Steve Skojec

Pat Buchanan takes a look at what has happened to American conservatism post-Reagan and without the USSR as a uniting cause:

Reagan defined conservatism for his time. And the issues upon which we agreed were anti-communism, a national defense second to none, lower tax rates to unleash the engines of economic progress, fiscal responsibility, a strict-constructionist Supreme Court, law and order, the right-to-life from conception on and a resolute defense of family values under assault from the cultural revolution that hit America with hurricane force in the 1960s.

With the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the breakup of the Soviet Union, anti-communism as the defining and unifying issue of the right was gone. The conservative crack-up commenced…

…today, the once-great house of conservatism is a Tower of Babel. We are big government and small government, traditionalist and libertarian, tax-cutter and budget hawk, free trader and economic nationalist. Bush and McCain support amnesty and a “path to citizenship” for illegals. The country wants the laws enforced and a fence on the border.

What’s more, Buchanan understands how this erosion leads to the potential of a Rudy Giuliani nomination, and what that really means for conservatives:

Pro-abortion, anti-gun, again and again he strutted up Fifth Avenue in the June Gay Pride parade and turned the Big Apple into a sanctuary city for illegal aliens. While Ward Connerly goes state to state to end reverse discrimination, Rudy is an affirmative-action man…

…A Giuliani presidency would represent the return and final triumph of the Republicanism that conservatives went into politics to purge from power. A Giuliani presidency would represent repudiation by the party of the moral, social and cultural content that, with anti-communism, once separated it from liberal Democrats and defined it as an institution.

Rudy offers the right the ultimate Faustian bargain: retention of power at the price of one’s soul.

The GOP certainly does look eager to sell its soul just to have an outside shot at keeping the reins, and the slightly more conservative individuals in the base are divided on what to do about it. Some will back Giuliani, or only slightly less distasteful, Romney or McCain. Some will mindlessly put their weight behind Thompson, the “empty suit”, because he looks and acts more like what they want in a president than anyone else - at least when he’s reading a script.

The real conservatives, the pro-lifers, are left to squabble over the scraps. They can’t support a presidential candidate who is antithetical to their most dearly held beliefs, which means they now are faced with a decision that leads down one of two roads - Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul - and neither seems likely to end in success.

You’ve heard me talk about Ron Paul. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - I think he has the most to offer and is the real conservative’s choice. But most pro-life conservatives today seem to be lost in a quasi neocon ideology of what makes a good president. And not surprisingly, that makes Huckabee their number one choice.

John Fund has a piece today on just who Huckabee is. While he’s clearly pro-life, he’s running, in my opinion, a disingenuous message platform on the issue, stating on his issues page, “I support and have always supported passage of a constitutional amendment to protect the right to life. As President, I will fight for passage of this amendment.”

Presidents, as Mr. Huckabee no doubt knows, have no formal role in the process of amending the Constitution. An amendment must first be ratified by both houses of Congress and then by a two-thirds majority of the states. In a country as divided over abortion as ours is, an amendment simply is NOT going to happen through that process.

But lets have a look at how conservative Huckabee is on other issues. We know that he’s supportive of the Iraq war and the vaguely defined “War on Terror” (as opposed to a war on clearly-defined enemies) and has no exit strategy. Fund, a friend of Huckabee, quotes noted conservative Phyllis Schlafly, president of the national Eagle Forum on Huckabee’s record as governor:

“He destroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas, and left the Republican Party a shambles…Yet some of the same evangelicals who sold us on George W. Bush as a ‘compassionate conservative’ are now trying to sell us on Mike Huckabee.”

Fund also cites Betsy Hagan, Arkansas director of the conservative Eagle Forum and, as characterized in the piece, a “key backer” of Huckabee’s early runs for office. Fund says that Hagan was once “his No. 1 fan.” However,

She was bitterly disappointed with his record. “He was pro-life and pro-gun, but otherwise a liberal,” she says. “Just like Bill Clinton he will charm you, but don’t be surprised if he takes a completely different turn in office.”

Fund takes the case further:

Governors who served with him praise Mr. Huckabee for his ability to work with others, but say he was clearly a moderate. “He fought my efforts to reform the National Governors Association and always took fiscal positions to my left,” former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, a supporter of Mitt Romney, told me.

Rick Scarborough, a pastor who heads Vision America, attended seminary with Mr. Huckabee and is a strong backer. But, he acknowledges, “Mike has always sought the validation of elites.” When conservatives took over the Southern Baptist Convention after a bitter fight in the 1980s, Mr. Huckabee sided with the ruling moderates. Paul Pressler, a former Texas judge who led the conservative Southern Baptist revolt, told me, “I know of no conservative he appointed while he headed the Arkansas Baptist Convention.”

Mr. Huckabee’s reluctance to surround himself with conservatives was evident as governor, when he kept many agency heads appointed by Bill Clinton. Zac Wright, a spokesman for incoming Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe, was asked this year why 15 Huckabee agency heads had been retained. Most of them were “Clinton people,” he replied, not “Huckabee people.” Mr. Huckabee told me many of his agency heads had “apolitical” responsibilities…

…During a visit to the Journal last spring, Mr. Huckabee joked that one of his biggest challenges is that “like Bill Clinton I hail from Hope, Arkansas, and not every Republican wants to take a chance like that again.” But it’s Mr. Huckabee who is creating the doubts. “He’s just like Bill Clinton in that he practices management by news cycle,” a former top Huckabee aide told me. “As with Clinton there was no long-term planning, just putting out fires on a daily basis. One thing I’ll guarantee is that won’t lead to competent conservative governance.”

Something that has bothered me about Huckabee since the first time I saw him is that, like Romney, he is too polished. He comes across as exceedingly political, calculated, and on-message. We do media training in my office, and when I saw an interview with Huckabee the other day on one of the major cable networks, I found myself thinking how proud his handlers must be of their work.

But the question remains - is he a conservative? In the classical sense, I think it’s obvious that the answer is no. He’s big-government, pro-war, hugely supportive of Israel, and stumping on a pro-life platform I have no reason to doubt that he believes in but that he simply can’t deliver on. We just apparently don’t know civics well enough as a nation to realize when someone is hiding behind a straw man.

This country is headed toward numerous crises. Our economic situation is in decline, our borders are bleeding and immigration in general is a bigger threat than most realize, our foreign policy is a disaster, our government spending is out of control and liberal secular special interest groups are legal terrorists who take away our freedom of speech and religion. Our government continues to centralize its power, and the dangers of totalitarian control through the voluntary surrender of our freedoms remain real. Moral decay lies at the heart of this all, and our available choices for President reflect this.

We don’t need any more of a conservatism that isn’t. We need a conservatism that is.