Dispatches From Planet Huckabee
Kerry Howley | May 29, 2008, 3:34pm
In a "partial, summarized transcript" at the Huffington Post, America's life coach explains libertarianism to the masses:
Republicans need to be Republicans. The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it's this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it's a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says "look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don't get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it." Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it's not an American message. It doesn't fly. People aren't going to buy that, because that's not the way we are as a people. That's not historic Republicanism. Historic Republicanism does not hate government; it's just there to be as little of it as there can be."
And libertarians want there to be as little of it as there...can't be? Fascinating! If "Republicans need to be Republicans," and Mike Huckabee is one to be emulated, shall we define Republican as pro-national smoking ban, pro-total war on obesity, pro-creationism, pro-squirrel frying? Sounds good to me, and no less coherent than the current platform.
The soulless Justin Logan responds here. My take on Mike Huckabee in Politics magazine is here.
Don't Get It | May 29, 2008, 10:08pm | #
"Why do you say "failure"? Because they haven't elected...who or what, exactly?"
Political parties usually define their goal as advancing their preferred polices. Sometimes, in practice, a party's goal is just to maintain its power, but I doubt any party in a country with free elections would fess up to this goal.
If a party's goal is indeed to advance its policies, then there are, I think, only two ways to do it.
First, you can get people elected to will enact your preferred policies.
Second, you can popularize your policies and then have them co-opted by the more dominant parties.
Either way, I don't see how the Libertarian Party has advanced its policies.
Now, if the Libertarian Party is really a social or debate club, then maybe it has been a success. Maybe being an official party makes it more enjoyable as a social or debate club. As a political party, however, I don't see how it has been a success.
"And it's a cheap shot to say that libertarians, and libertarians alone, "let" the poor go without..."
I don't know whether you are talking about me or Huckabee. I don't see where either one of us said libertarians *alone* take any view.
To say my statement was loaded with false premises is a bit much. Your disagreement seems to be with what meaning to ascribe to the word "let." Actually, I don't even see how what I said is inconsistent with what you said. Your view is to shut the government program down and then the old people can depend on private charity (unless they can find work, of course). That's pretty much what I said. At best, you might fairly accuse me of a poor choice of emphasis in the sentence, but why would we ever interpret someone's comments on a blog charitably?
