Goldberg on Huckabee and Paul

Jonah Goldberg, in National Review, with some great insights on Huckabee and Paul. For the brief excerpts I'll post here, I'll focus on his remarks about Huckabee.

What’s so scary about Huckabee? Personally, nothing. He seems a charming, decent, friendly, pious man. What’s troubling about The Man From Hope 2.0 is what he represents. Huckabee represents compassionate conservatism on steroids....

For example, Huckabee would support a nationwide ban on public smoking. Why? Because he’s on a health kick, thinks smoking is bad and believes the government should do the right thing.

And therein lies the chief difference between Paul and Huckabee. One is a culturally conservative libertarian. The other is a right-wing progressive...

In this respect, Huckabee’s philosophy is conventionally liberal, or progressive. What he wants government to do certainly differs in important respects from what Hillary Clinton wants, but the limits he would place on governmental do-goodery are primarily tactical or practical, not philosophical or constitutional. This isn’t to say he — or Hillary — is a would-be tyrant, but simply to note that the progressive notion of the state as a loving, caring parent is becoming a bipartisan affair.

Indeed, Huckabee represents the latest attempt to make conservatism more popular. Contrary to the conventional belief that Republicans need to drop their opposition to abortion, gay marriage and the like in order to be popular, Huckabee understands that the unpopular stuff is the economic libertarianism: free trade and smaller government. That’s why we’re seeing a rise in economic populism on the right married to a culturally conservative populism. Huckabee is the bastard child of Lou Dobbs and Pat Robertson....

I would not vote for Paul mostly because I think his foreign policy would be disastrous (Also, he’d lose in a rout not seen since Bambi versus Godzilla). But there’s something weird going on when Paul, the small-government constitutionalist, is considered the extremist in the Republican party, while Huckabee, the statist, is the lovable underdog. It’s even weirder because it’s probably true: Huckabee is much closer to the mainstream. And that’s what scares me about Huckabee and the mainstream alike.