Huck drops out

Mike Huckabee dropped out a few minutes ago. He ran a heck of a campaign with no money, and was the last guy standing before McCain clinched. I expect him to rally the troops around McCain and work to get him elected. He should be proud of the campaign he ran for the most part and the groundswell of support he raised. If nothing else, it helped remind the National Review crowd that they need us a lot more than we need them!

The death of a legend

William F. Buckley, founder of National Review magazine, died today at the age of 82. Few people have had a more profound impact on the political environment, while not being a household name, than William F. Buckley. I would hazard a guess that most people who vote Republican in November have no idea who Buckley was or that he was one of the driving forces behind where the GOP is today. Other than Ronald Reagan, no other person has the level of impact on the intellectual underpinnings of American conservatism.

My family has always held Buckley in the highest esteem. The intellectualism, the dry wit, the biting sarcasm and the smarmy mean streak all appeal to us as a family. But American conservatism has moved beyond the elitist, libertarian roots that Buckley represented. The Republican party, the two-party system representative of conservatism in America, looks very different from the Ivy League elite men's club it used to be. Buckley championed Christian virtues in American culture, but it struck me that his idea of Christian virtue was more a philosophical idea than a life-changing reality. Nonetheless, Buckley was one of the great champions of the small government, libertarian, anti-communism that were the hallmarks of the Reagan revolution.

The reliance of Buckley conservatives on the Southern and Midwestern religious conservatives to build a voting coalition, rally the troops and get the grassroots efforts needed to win elections is grating. I have always gotten the sense that ideological purity has trumped political pragmatism. Bully for Buckley and company, but that leads to lots of Democrats in high office. On the other hand, Buckleyites seem to revel in misery and harrumphing about the state of things, so maybe he enjoyed being out of power and complaining about those who are in. He was a funny fellow, in a dry, almost humorless sort of way.

Rest in peace Bill.

Disappointing...

One of my favorite writers for National Review online is Jay Nordlinger. Unfailingly clever, staunchly anti-communist, a music critic and free Cuba advocate, his columns are always entertaining, educational and thought provoking. But his recent column takes a shot at Huckabee that is both a cheap shot and an ignorant one

One more word about politics, while I’m fulminating: In early days, when Huckabee was a fringe candidate, he was kind of entertaining and endearing — a charming goober, adorning the campaign. Now that he is a major candidate, he is positively unnerving — with his incredibly naïve views about foreign policy. Views not so different from Barack Obama’s.

And we’re in the middle of a war, both the shooting kind and the “cold” kind (if you consider the war against Islamofascism another long, twilight struggle, as I do).

If the two major-party nominees are Obama and Huckabee: What differences will they stress? Their skin color?

That was ugly and inaccurate on a number of levels. Obama is a fanatic about being pro-abortion, as evidenced by this Townhall.com editorial by Terence Jeffrey that I linked to from the NRO website! Now you may not like some stuff about Huckabee but he is the most consistent pro-life candidate out there. Jay, do you really think that the only difference between Huckabee and Obama is their skin color? Huckabee is a solid Second Amendment supporter, an advocate of radical changes to the tax code, of school choice and home schooling. Other than failing to march the party line on President Bush's Iraq policy, where is the similarity between Obama and Huckabee? That is like suggesting that Romney and Ted Kennedy are one and the same because they both were elected to political positions in Mass. Truly a disappointing comment from a man who normally is sober minded and clear thinking, but in this case has been drinking the National Review anti-Huckabee Kool-Aid.

More on Mitt

(Playing a little fast and loose with the facts!)

According to a news report from the AP, it turns out that maybe Romney's dad didn't actually march with Martin Luther King Jr....

BOSTON - Mitt Romney, who earlier this year had to backpedal on his hunting exploits, is explaining himself again after claiming an endorsement he did not receive and saying he witnessed his father in civil rights marches he could not have seen.

"It's a figure of speech," Romney said Thursday after media inquiries into the Republican presidential contender's statement during his recent religion speech that he watched his father, the late Gov. George Romney of Michigan, march with Martin Luther King Jr.

Romney, who was in high school at the time, later said he only heard of his father marching, and some historians have questioned whether his father, in fact, did march with King. The Romney campaign provided books and news articles it said supported his statement.

A figure of speech? This is what he said in his 'Faith in America' speech: " I saw my father march with Martin Luther King."

How is that a "figure of speech"? That smacks of Clintonian spin. Well, I didn't see him, but I saw him, if you know what I mean. The Detroit Free Press, which takes a special interest in Romney because his father is the former Governor of Michigan, has additional details:

Asked about the reports, Romney said: "My own eyes? You know, I speak in the sense of I saw my dad become president of American Motors. I wasn't actually there when he became president of American Motors, but I saw him in the figurative sense of he marched with Martin Luther King.

"My brother also remembers him marching with Martin Luther King, and so in that sense I saw him march with Martin Luther King."

So now his brother allegedly remembering something means that Mitt saw it happen? Huh?!

The AP report also mentions some of Romney's other faulty recollections:

Romney similarly backtracked after telling a national television audience Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that "I received the endorsement of the NRA" in 2002 while running for governor of Massachusetts.

The gun rights group did not endorse either candidate, and gave a higher issues rating to his Democratic opponent.

Romney said Monday, "It was, if you will, a support phone bank, which is not an official endorsement."
...
Throughout his campaign, he has been dogged by allegations of flip-flopping on key issues, from abortion rights to gun control and gay rights.

"It's the fine-tuning that's created the problem. It's always that one extra step that causes him the trouble," said Tobe Berkovitz, a longtime Romney observer and the interim dean of Boston University's College of Communication. "You can't just say that African-Americans were accepted into the church and I was happy, you have to say you pulled over and you cried."
...
Nonetheless, Romney faced snickers in April after his staff said he had been hunting on only two occasions despite his telling a New Hampshire voter, "I've been a hunter pretty much all my life." Romney later said he had hunted more than twice but only for "small varmints" and that he did not own a gun or have a hunting license.

This is National Reviews true blue conservative? This is their guy? A guy who makes bold claims about stuff that never happened, claims endorsements he never received and makes up a persona to appeal to hunters? Maybe Rich Lowry and company need to look a little harder...

Mike makes NRO mad part deux

More National Review attacks on Mike Huckabee. With an editorial disdainfully titled: "The Problem With Pastor Mike", Peter Wehner castigates Huckabee for his opinions in Foreign Affairs as being "fundamentally unserious":

The role of commander-in-chief is the most important one we look to in a president, particularly when America is at war. Governor Huckabee’s article in Foreign Affairs, while fine (if largely conventional) in some respects, is fundamentally unserious; on national security matters, he is likewise. And when the final votes are tallied in the GOP race, Mike Huckabee’s words, on these issues and others, will cost him.

Was President Bush "serious" about foreign policy? He could barely pronounce many of the names of their leaders.

Wehner's post is full of arrogant snippets that paint Huckabee as a foreign policy idiot: "Governor Huckabee also seems ignorant about the extent of cooperation that, on a daily basis, is garnered for the war against militant Islam. ", "Does he know (or care) that the United States won the unanimous approval of the U.N. Security Council for Resolution 1441" and "Is Huckabee unaware of all the other options on the table, which Iran has so far rejected?". The whole article is liberally (no pun intended) sprinkled with "Pastor Mike" as a pejorative. Odd that referring to someone as "Pastor" would be seen as an insult from an ostensibly conservative writer. His big concern seems to be that Huckabee recognizes that, rightly or wrongly, much of the world looks at the USA as arrogant, that the war in Iraq has been handled poorly (the cause is absolutely right, the execution has been not so much) and that we have made a myriad of mistakes in foreign policy. My hope would be that Huckabee or whichever Republican was elected would surround himself with a solid foreign policy team that will absolutely stand for American sovereignty but also recognize that there are other countries in the world. I personally am in favor of booting the UN out of New York, but I am also not running for Commander-in-Chief.

To jump on Wehner's hyperbole bandwagon, perhaps Hillary or even Bill Richardson would better suit him as a candidate, both being more "fundamentally serious" about foreign issues? Of course that is silly and unfair, but such assertions seem fair game for Mr. Whener, including this doozie: "Would Huckabee base his foreign-policy decisions on how our actions poll in Waziristan or Gaza under Hamas, or in madrasas throughout the Middle East? Based on his Foreign Affairs essay, it’s reasonable to believe he might." What ever happened the the 11th Commandment of the GOP? Those types of comments are just silly and unworthy of an august publication like National Review, and indicate that it may just be Wehner, not Huckabee, who is "fundamentally unserious".

I believe that President Bush is the source of much of the angst among the National Review crowd. They allowed us our candidate once and he was a disappointment in many areas they find important. Of course he is a disappointment to many of us as well. Spending is out of control and the war has been handled poorly. Most social conservative are also fiscal conservatives and we recognize that there need to be changes, and soon. But I quite frankly don't trust Rudy or Romney to nominate an acceptable nominee for the almost inevitable Supreme Court vacancies. We are very close to be able to overturn Roe V. Wade, and we are also on the tipping point of losing that chance if a conservative Justice retires or dies.

It seems to me that because Bush came across as a man of deep and open faith, perhaps not as savvy as some but a genuine person, Huckabee reminds old school conservative of him and that leads to distrust. Certainly being Governor of Arkansas is not the ideal training for a foreign policy leader, but if he will surround himself with the right advisers he should be fine. Better a man of honest and sincere social conservative values than a man who has either rejected those same values (Rudy) or has flip flopped on them when it was politically expedient (Romney)