Mike Huckabee is no man of the right

Now that Dr. James Dobson has thrown in with Mike Huckabee (Virginia Virtucon), it looks like we’ll have a spirited two-man-plus-Paul contest after all (I told you this wasn’t over yet).  Sadly, a lot of right-wingers will take this, add it to their own animus toward McCain, and declare Huckabee the “conservative alternative” in the race.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

McCain’s departures from orthodox Republicanism are well known – partly because some of them are big issues, partly because MSM has been building the division-within-the-party angle for decades, and partly because McCain, a very principled man, is never shy about what he thinks.  However, Huckabee has far more serious problems with the right, problems that have been highlighted often in this space but bear repeating.

Mike Huckabee (or as he’s better known around here, Mike Dukakabee), had a history of big spending and higher taxes during his decade in power in Arkansas – to the point of accusing critics of wanting “to rip the feeding tubes out of an 8-year-old or an elderly person on Medicaid.”  During another argument over taxes, he referred to limited-government supporters within his own party as “Shiites” – insulting hundreds of thousands of Muslims and dismissing the party’s base in one fell swoop.  While McCain did oppose the Bush tax cuts when they were initially proposed, he has always been firmly against higher government spending, and the tax argument was never this personal with him.  The Huckster has also threatened to regulate corporate salaries.

If that wasn’t bad enough, there was his appalling history with granting clemency to hardened criminals, which coud be an even greater problem given the number of enemy combatants we still have in custody.  That reminds me; for those of you upset about McCain’s call to close Guantanamo’s detention center (I also prefer it remain operational), Huckabee also wants it shut down.

This brings us to foriegn policy, a subject on which Huckabee boasted of his ignorance by borrowing the old Holiday Inn punchline.  How ignorant is Huckabee?  Shall I remind you all of the time when he never heard of the Iran NIE?  And then claimed it was published years, rather than days, before his gaffe?  This was while the Huckster tried to make himself relevant by blasting the Bush Adminstration and its “arrogant bunker mentality.”

Of course, Huckabee’s main claims to fame are his views on social-issues.  Naturally, most folks thus assume that he would at least be reliable on the most important role a President plays in social issues – the appointment of judges.  As it turns out, that assumption is - at the very least - in question.

As, I’ve said before, I can understand why so many right-wingers are less than happy with John McCain, but he is still the best candidate in the field, even before Romney suspended his campaign.  Either way, the notion of Huckabee as a decent alternative is out of the question.

Cross-posted to Virginia Bloggers Against Mike Huckabee