(cross posted in EcuProphets under my revdbh screen name)
Robert Novak does a hit piece on Mike Huckabee today, excoriating him for apparently being a faux conservative.
Huckabee simply does not fit within normal boundaries of economic conservatism, such as when he criticized President Bush’s veto of a Democratic expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Calling global warming a "moral issue" mandating "a biblical duty" to prevent climate change, he has endorsed a cap-and-trade system that is anathema to the free market.
I had never realized that opposition to SCHIP and preventing climate change were principled positions. Thanks to Novak’s concise writing, we learn that they are, I guess. But Robert Novak just can’t seem to avoid being, well, Robert Novak.
The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger: What if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own? That has happened with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
This has to be one of the most blatantly cynical paragraphs I have read in quite a while. Or perhaps it holds the key to another deeply held Novakian principle, namely,
Bible-totin’ rubes are there to use, so the big boys can get themselves elected, which would never happen if folks got a straight look at what they’re about. If one of those rubes starts actually spouting Bible folderol, why, get him to sit down and shut up.
Well, if I were an evangelical, I’d be insulted.