Month: January 2008

“You Obey The Orders.”

Huckabee relates the key prudential principle of Christianism. Yes: it’s vertical. When addressing what a polity needs, you just need to ask God. And then we obey. At least now no one will hide it. This dog whistle is loud and public and audible by anyone:

"When we become believers, it’s as if we have signed up to be part of God’s Army, to be soldiers for Christ… When you give yourself to Christ, some relationships have to go. It’s no longer your life; you’ve signed it over."

His sermon/speech in New Hampshire is an almost text-book study of the fundamentalist psyche I outline in the first chapter of "The Conservative Soul." If you want Bush’s fundamentalism and big government liberalism taken to the next level, vote Huckabee. The two of them threaten to purge the GOP of its traditional conservatism.

Attacking Obama From The Right

I gagged when I read Bill Kristol warning of Obama’s "nanny-state" impulses. This from a Bush-supporter! I’m sorry but Kristol has no standing to defend a conservatism he largely ignored or trashed while he was close to the levers of power under Bush and Rove. Bruce Bartlett gets it right:

I think the standard answer to every objection to Obama by Republicans should be this:  He can’t be worse than Bush.

From a conservative perspective, on spending, debt, big government, regulation, which Democrat could be worse?
 

McCain On Obama

Sounds like himself a little:

"Knowing him well, as I do, I know he had great potential, but I wasn’t sure about, and I think all of us who indulge in the conventional wisdom didn’t know, is whether he could have success against what was basically very strong control of the party and its apparatus in Sen Clinton. It’s sort of what we faced in 2000 with Gov. Bush. He had the whole party apparatus behind him. I’m not saying she had all of it, but she certainly had a good part of it …

He is very articulate. He’s got a very strong message of let’s work together and get something done for the country. I think he has articulated that message very effectively. I think that he campaigns extremely well, and he’s able to motivate people, to say the least, very well. And I think he has a pretty good message."

Let’s forget he said "articulate" shall we? I’ve said it before, but a McCain-Obama contest in 2008 would bring out the best in us. It would be particularly instructive in grappling with the question of the Iraq occupation.

Obama and the Right III

A reader writes:

As an economic conservative, I’ve been wrestling for days with Obama’s appeal to me. The qualities he has that I keep returning to are: honesty and clarity, and therefore a tendency toward transparency of government. As shown in his debate response on the carbon tax issue, the man refuses to condescend to the right by hedging or qualifying his point of view. While I do disagree with Obama on practically every issue (with the noted exception of the Iraq war), I also believe that if he’s elected and manages to see his mandate through, America won’t have been hoodwinked into its future. We will have chosen it with open eyes.

Contrast that to Clinton’s "hard work" — her euphemism for politics as a dirty game in which she must attempt to smuggle in her policies behind our backs. That is the politics she would practice in office, and that is the chief reason she is much less appealing to me and others like me. I’m still not sure whether I would vote for Obama in a general election (I only know that I would vote for any Democrat against Huckabee), but I do like him a hell of a lot for being straightforward with me.