Prince Of Darkness Ambushes The Angelic Arkansan genre: Polispeak & Six Degrees of Speculation

Elections have a way of bringing out the beast in Bob Novak...and his latest skewering of Mike Huckabee, "The Angelic Arkansan", is a classic example of his efforts to annihilate the man he views as a threat to his current iteration of "real conservatism".

They don't call Bob Novak "The Prince of Darkness" because he's mister sunshine and rainbows. In fact, "Novakula" is often the bearer of bitter bits of bloviating aimed at anyone and anything he deems to be detrimental to his "demonic" vision of democracy.

Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative, but serious Republicans know that he is a high-tax, protectionist advocate of big government and a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans. Until now, they did not bother to expose the former governor of Arkansas as a false conservative because he seemed an underfunded, unknown nuisance candidate.

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? That has happened with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Huh? Has Bob been banished to his den of darkness for the last seven years such that he failed to witness the very same thing under the Bush presidency? While George W may lack Huckabee's holy credentials; it hasn't prevented him from administering his own version of virtuous values. In fact, our sitting president (the one who imagines himself seated next to the almighty) has a penchant for political pontificating that clearly crosses the line of live and let live conservatism and likely set the bar for those who now embrace the likes of Governor Huckabee.

If George Bush's promises to act as a uniter and not a divider are the template for compassionate conservatism, then Mike Huckabee is simply taking the next step to insure the inevitable biblical bliss that comes with lockstep legislation, a cash cow for faith based initiatives, loving the sinner by acting to outlaw the lifestyle, the imperial imposition of a Christian capitalist ideology coined as the exportation of freedom and democracy, and the busting of the bank in order to buttress one's beliefs.

Who would respond to criticism from the Club for Growth by calling the conservative, free-market campaign organization the "Club for Greed"? That sounds like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards, all Democrats preaching the class struggle. In fact, the rejoinder comes from Mike Huckabee, who has broken out of the pack of second-tier Republican presidential candidates to become a serious contender -- definitely in Iowa and perhaps nationally.

Huckabee clearly departs from the mainstream of the conservative movement in his confusion of "growth" with "greed." Such ad hominem attacks are part of his intuitive response to criticism from the Club for Growth and the libertarian Cato Institute about his record as governor.

Quin Hillyer, a former Arkansas journalist writing in the conservative American Spectator, called Huckabee "a guy with a thin skin, a nasty vindictive streak." Huckabee's retort was to attack Hillyer's journalistic procedures, fitting a mean-spirited image when he responds to conservative criticism.

OK, I'll admit that I love it when the leaders of the once seemingly invincible klatch of conservatives and christians resort to mudslinging in order for both groups to preserve their perceived political power...and the cash they both know it can generate. Poor Bob must be beside himself now that the evangelical segment of the GOP coalition is finally clamoring for the results they've been bamboozled into believing would be delivered by their divinely driven demagogues.

Truth be told, Novak and the many other Republican revisionists who have run roughshod over these religious rabble-rousers for years are simply confounded by the fact that the chickens may have finally come home to roost. It's no surprise that the purveyors of these ideologically intransigent identities have finally reached what may be an insurmountable impasse.

Nothing shines a brighter light on hypocrisy that those moments when the compassionate christians set out to crucify their conservative conspirators...as well as when the libertarian vitriol of the consummate conservative finally calls for the cutting of the cord that has linked their aspirations for power to the politics of inviolable virtue.

Looks like a garden variety divorce to me...although I'd bet the farm that one side will scurry to slap together a new "relationship" (hint: time to invoke the evils of "icky" immigrants) and the other side will ask the almighty for an annulment in order to preserve its "papered" piety.

The following graphic summarizes the duality which is all too often inherent in these oh so dubious "deals with the devil".

The Prince Of Darkness Speaks

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