The Huckabee Threat

Rip van Novak rouses himself from a deep slumber:

The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger: What if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own?

Memo to Novak: have you heard of George W. Bush? Barely a government program he hasn't expanded; barely a soul he doesn't want to heal. Nation-building where there is no nation; borrowing when there is no more money. And all wrapped up in a theological bundle of conservative "compassion". The main difference between Bush and Huckabee is that Huckabee once actually raised the money he wanted to spend, instead of borrowing it from the Chinese. And Huckabee's resort to left-liberal criticism of conservatism - that's it's heartless and greedy - has been deployed by Bush as well. Heroic Christianism - with its certainty about everything and moral imperative to intervene wherever "evil" strikes - is not compatible with any sense of limited government. It's pretty amazing to me that it has taken Huckabee to wake some up to this somewhat obvious fact.