HUCK AND THE MONEYCONS….Atrios comments on the newfound conservative loathing of Mike Huckabee:
I understand why the Villagers are freaked by Huckabee, but I don’t understand why all of the idiot conservative bloggers are freaking out too. They’re using the kind of language to describe the religious right that I steer clear of personally.
Over at The Corner they’re up in arms over Huckabee too. The language might be a little more judicious, but the high priests of mainstream conservatism are every bit as unglued about Huckabee as the bloggers.
There are a variety of ostensible reasons for this: lack of foreign policy bona fides, too compassionate for their taste, too willing to consider spending money, etc. But I think the real reason is simpler: as with blogosphere conservatives, mainstream conservatives are mostly urban sophisticates with a libertarian bent, not rural evangelicals with a social conservative bent. They’re happy to talk up NASCAR and pickup trucks in public, but in real life they mostly couldn’t care less about either. Ditto for opposing abortion and the odd bit of gay bashing via proxy. But when it comes to Ten Commandments monuments and end times eschatology, they shiver inside just like any mainstream liberal. The only difference is that usually they keep their shivering to themselves because they want to keep everyone in the big tent happy.
But then along comes Huckabee, and guess what? He’s the real deal. Not a guy like George Bush or Ronald Reagan, who talks a soothing game to the snake handlers but then turns around and spends his actual political capital on tax cuts, foreign wars, and deregulating big corporations. Huckabee, it turns out, isn’t just giving lip service to evangelicals, he actually believes all that stuff. Among other things, he believes in creationism (really believes), once proposed that AIDS patients should be quarantined, appears to share the traditional evangelical view that Mormonism is a cult, and says (in public!) that homosexuality is sinful. And that’s without seeing the text of any of his old sermons, which he (probably wisely) refuses to let the press lay eyes on.
I think this brand of yahooism puts off mainstream urban conservatives every bit as much as it does mainstream urban liberals. They’re afraid that this time, it’s not just a line of patter to keep the yokels in line.
