The Anti-Necrophilia Candidate
Cato's David Boaz takes one glance at Mike Huckabee and asks "What fresh hell is this?"
Huckabee told the AP that "homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle," and called for isolating people with AIDS. That was a position, by the way, that the venerable Reagan had firmly rejected five years earlier. In 1997, then-Arkansas Gov. Huckabee pushed for a reaffirmation of the state's sodomy law, and in 1998 he compared homosexuality to necrophilia.
Huckabee says his rise in the polls can only be attributed to God's will. He endorsed the Southern Baptist Convention's declaration that "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband." He says he entered politics to "take this nation back for Christ."
Huckabee is the least libertarian candidate in this race, and the whole column is worth a read. That said, Huckabee's christian universalism does lend itself to some libertarian-friendly positions. Despite the loathsome rhetoric he has adopted to placate the Tancredo/Dobbs cabal, Huckabee has more liberal instincts on immigration than any Democratic candidate. He is also the least likely drug warrior of any candidate other than Paul; Huckabee believes in redemption and he is not fond of locking up entire populations of young men. Here's the Houston Chronicle:
Dana Reece, another defense lawyer, told of one client who received a life sentence for selling six grams of crack cocaine. "He'd still be in prison today if it weren't for Governor Huckabee," Reece said. "How many politicians, she asked, would stick their necks out for a crack dealer?"
"This was a political hot potato, and he knew it," Cory Cox said of his former boss. "But he had a conviction that people could better themselves, and he was open-minded to the idea that a poor black man from east Arkansas convicted by an all-white jury just may have been a victim of injustice."
This seems like a good time to link to Radley Balko's "The Case of Cory Maye."