Mike Huckabee, The Last Standing Neoconservative

It must be great to be Mike Huckabee. He's the talk of the nation, he's arguably within striking distance of the Republican nomination, and his weight loss makes Jared the Subway guy look downright slothful. Not only that, but when he gets sick, he doesn't have to take all his antibiotics.

You see, Mike Huckabee doesn't believe in evolution. Now, this in and of itself is not unusual--for Americans and Turks. Neoconservative politicians, playing to the uniquely American idea that evolution is somehow incongruent with Christianity, have long done their best to keep the facts about evolution out of US public schools. Or maybe it's just that the mountains of evidence, including the recent mapping of the entire human genome, would leave little time for other studies. To men with Mike Huckabee's set world view, evolution is just a crazy theory--in the same scientific category as atomic theory, cell theory, or that crackpot theory of gravity.

If the Bush years have taught us anything, I would hope it is that it's a really bad idea to elect a leader who chooses to ignore solid evidence in favor of what they feel should be true. The results are evident. Touchy-feely dogma-over-truth politicians like Huckabee have clearly succeeded in hobbling American students, who now lag well behind other nations in the sciences. Yet Huckabee's supporters have embraced these occasionally backwards beliefs, billing him as the one true conservative in the race.

His record, however, just doesn't back that up. After all, it was "Tax Hike Mike" who saw the average Arkansan's tax burden rise from $1,969 to $2,902 during his time as governor. Huckabee's fiscal irresponsibility, paired with his choice of dogma over fact are just two of the many clear warnings that his core political philosophy is far from conservative. These are, in fact, classic signs of the neoconservative.

This neoconservative distance from reality has clearly aided Huckabee in attracting Republicans repelled by the flipping of Rudy and the flopping of Mitt. In a nation that often values resolve over pragmatism, backers are drawn to the steadfast--though often deranged--views of the former Arkansas governor. It's the same argument many made for Bush against Gore, and then Bush against Kerry: he may be dead wrong, but he really believes it. And now it's happening again. And that is exactly why the affable, warm and probably well-meaning governor is so dangerous, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

You see, the neoconservative ideology doesn't just reject the minor details of reality; it also embraces a total worldview based on a falsehood. The narrative they have created and inhabit is one of good guys vs. bad guys, free from the complexities of the real world and all its shades of gray.

Huckabee's public comments have clearly shown that he, like any good neoconservative, lacks a moral hierarchy. The equivalences that result are both hilarious and appalling; from abortion to weight loss, Huckabee finds there aren't many things you can't compare to the Holocaust. To Huckabee, telling people to use condoms is akin to saying it's okay to drive drunk or smack your wife around a little. No matter, though. If Huckabee had his way, people with HIV would be taken out of the general population a long time ago.

Huckabee has also been known to utilize the most classic neoconservative play: blaming the evil other. It isn't Huckabee's fault if you read something bad about him in the papers, it's the paper's. He's compared journalists who accurately covered his tenure as governor to the disgraced reporters Jayson Blair and Janet Cooke. He even cost the state $15,000 in a settlement (not counting untold legal costs) after he pushed a critical journalist off the air.

Even the usually-conservative Arkansas News wrote of the governor:

"Through the years, Huckabee... has been referred to as petty, egotistical and thin-skinned, and questions have been raised about his ethics... The governor has been cautioned and fined by the state Ethics Commission for issues related to gifts and he has sued the commission over rules that limit officials' acceptance of gifts."

But there are also other, jarringly un-amusing examples of his bizarre, white-and-black-hats version of morality.

In the neoconservative mind, Bill Clinton was a bad guy. So, when Wayne Dumond was convicted of raping a distant relative of Clinton in 1984, many of them--most notably Steve Dunleavy of the New York Post, hack author Guy Peel and Mike Huckabee--somehow came to believe that Dumond must then be a good guy. Although Clinton recused himself from the case, the fanatical Clinton-haters, Huckabee included, still felt Clinton must have played a role in Dumond's harsh sentencing. If you're curious how any sentence for the rape of a 17 year old girl can be deemed harsh, you'd have to ask Huckabee. When he became governor, Huckabee pressured the parole board until Dumond was released.

"My desire," he wrote the convicted rapist, "is that you be released from prison. I feel that parole is the best way for your reintroduction to society to take place." It turned out that Dumond had struck gold when he raped the governor's distant cousin; that stroke of luck freed him to rape and murder Carol Sue Shields. He died in prison, while awaiting charges for the murder of yet another woman, Sara Andrasek. Andrasek was expecting her first child.

I wonder, if it were not himself, how Huckabee's absolutist morality would judge a man with five ethics admonitions, who bullied the press mercilessly and cost two women their lives by freeing a rapist for political purposes? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure he'd find a holocaust analogy in there somewhere.

This is not to imply that if Mike Huckabee were elected president, he would be freeing murderers and rapists left and right. But it is one example of how the warped worldview has already brought tragedy to the lives of innocent Americans. There are many more.

"The awful thing about life," Jean Renoir said in Rules of the Game, "is everyone has their reasons." It's a line I'm often reminded of when I see nations do horrible things, or struggle to make peace. Luckily for neocons like Huckabee, life isn't so complicated for them. There are good guys and there are bad guys, and nothing short of all out war can change that. This, my friends, is why the next president, Republican or Democrat, must not be a neoconservative.

Every time they've been handed the presidency, the neoconservatives have dug holes so deep that it takes America 20 years to climb back out.

In 1988, Gorbachev attempted to strike a deal for the Soviet pull-out of Afghanistan: the Soviets would exit the nation if the Reagan Administration would stop arming the Islamic insurgents long enough for the government to stabilize. Quite famously, the US was having none of that. The evil Soviets would be defeated by the heroic, US-armed freedom fighters--you know, like Osama bin Laden--and democracy would rain down from the heavens under their wise and just leadership. Gorbachev warned that the situation was a bit more complicated, and that without US aide, democracy would not be the result of their pullout. But why would any self-respecting neoconservative listen to The Evil Empire?

Unfortunately, Gorbachev was right, the Reagan Administration was wrong, and post-occupation Afghanistan became a terrorist breeding ground.

Today, we face the same situation, only with the combat boot on the other foot. Another neoconservative, George W. Bush, decided that the best way to combat Islamic terrorism in the Middle East was to remove a secular power-hog from the region. After all, he was a bad guy, too, wasn't he? Unfortunately, it seems that good guys and the bad guys don't fall so easily into groups, regardless of how little room for variation exists in the neoconservative mind. Now, we are trapped in an insurgency that the Bush Administration insists is fueled by outside governments, and Republicans in key states are rallying behind yet another neoconservative.

Will our next president be able to work with other nations to ensure a stable Iraq and a US exit? Or will we have Huckabee to lead us into confrontation with the next great neoconservative "evil"?

Comments

[suki21693]

Mike Huckabee, The Last Standing Neoconservative
--if only.

[Crowhaul]

In the medical world, viruses evolve from year to year, thus presenting us with a new set of viral challenges to anticipate and deal with each year.

In MikeHuck's world, the only explanation for the annual crop of drug-resistant viruses (since, admittedly, he doesn't believe in evolving life forms, right?) is that god places new, slightly modified viruses all around us to...? What? To tease us with our own shortcomings as humans? To test our ability to cope? To measure with cold, distant interest our ability to survive? WTF.

How can this man be so incomprehensibly stoopid. Now...the REAL question: does America want someone with this lack of understanding, this low level of intelligence running the Whitehouse (again)?

[tumblewind]

This guy is more of the same nightmare we have been living through since 2000! It's unreal the amount of people buy into this sort of rhetoric. As far as I can see it destroys people. They get to be cruel, bigoted, mean-spirited, spiteful and ultra-testy! I have watched it ruin my son. It changed his personality completely.

[drblack]

The best way to fail and destroy is to ignore reality.
When faith is more important than fact you get things like the Bush administration.
The Republicans and their supporters have truly gone insane and all of America is suffering because of it.
Until we become a fact based culture we will continue to decline.

[Galvestonians for Dr. Ron Paul]

Hi Mr. Womack...
I definitely could appreciate your thread..
I would have liked to seen it go further by you explaining that one among ALL the presidential candidates actually has gone up against the Texas neoconservatives and won EVERY TIME.
See, people often speak of Neoconservatives and how bad they are, but no one speaks to the fact that Ron Paul has kept them out of district 14,(then 22) for 20 years...

I dont understand how people can not see the only way to win and remove these neoconservatives from our politics is through Ron Paul...
A Democrat could NEVER do what he is attempting to do..
NEVER!
DONT PEOPLE SEE THIS?
He is risking his life.
We know this..
He calls them out at every turn...He is not beholden to big oil or big energy and the Halliburtons like they are..
Very soon, you will not be able to ignore the power of his campaign.
The bombs will start faliing one by one..
The lead candidates cant even attack him, because he is not supposed to even be on the radar..
They know they fucked up..
They are left to attack each other, when they all know they should be attacking Ron Paul..
Watch this man play the MSM like a finely tuned fiddle..
Watch him make these corrupt politicians squirm and use their own platform to expose them for the corrupt pigs they are.
Ron Pauls ground is firm and his supporters are strong.
You can not ignore this mans record when it comes to neos..
YOU JUST CANT!
Do alittle homework on how Ron Has slapped these neos in District 14.
He has placed them in the corner for years to come.
He has severely damaged the Republican party here in this part of Texas..Even Delays old district 22 is held by a Dem...But still more neo than Ron!!

[cke]

Definitely a tricky path we have to tread. Dealing with shades of gray. If you believe the Obama-heads, all we need is good feelings and moral direction. If you believe the Clintonites, you need competence, guile and determination.

Who you gonna vote for?

[BillZBubb]

Your post is 100% dead right on Huckabee, but you are wrong that he is the only neo-con in the RepubliCLOWN field. They are all neo-cons except Ron Paul. Paul is frightening for other reasons.

[drricklippin]

How on earth did such a bona-fide lunatic get so far in American Politics?

His affabilty makes him all the more dangerous.

Pretty scary?- No VERY scary!

Dr. Rick Lippin
http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com

[BlueMrsKitty]

Huckabee is a throwback. Lots of men thought it was ok to rape women in the good ole days.

[mamacat]

A lot of good things to think about.
How much should we value a candidate's TV personality, over his or her record? I saw Gov. Huckabee raise his hand, denying evolution. That act speaks volumes, but all by itself might, just might, be excuseable. Combined with the other information coming out about him, it appears it was not an aberration, but a indication of what to expect from the Governor. His mistakes as President would be perhaps thousands of times worse than his mistakes leading Arkansas. Lets hope we don't have to see it happen.

[niikeb]

Ive got some bad news for you. Everyone but Ron Paul on the Republican side is a Neocon. Rudy has hired Mr. Neocon himself Poderhertz.

[dgrffy]

Yep, whenever the neo-conservatives get my blood pressure up, I come to the Huffington Post. Then I realize bigotry, judge mentalism, arrogance, and contempt are not attitudes isolated to one political ideology. Thanks, folks, for reminding me of what I so easily forget.

[ljsfolly]

Huckabee is the preacher guy telling people anything he wants to about his interpretation of the bible. While Rudy is the guy with his interpretation thinking multiple wives is ok with God. But so many have roots in the church Huckabee preaches at that somehow the mind is divorced from what is said and all is amen, amen from the pews. He is a very scary man who thinks as long as he can preach his version of everything he doesn't need to interact with reality just like the guy now proclaiming he didn't read or watch the news.

[FlowerGirl]

Last standing Neocon? I suppose you don't count Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rupert Murdock's little favorite.

[JustAnotherScreenname]

What's wrong with being like Turks? Americans deny evolution, Turks deny killing Armenians...

[Dandy12]

Huck is sure a very affable guy... So is W, if all he is doing is showing you around his ranch and eating barbecue. The problem is when these clueless yayhoos stick their fingers into government. Particularly dangerous are those that have or feign having a religous bent!

[Lisette]

Dear Larry,

Your Post is absolutely terrific. Thanks!

I know a lady who was fired from her job in the Science dept because she hired a speaker who was pro evolution. True story. This country is going backwords.

[gsuescum]

What happened to good old witch burning? Can't we have a few of those for the neocons?

[lanefiller]

Anyone interested in what Huckabee is really like face to face should try this funny (but it actually happened) column:
http://goupstate.us/index.php/lanefiller/2007/11/02/title_14

[Marioth]

Wow, the polling really suggests that the Wingnut Class has been told by god for whom to vote. If this fat lady has indeed sung, it's over, and Mittens is a dead duck. Giggliani hasn't a prayer of coming back agin jaaaaaaysus.

Now, at what point will the Establishment let him in? Will they ever? Huck does not have the money today for a long fight, but collection plates have a knack, at the end of the service, of being emptied by Pastor.

I would love to see the GOP fret and sputter all the way to the Convention. Because it won't matter. The bad news for the GOP is just getting into second gear. 2008 is going to be brutal, as no GOP voice now has any credability. Who is their Oprah? Their Obama? Even their Gipper? That'd be no one.

Invoking their monotheistic infinite loops is really the only place they have to go.

Pax,
M.

[Forest]

Thank you for this thoughtful and illuminating article.

[Liberal2]

The problem with religious wackos is they have a convenient excuse for all the bad consequences of their bad ideas: "Gawd is letting bad things happen because we are letting liberals, gays, abortionists, mormons, etc., live here. Everything would be great if we purged the country of these heretics and non-believers. This is the truth, qawd told me this."

[StackPtr]

This Huckabee fellow has EVERYONE scared to death. The Right is making up stuff about him. The Left is making up stuff about him. The attacks are ugly and personal.

Yet, he continues to move forward on a daily basis in the polls. You guys hate him. The Right Wingers hate him. And the American Public, the rest of us, think he is a fine a decent man who isn't locked into a political dogma and will act in America's best interest, rather than in the SPECIAL interests.

Good for Huck.

[SamanthaJaneSalem]

I guess I have a different understanding of what a neoconservative is. I thought a neoconservative was someone like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, William Krystol-- just about anyone at the American Enterprise Institute or The Weekly Standard.

The neoconservative wants a bigger, imperialistic government that does police the world-- replacing dictatorships, particularly "Islamofascist" regimes, with "democracies" which will benefit us economically and reinforce our military superiority. The neoconservative is pro-Israel and anti-secular-Jewish.

Mike Huckabee, for all his deficiencies, is more of the old-fashioned sort of conservative. Whether this is Ronald Reagan (another ex-governor who had a gift for memorable one-liners) or just your everyday, regular sort of "Heartland" white male, Huckabee isn't actually all that popular among neoconservatives. He doesn't talk much about foreign policy and killing all the terrorists. He cares about improving the health of Americans and emphasizing the charitable aspects of Christianity in helping the poor (in the evangelical's attitude of judgmental kindness-- but still).

Huckabee is actually a throwback. Giuliani is the neoconservatives' guy because no matter how corrupt (or inept) he is, he will find things to blow up while bullying the American people into supporting his "Kill Them All & Spy On Us" policies. In fact, Bush is still their guy too, only things are going so badly neoconservatives don't like him as much. They think he hasn't beat up on the media enough for showing the way things are in Iraq.

[flatus]

What would Gomer Pyle do?