Monday, December 10, 2007

Should I Heart Huckabee?

Ben Domenech shines in his analysis of Mike Huckabee's run for the GOP nomination, and Mark Byron has been liking Mike from Day One.

My personal preference based on issues and style is for Fred Thompson; he's solidly conservative and seems to have been the only one paying attention when they talked about federalism in Civics class. His campaign, however, has been pretty disappointing. The problem is that most of the rest of the field seems marginal. Giuliani, anointed by the media as the frontrunner, is pro-abortion, pro-homosexual marriage, and is scandal-plagued (I can probably come up with more problems involving hyphenation if pressed). McCain is tough-talking and Romney has proven experience as a manager, but neither of them is quite trustworthy, flip-flopping on issues. Besides, McCain is pretty old and Romney is just too slick. Hunter and Tancredo are marginal, although I agree with them on immigration and hope their views receive proper consideration. Then there's Ron Paul. The less said about him, the better.

Huckabee is soft on immigration and federalism. He has executive experience as Governor of Arkansas and seems to have done a good job of it. He's a sincere Christian with a dose of charisma; he's also nicely low-key as compared to most of the Democrat candidates. As far as I can tell, he's willing to continue the War on Terror. Basically, I get the impression that he's like a copy of George W. Bush; in my book that's a good thing. I'd vote for Bush again if I didn't think that too much power for too long isn't a good thing. While an energetic Thompson might give the top Democrat candidates a run for their money, I think that Giuliani, McCain, and Romney would probably get pwnt by Clinton or Obama (or, *shudder*, Edwards).

As for the Democrats, Richardson is the only one I can stand. Not that I like him on the issues, but he alone among them seems like a decent person (maybe Obama, too, on this) who actually has experience in government. I think it was the Clinton campaign that said (apparently without irony) that running for President isn't actually a credential when it comes to running for President; Obama has virtually no experience. My theory has been that he's running for President in 2012 or '16, possibly as Vice President under Clinton. As for Edwards, I'm not sure there's a politician I detest as much as the former senator from North Carolina (watch this, compare it with this, and see who's classier). I think there are also a bunch of Northeastern senators who always run; they can be safely ignored.

So what's this all mean? I don't know. The election is still a long, long way away, even if the obscenely-early primaries are just around the corner.

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