Huckabee

My initial position on Huckabee was that he was my perfect anti-candidate, but that's not quite true.

• Hucakbee's intensely socially conservative. I'm socially laissez-faire.



• Huckabee's a "compassionate conservative." I'm in favor of a providing opportunities for all through education and public and child health programs, but I'm intensely anti-distributive. I'm not so sure that Huckabee wouldn't redistribute.



• Huckabee has a whiff of economic populism about him, which I think is abject insanity. I'm a free trader first, last, and foremost. I'll live with a little bit of needed regulation, but I'm not sure that Huckabee would stop there.



• Huckabee is hawkish on Iraq and Afghanistan. So am I.



• Huckabee has about as much foreign policy experience as Obama. I want somebody who actually understands how the world works.



• Huckabee is indifferent to the size of government. I want government as small as possible, but no smaller.

But what am I going to do if this joker panders properly to the economic orthodoxy of the GOP: free trade, low regulation, small government/low spending, muscular foreign policy? He's not that far off. I'm not sure I'd believe him completely, but I'm pretty sure that if he toes the line, the powers that be will make him continue to toe it if he were to be elected.

I still won't vote for him. Ultimately, his religion is just too much for me to swallow. I was willing to put up with Bush's lay evangelism and that turned out to be a big mistake. Now Huckabee is selling the same package, but on steroids. This country needs a secular president. I don't care if the president has religious convictions just as long as he's capable of firewalling them from policy. Huckabee won't be able to do that.