FreedomTalks

Paleoconservative blog-superstar Daniel Larison takes issue with Dick Armey’s column on Huckabee, arguing first against Armey’s claim that Huckabee is seeking to split the GOP coalition in order to win the nomination.  This doesn’t seem to me to be a particularly odd claim, and Huckabee’s rhetoric has essentially admitted it. He’s railed against the Club for Growth, talked up his Main Street/Wall Street dichotomy, and has campaign manager Ed Rollins going around feeding reporters string about the demise of the Reagan coalition.  He’s been openly pushing religious conservatives to view business-minded economic conservatives as antagonists.

Oddly, Larison cites Huckabee’s FairTax plan as a reason that “Wall Street” conservatives, which he suggests would benefit from the FairTax at the expense of small business, as a reason that economic conservatives should find something to like in Huckabee.  This is a rather curious assumption, one that simply assumes that the interests of economic conservatives are 100% in sync with the short-term interests of big businesses. That’s simply not the case.  (If it were, we’d be lining up to support all sorts of goofy legislation – cap and trade, universal health insurance, and the rest of the Tim Carney playbook — simply because some major business interests are behind them.)

Additionally, economic conservatives of a broadly libertarian stripe, and with any sort of economics background, are against the FairTax because it reduces transparency, it’s based on faulty economic assumptions, it’s unfair and regressive, and it’s blatantly unworkable.  (True econ geeks will get a kick out of Bruce Bartlett’s lengthy, wonky evisceration of the plan [PDF].)Who it benefits hardly matters if it’s a loopy, impossible, irresponsible idea.

Larison also seems to think that coalition politics just isn’t a viable option for the GOP: 

The makeup of the GOP has changed over just the past ten years, as many noted last year with the release of the latest Fabrizio polling.  Trying to organise an electoral strategy that rallies a coalition that no longer exists would seem misguided and a classic example of fighting the political equivalent of the last war. 

He’s right that the Reagan coalition isn’t exactly seeing its finest hour — President Bush hasn’t always been great for the coalition’s success, and none of the current crop of candidates looks poised to smooth over tensions or ease frustrations within the party. And it’s true that the concerns of GOP voters have shifted to some extent. 

But that’s no reason to ignore the fact that there is a natural, obvious, and potentially productive alignment between the interests of religious conservatives and economic conservatives.  Both groups stand to win by working together; even if the coalition has become less sturdy, it makes sense to try to keep it strong — even to rebuild parts of it as necessary — as the agendas of both groups are best served by the coalition. 

Huckabee, on the other hand, clearly has it in mind to try to turn that coalition against itself. How else could you possibly interpret his rhetoric? And it is that internal friction, not any sense of unity or togetherness, which he hopes will propel him to the nomination. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 11:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.