When he’s not talking about Venezuela or Iran, Rick Santorum can be pretty sensible (via Sullivan):
And then on the issue of, on social conservative issues, you point to me one time John McCain every took the floor of the United States Senate to talk about a social conservative issue. It never happened. I mean, this is a guy who says he believes in these things, but I can tell you, inside the room, when we were in these meetings, there was nobody who fought harder not to have these votes before the United States Senate on some of the most important social conservative issues, whether it’s marriage or abortion or the like. He always fought against us to even bring them up, because he was uncomfortable voting for them. So I mean, this is just not a guy I think in the end that washes with the mainstream of the Republican Party.
That sums it up pretty well. Meanwhile, you supposedly three other leading candidates, one of whom has no real credibility on social issues, one of whom is effectively on the other side of the debate and the third who is evidently entirely reliable. Social and cultural conservatives make up a much larger part of the party than do economic conservatives, and three of the four leading candidates are essentially unacceptable to large numbers of them for different reasons. All other things being equal, if you wanted to choose the candidate who had the best chance of turning these voters out in November and keeping as much of the coalition together as possible, wouldn’t you choose the one who can most reliably motivate your largest voting bloc? Are economic and “national security” conservatives really going to sit out a Huckabee-Clinton or Huckabee-Obama election? It’s not as if they are likely to vote for the other party! (Bush Hawks for Obama does have an amusing ring to it, but I don’t think we’re going to see it this year.) As they have said to social conservatives so many times before: where are you going to go?
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January 10th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Howard J. Harrison
Are economic and “national security” conservatives really going to sit out a Huckabee-Clinton or Huckabee-Obama election? It’s not as if they are likely to vote for the other party!… As they have said to social conservatives so many times before: where are you going to go?
A partially irrelevant datum: The Republicans have my vote if they nominate Hunter, Paul, Thompson or Romney. If Huckabee, Giuliani or, especially, McCain, then the Democrats can win my vote. In the extreme case—McCain against Clinton—I would vote Clinton with a clear conscience and a smile on my face. Huckabee against Obama would retain my vote for Huckabee. McCain against Obama would probably make me throw my vote away on a third party. Other combinations would leave my vote in play during the 2008 campaign.
To you, the datum is partially irrelevant in that I am very much a social conservative rather than one of the economic conservatives to which your article refers. Naturally I claim to speak for no one but myself (although my wife’s sentiments at least are fairly similar to mine).
Anyway, if the information is interesting, then make of it what you will.
Howard
January 10th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Daniel Larison
It is interesting. I assume that it is Huckabee’s awful record on immigration that makes him unacceptable to you? That seems perfectly reasonable. It’s not irrelevant if you are representative of a lot of social conservatives who correctly refuse to accept Huckabee’s sudden discovery of border security and immigration restrictions. You might be. In that case, Romney might be a little more viable than I would have thought, but I’m not sure that a lot of voters are going to be able to distinguish between Romney, who suddenly realised illegal immigration was important 12 months ago, and Huckabee, who discovered the issue five or six months ago.
January 10th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Howard J. Harrison
Daniel:
I am afraid that I have no single yardstick by which to measure all candidates, nor can I sum up in a few words why I might support Hillary Clinton (but not Barack Obama) over some Republicans this year.
You can blame John Savage for my reservations against Mr. Huckabee, though “unacceptable” might be much too strong an adjective against Mr. Huckabee in my case. I think Mr. Huckabee a nice man, but John has persuaded me that he is too soft in the head. You are right, though: Mr. Huckabee is indeed substantially wrong on immigration. I am fairly willing to let a candidate change his mind on immigration because I have changed my own mind on immigration, but even after changing his mind, Mr. Huckabee still is substantially wrong.
So is Mr. Romney, of course. You can blame yourself for my reservations against Mr. Romney, but my reservations do not yet run so deep that I would consider voting Democratic against Mr. Romney in the general election.
Regarding immigration, almost all the candidates are fairly awful, except Duncan Hunter whom I support and Ron Paul who is my second choice. Twenty years ago I was awful on immigration, too (I have no good excuse, except that a lot of us Americans were awful on immigration together). Immigration politics generally are trending the right way now, but it’s like an aircraft carrier: it won’t stop on a dime, and I refuse to despair if it doesn’t. What I like about Mr. Romney’s immigration policy is that he wants to replace low-skilled immigration with highly skilled immigration—which is not as good as zero immigration but which is a major improvement. Highly skilled, non-Muslim immigrants speak English, pay taxes and and have high-IQ kids who do not roam the streets looking for stop signs to spray-paint.
You are correct that I trust Mr. Romney to secure the border more than I trust Mr. Huckabee to do it. Mr. Romney will do it because he sees it as his job, and because he’s the kind of man that gets his job done, whether he likes it or not. I am afraid that Mr. Huckabee once in office might drag his feet in much the same way that George W. Bush has done.
Thanks for the follow-up question. If I’ve not properly answered in your view, please advise.
Howard
January 10th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Howard J. Harrison
One other comment: The word “economic conservative” seems to appear more and more often these days. The word seems to refer to right-wing libertarians of Friedrich von Hayek’s stripe. If they like to be called “economic conservatives,” that’s fine with me, I guess; but I find Hayekism to run more or less orthogonal to authentic conservatism. It may be the fame of the famous conservative Rush Limbaugh that has confused the term—the reasoning being that if Rush favors Hayekism, then Hayekism must somehow be conservative—or it may be the lingering echo of the 1970s-era rivalry between U.S. trade unions and the Republican party.
It gets silly however when some right-wingers start calling Mike Huckabee an “economic liberal” because he espouses the same, traditionally conservative trade policies George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Calvin Coolidge believed in. Such labeling is nearly the opposite of the truth. If this is what we get for indulging right-wing libertarians in calling themselves “economic conservatives,” then maybe we need to start gently challenging the label.
Authentic conservatives are more likely to be informed by Belloc and Chesterton than by Hayek. If we called Belloc and Chesterton “economic conservatives” now, however, folks would think us out of our minds. Oh, well. That’s how confused the terminology has become.
HJH