Bradley in DC
01-08-2008, 08:26 AM
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/huckabees_counterproductive_sw.html
Huckabee's Counterproductive Sweet Talk
By Dick Armey
With a definitive win in last week's Iowa caucus, Mike Huckabee talked himself into the frontrunner position for the Republican presidential nomination. His folksy demeanor and populist promises are central to his appeal, but they mask a strategy designed to divide the conservative movement. If the Republican party chooses to follow Huckabee's lead, it will allow political sweet talk to destroy its greatest electoral and policy-making advantage: the GOP's traditional political consensus built around limiting the size and scope of government...
... Huckabee undermines the GOP's longstanding unity between its traditional and economic wings, a coalition built to serve the goals of social as well fiscal conservatives.
This coalition, solidified in the Reagan years, rests on the principle that freedom--individual and economic--is not in conflict with virtue, but rather is the key to it. Social conservatives are served by promoting economic freedom, and vice-versa. Moreover, the alignment of these interests is the foundation for the GOP's electoral successes, no small thing in the realm of politics. The enthusiasm for Huckabee from the party's socially conservative wing is not just misplaced; it's counterproductive...
Huckabee's Counterproductive Sweet Talk
By Dick Armey
With a definitive win in last week's Iowa caucus, Mike Huckabee talked himself into the frontrunner position for the Republican presidential nomination. His folksy demeanor and populist promises are central to his appeal, but they mask a strategy designed to divide the conservative movement. If the Republican party chooses to follow Huckabee's lead, it will allow political sweet talk to destroy its greatest electoral and policy-making advantage: the GOP's traditional political consensus built around limiting the size and scope of government...
... Huckabee undermines the GOP's longstanding unity between its traditional and economic wings, a coalition built to serve the goals of social as well fiscal conservatives.
This coalition, solidified in the Reagan years, rests on the principle that freedom--individual and economic--is not in conflict with virtue, but rather is the key to it. Social conservatives are served by promoting economic freedom, and vice-versa. Moreover, the alignment of these interests is the foundation for the GOP's electoral successes, no small thing in the realm of politics. The enthusiasm for Huckabee from the party's socially conservative wing is not just misplaced; it's counterproductive...