In an interview (in which I think Huckabee was trying to ensure he wouldn't be chosen as the Republican vice presidential nominee), Mike Huckabee critiques conservative economic thought (italics mine):
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. But they also recognize that government has to be paid for.If you have a breakdown in the social structure of a community, it's going to result in a more costly government ... police on the streets, prison beds, court costs, alcohol abuse centers, domestic violence shelters, all are very expensive. What's the answer to that? Cut them out? Well, the libertarians say "yes, we shouldn't be funding that stuff." But what you've done then is exacerbate a serious problem in your community. You can take the cops off the streets and just quit funding prison beds. Are your neighborhoods safer? Is it a better place to live? The net result is you have now a bigger problem than you had before.
My experience in Arkansas was, a lot of the so-called conservatives said "Let's cut the budget." But they wanted to add prison sentences, they wanted to eliminate parole, they wanted to have harsher sentences for various crimes. And I said "OK, that's fine, but that's going to be expensive. So which do you want?" You can't have both, or you do what the federal government has done, and this is where I think Republicans have been especially irresponsible. Their approach has been [to] just kick the can down the road and let your grandkids pay for it.
So they run up huge deficits ... but they've pushed those costs down to the states, and the states have to eat it, because they have to balance their budgets, they don't get to print money or borrow. Or the federal government just runs up more deficits and let's the next couple of generations worry about paying for all this stuff.
Either way, it's irresponsible, and I think people in America are smarter than that and they know that's not the responsible way to approach governing.
Even Huckabee, who's utterly batshit loony on social issues, can figure this out. Oh well, conservatives will always have Rachael Ray's scarves...
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these *UGLY GEEKS* should stick to BIOLOGY
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Isn't Dennis a candidate for universal disemvoweling?
Good ideas, Huck. That's why you never got very far in the primaries and nowhere with the republiscum bigwigs.
Dennis Markuze, a.k.a. Dennis Johnson, a.k.a. David Johnson, a.k.a. David Mabuse, has been all over the place today.
Huckabee also recognized a major cause of the health care crisis in the United States when he said that the practice of tying health insurance to employment was the reason that preventive medicine is not well-funded in the United States.
With the high turnover in employment, and thus the fact that most people choose the same ins. carrier for a few years at a time the company that pays for preventive medicine doesn't get the benefit the benefit of the reduced expenses.
And that was the only other sensible thing I heard Huckabee say during his run at the election.
The historical parallels to William Jennings Bryan could be instructive.
Huckabee appears to be aware of the class of problems that divides the group of people calling themselves "libertarians" into three main classes:
Libertarians: Believe that government's legitimate scope is quite narrow and restricted to a core set of objectives.
Stingitarians: As above; but hates paying for it, and generally preferrs to restrict government means as well as ends(eg. a libertarian might see funding public health infrastructure as legitimate, given its value as a defence against biological weapons. A stingitarian would be inclined to reject an nonlibertarian means even to a libertarian end.)
Smash and grab thieves: Just here to grab whatever they can and get out before the whole mess caves in.
Brings to mind the old "make everything is simple as possible; but no simpler." line.
I like you blog, but I must respectfully disagree with your politics.
Huckabee is wrong about Conservative libertarians. It's not "lets cut medicare" It's "lets find ways where we don't need it any more." For example, getting rid of our ridiculous and expensive foreign policy to fund broke social entitlement programs. But just not indefinitely.
IT's about decentralizing social welfare, and helping people become self reliant. As in, it's not the government's job to coddle, just to help pick someone up after they've fallen.
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