Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

HUCKABEE'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH ISRAEL

Ben Smith at Politico offers an informative and fair-minded article.

Mike Huckabee's Church in Little Rock

Drudge linked to an article on Huckabee's preaching in a New Hampshire church last weekend.  That article mentioned that Huckabee attends The Church at Rock Creek in Little Rock.  I looked at his church's website and learned that it holds a Monday night service with a Q&A afterwards. The church has grown from 25 people in 1995 to over 5,000 today. Check the church's website.

On another matter, Bill Kristol wrote an extraordinarily respectful piece on Mike Huckabee in today's New York Times.  From the last  three paragraphs:

. . . His campaigning in New Hampshire has been impressive. At a Friday night event at New England College in Henniker, he played bass with a local rock band, Mama Kicks. One secular New Hampshire Republican’s reaction: “Gee, he’s not some kind of crazy Christian. He’s an ordinary American.”

In general, here in New Hampshire he’s emphasized social issues far less than in Iowa (though he doesn’t waffle when asked about them). Instead he’s stressed

Is Huckabee More Religious Left Than Right?

I think we'll be hearing more about this in the future.  Meanwhile, Arkansas political columnist David J. Sanders argues in the WSJ that very point:  that Huck is more religious left than religious right.  (HT: Mark Hemingway)

Why Huckabee is Garnering Attention and Votes

Did you see Mike Huckabee on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno"?  I didn't either.  But I looked at his appearance a few moments ago on YouTube.  Peter Robinson over at the Corner wrote the following which motivated me to have a look.  Robinson wrote:

Even if you watch these clips in the same frame of mind I was in when I watched them—I did not want to like Huck—I think you'll find the former governor almost preternaturally hard to resist.  Relaxed, funny, persuasive, and just so darned likeable. To spend ten minutes with the likely winner of tonight's GOP caucuses, click below.

Part One

Part Two

Me:  I agree with Robinson.  Huckabee's charm, humor and verbal gifts set him apart in a class all his own.  I am glad he won the Iowa Republican caucus tonight over Mitt Romney, but I retain reservations.  I look forward to a debate between him and Fred Thompson on their substantial policy differences some time in the future.

Huckabee's Chairman Ed Rollins Wanted to Go Negative

This article presents a fascinating sketch of Ed Rollins and his relationship to Huckabee.  It sheds light on Huckabee's recent nixing the idea of blanketing Iowa with negative ads against Romney.  (HT: Drudge)

Peter Robinson Calls this Huckabee Ad "Incomparably the Finest Ad of the Season"

Click here.   Read on for the context of Peter Robinson's comment.

Trying to figure out what's going on in the Hawkeye state, I spent a few moments just now looking over Huckabee's campaign videos on YouTube. Without exception, they're brilliant—brilliant. In the ads in which he himself appears, Huckabee is engaging, warm, relaxed, and persuasive; the best I can recall since the Gipper himself. And the "surrogate" or "third-party" ads are almost as good. The "Switch to Huckabee" series adopts the lightness and cleverness of recent Apple ads; they're arresting, funny, hip. (That's right. An ad about a Baptist preacher is hip.) And the ad entitled "It's a Whole New Race" manages to be amusing and devastating all at once. Incomparably the finest ad of the season, "It's a Whole New Race" amounts to something a lot like a work of political genius.

Huckabee has also produced what some call the "Floating Cross Christmas Message" ad.  Ron Paul doesn't like it, and quotes Sinclair Lewis,  "When fascism comes it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying

Who is the Real Mike Huckabee?

I confess I am not sure.  Today Robert Novak came out with a blistering column that agrees with a strongly negative National Review editorial  a week ago.  Novak titled his column "The False Conservative."

Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist advocate of big government and a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans.

Huckabee's pro-life stance causes conservatives like me to want to like him, but accusations like the following I find really troubling:

But Huckabee simply does not fit within normal boundaries of economic conservatism, such as when he criticized President Bush's veto of a Democratic expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Calling global warming a "moral issue" mandating "a biblical duty" to prevent climate change, he has endorsed a cap-and-trade system that is anathema to the free market.

Read the whole article.  Conservatives need to weigh Huckabee's pros and cons carefully.

National Review Online (NRO) Doesn't Like Mike Huckabee

Today's NRO editorial on Mike Huckabee attacks his domestic programs and record.  Earlier tonight on television I saw Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer point out Huckabee's lack of experience in foreign policy.  I reproduce NRO's editorial below for the record so that one might be aware of the arguments some conservative make against Huckabee.

When they debated economic issues in Dearborn, Mich., most of the Republican presidential candidates talked about how good the economic statistics look. Mike Huckabee was the candidate who offered sympathy for the public’s anxieties. So it has been throughout the campaign. Huckabee, more than the other Republican candidates, understands