Huckadefense

My first entry on Free Silver was on the fall of Mitt Romney. I mentioned in it that I was disappointed that he dropped out because had he won the nomination, Democrats would have to see the Republican Party for what it really is: callous, corporate, and out-of-touch. Last night, somewhat lost in the spectacle of a Democratic Primary in extra innings, Mike Huckabee withdrew from the race. By the “Biff” measure, I suppose I should be happy about the Huckademise; I don’t think I would enjoy watching the base of the Democratic Party position themselves as the anti-Huckabee, and all that would entail.

But I guess when it comes down to it, I’m not all that calculating. I wanted Huckabee to win the Republican nomination because I liked him more than I liked the other Republicans (and probably more than I’ve ever liked a Republican candidate). I obviously wouldn’t have voted for him, but all those Obamicans probably won’t vote for Obama either. Still, in my world, defending Huckabee will definitely raise a few eyebrows. It’s okay to like Ron Paul, and it’s even okay to say that McCain ain’t all that bad, but Huckabee? He’s the Right-wing nut-job, right?

So, this isn’t really a defense of Huckabee… it’s a defense of myself – a research style justification — for liking Huckabee. Unfortunately for me, none of the friends who raised their eyebrows when I said I liked Huckabee even know this blog exists, so I guess this entry will have to stand as my private response to them.

Even though his campaign lasted until yesterday, the ending really began on January 10, in the Fox News South Carolina debate. At that point, Huck had won Iowa, finished a respectable third in New Hampshire, and was leading in the polls in South Carolina. But Fred Thompson was also vying for South Carolina (or at least wanted to protect it for McCain) and took his shot that night at Huckabee:

 

He would be a Christian leader, but he would also bring about liberal economic policies, liberal foreign policies. He believes we have an arrogant foreign policy and the tradition of, blame America first. He believes that Guantanamo should be closed down and those enemy combatants brought here to the United States to find their way into the court system eventually. He believes in taxpayer-funded programs for illegals, as he did in Arkansas. He has the endorsement of the National Education Association, and the NEA said it was because of his opposition to vouchers. He said he would sign a bill that would ban smoking nationwide. So much for federalism. So much for states’ rights. So much for individual rights. That’s not the model of the Reagan coalition, that’s the model of the Democratic Party.

Tough words for a Republican Primary, and, much as it would make my justification easier, really not true. Huckabee supports the Fair Tax, which, though far better than the flat tax is still pretty regressive (and not made less regressive just because a handful on the far Left also support it). Liberal foreign policy? Well, he’s not a neo-con, but he supported the war in Iraq and the surge, so I wouldn’t call him a liberal. But Thompson had reason to use this as a line of attack against Huckabee because while he certainly isn’t a liberal, he doesn’t always fit the conservative model either.

So, for the purposes of this defense, I admit I cherry-picked some of the more liberally appealing Huckaquotes, and I’m sure for every one of these, there’s one of his “change the Constitution” statements, but those “bad” quotes and positions have been very well documented by the Left. It’s the other statements that are inconvenient for all sides to acknowledge: for the Left, because it ruins the whole Right-wing zealot narrative; for the Huckabee people — well, he was running in a Republican Primary and probably didn’t want to advertise the quirkier, more liberal positions of his candidacy.

First, on the environment and energy, Huckabee consistently stated that we had a responsibility to be “good stewards of the Earth.” He was endorsed by Joel Hunter — the evangelical leader who was rejected for the leadership of the Christian Coalition because of his positions on (among other positions that conservatives objected to) global warming. Hunter was a leading advocate of Creation Care — the Christian movement to protect the environment and combat global warming. Huckabee was the only candidate on either side of the aisle to give a hard deadline for achieving full energy independence, comparing the pledge to Kennedy’s pledge to go to the moon:

For too long, we have been constrained because our dependence on imported oil has forced us to support repressive regimes and conduct our foreign policy with one hand tied behind our back. I will free that hand from its oil-soaked rope and reach out to moderates in the Arab and Muslim worlds with both. I want to treat Saudi Arabia the way we treat Sweden, and that will require the United States to be energy independent. The first thing I will do as president is send Congress my comprehensive plan for achieving energy independence within ten years of my inauguration.

Huckabee was one of a handful of Republicans to debate at Morgan State University in Baltimore on issues of importance to African-Americans. Often on the campaign trail, he boasted about winning 48% of the African-American vote in Arkansas — apparently in a competitive race for Governor. The debate was held in September 2007, before Huckabee was considered a leading contender for the nomination, and therefore at a time when he was less cautious about someone like Fred Thompson going after some of his issues. At that debate, he was the only Republican to unequivocally support full voting rights for D.C.:

I believe that the people of D.C. should be able to vote for representation. I think that’s appropriate, for the simple reason of equality and justice. And if we need to amend the Constitution to make that possible, it should happen. D.C. is not the same city it was when it was first created, and I think it just makes sense to not have a group of people — I don’t care what color they are, I don’t care how they vote — they ought to be able to vote, and their color and their political affiliation ought to have nothing to do with the equality that we should give them.

Another interesting position that he discussed at that event, but that had also been a top priority when he was governor in Arkansas was prison reform:

I would like to believe, if I were fortunate enough to be the president, that at the end of my tenure… that housing opportunities would be better, that we made some real strides in the criminal justice system so that you don’t have a different sentence for a 17-year-old kid caught with a lid of marijuana than you do some upper-middle-class white kid who gets caught with cocaine. He goes to rehab, and the Black kid goes to prison for 10 years.

“First of all, we really don’t have so much a crime problem in this country. We have a drug and alcohol problem. Eighty percent of the people who are in our prisons and jails are there for a drug or alcohol crime. They either were high or drunk when they committed the crime, or they committed the crime to get high or drunk. And what has made a huge mistake is that we’ve incarcerated so many of the people who really need drug rehab more than they need long-term incarceration… We’ve got to quit locking up all the people that we’re mad at and lock up the people that we’re really afraid of, the people who are sexual predators and violent offenders. But the nonsense of three strikes and you’re out has created a system that is overrun with people, and the cost is choking us.

Most of the media picked up on Huckabee’s economic populism, and it doesn’t take much digging to find the evidence. He was attacked by the Club for Growth, and responded by calling them the Club for Greed; he used as part of his stump speech that he was the candidate for “main street, and not wall street.” He tagged Mitt Romney with the line about people wanting a President “who looks like the guy they work with, and not the guy who laid them off.” He came out in favor of a new public works program to rebuild America’s infrastructure. And rarely did he let an opportunity go by without talking about truck drivers or the “people who carry the bags.” At the Republican debate in Dearborn Michigan in October 2007, Huckabee was the only candidate to question the strength of the economy:

You know, a lot of people are going to be watching this debate, they’re going to hear Republicans on this stage talk about how great the economy is. And, frankly, when they hear that they’re going to probably reach for the dial.

I want to make sure people understand that for many people on this stage the economy’s doing terrifically well, but for a lot of Americans it’s not doing so well. The people who handle the bags and make the beds at our hotels and serve the food, many of them are having to work two jobs.

Also in the debate, he talked about the relevance of unions:

The real fact is, unions are going to take a more prominent role in the future for one simple reason: A lot of American workers are finding that their wages continue to get strapped lower and lower while CEO salaries are higher and higher.

And the reality is that when you have the average CEO salary 500 times the average worker, and you have the hedge fund manager making 2,200 times that of the average worker, you’re going to create a level of discontent that’s going to create a huge appetite for unions.

So unions are the natural result of workers finally saying, “Look, I can’t go from a $70,000 year job to a $15,000 a year job and feed my family of four.” That’s when unions are going to come back in roaring form.

But my personal favorite example of his economic populism was something Huckabee said fairly candidly on Hardball with Chris Matthews last August. He was set to appear after a segment about the Democratic AFL-CIO debate in Chicago. At that debate, a retired steelworker named Steve Skvara (an Edwards supporter) choked up when discussing the loss of his pension and health care:

After 34 years with LTV Steel, I was forced to retire because of a disability. Two years later, LTV filed bankruptcy. I lost a third of my pension, and my family lost their health care. Every day of my life, I sit at the kitchen table across from the woman who devoted 36 years of her life to my family, and I can’t afford to pay for her health care.

While waiting for his segment to begin, Huckabee watched the previous segment which included the clip of Skvara. Huckabee then decided to use his time on Hardball to respond:

Well, Chris, the first thing we’ve got to do as a Republican Party is quit being a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the corporations that have done exactly what Steve talked about, and that is allow workers at the bottom to make money for their companies and then let a CEO get a pension, get a wonderful bonus, take a trip to the Riviera, and Steve takes a trip to the poorhouse.

Not many Republicans are willing to say it, but we better say it or we‘re not going to win another election for a generation. We‘ve allowed a lot of people in the airline industry—the baggage handlers, the ticket agents, the clerks—to take 40 percent pay cuts. The executives steer the company into bankruptcy, they get a $200 million bonus…

This is sheer, unadulterated greed, and that‘s not what makes a strong economy, and it‘s going to ruin not just this country but it‘s going to collapse the Republican Party if we don‘t start standing up and saying that you can‘t have that kind of economy, where CEOs make 500 times that of their worker and call that perfectly acceptable. It‘s not acceptable. And people like Steve have got to be factored into the equation… you look at a guy like Steve and you realize, we better run for president and remember him and not just the folks who come to the high-price cocktail parties in Manhattan and Georgetown.

He also seemed to hint at what he thought of the economic policies of the current Republican Administration on, of all places, The Colbert Report (in one of his first couple appearances). Colbert asked his traditional question: “George W. Bush, great President or the greatest President? Huckabee responded: “He’ll rank right up there with McKinley and Harding.” Even as a joke, seemed an odd thing for a Republican to say.

But okay — the trouble that liberals like me have with Huckabee has nothing to do with his economic policies, but with his social conservatism and his support from the evangelical community. And yeah, the guy is unabashedly pro-life — he supports a human life amendment to the Constitution that would go beyond simply repealing Roe v. Wade. But, even with that — probably his most Right-wing position, he still criticized the traditional tactics of pro-life conservatives:

Many of us who are pro-life, quite frankly, I think, have made the mistake of giving people the impression that pro-life means we care intensely about people as long as that child is in the womb, but beyond the gestation period, we’ve not demonstrated as demonstrably as we should that we respect life at all levels, not just during pregnancy. We shouldn’t allow a child to live under a bridge or in the back seat of a car. We shouldn’t be satisfied that elderly people are being abused and neglected in nursing homes. It should never be acceptable to us that people are treated as expendable — any people.

And of his belief of the role of religion in the White House:

 

I think the most dangerous thing that a person has is this messianic complex, where he thinks that he’s not being a servant of people, he’s being God of people. That’s the opposite of what my faith teaches me… and I think when we see people who think they’re running not for president but to be lord of America, that’s a very dangerous thing.

Still, as a good liberal, I really had to enjoy his quip about Pat Robertson when Robertson endorsed Giuliani. Huckabee was asked why such a high-profile evangelical Christian leader had endorsed Giuliani instead of him, and Huckabee responded: “I can no more explain that than I can, you know, him saying that he prayed the hurricane off the coast.” That was fun. I liked that line.

Now, I wrote in “An Iowa kind of night” that there were some intangible reasons that I thought Huckabee stood out from the Republican field, and that is definitely true. He did piss off the right people — Limbaugh, Coulter, Viguerie, Toomey… He does have an engaging personality — telling stories about pardoning Keith Richards as governor for a 1970s reckless driving violation (great clip), or dreaming of having his band open for Led Zeppelin; joking about Huckaburgers on Colbert, or fried squirrel on Morning Joe… and he is an easy-to-cheer for underdog who managed to make an impressive run with no money and no establishment support. Problem is that pointing out those facts actually negates the fact that he weren’t so evil on a lot of the issues either.

So, in any event, Huck is officially out of the Republican race. He didn’t rule out a TV position either, saying amidst that speculation that he was unemployed and waiting for the phone to ring. After scoring pretty well on my predictions for Clinton yesterday, Huck taking a TV job could continue to boost my predictive capability.

For now though, this simple campaign obituary from a liberal can stand as a contrast to the obituary for the Romney campaign. Maybe Huck will run again one day, and maybe he will disappoint me the same way the 2000 model of John McCain (who was in fact pretty cool) disappointed me eight years later.

Finally, my favorite quote for obvious reasons came from a liberal blogger for The Atlantic. She wrote of Huckabee last night:

Now that he’s dropped out, I have to admit he’s kind of charming, like your good-hearted Uncle Ned who believes in free silver, and fairies.

Now see? That should justify everything…