granting the disputed statement that Huckabee is an “economic populist,” he still speaks out more forcefully on life and family than any candidate in the field right now, and I appreciate that.

(P.S. I will wholeheartedly agree with this critique: Huckabee has not surrounded himself with prominent conservative thinkers or with a policy staff that have developed detailed proposals like Rudy, Romney, or Thompson. If he wants to treated as be top tier, he needs the whole package, including detailed policy proposals).

(P.P.S. I give kudos to the Club for Growth – their series of white papers has come to define the candidates’ stances on economic issues. Two thoughts. One, Brian: Rudy opposed NAFTA. Two, comparing Rudy and Mike:
Rudy: Title: “Rudy Giuliani Enacted Pro-Growth Policies Despite Liberal New York Environment” Summary: “The white paper emphasizes the liberal context in which Giuliani was forced to govern. Although the Mayor took a number of anti-growth positions … he used free-market, limited-government values to turn around a faltering economy in a political environment dominated by a left-wing City Council; public sector labor unions; social welfare activists; and an unfriendly media.” (There’s also an acknowledgment of the liberal legislature in MA for Romney.)

Mike: NO MENTION of the fact that 75 of the 100 members of the Arkansas House and 27 of 35 members of Arkansas Senate, two of two US Senators, and three of four US Congressmen, ARE DEMOCRATS!!! Talk about a liberal environment! Yet the White Paper makes NO MENTION of the fact that Huckabee was in just as tough a legislative environment as Rudy was. But the Club clearly has an agenda to slam Huckabee.)

Last 5 posts by Daniel