Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, suddenly rising in the polls as a Republican presidential candidate, is too weak on tyranny and terrorism, Paul Mirengoff of the Power-Line blog says.
Why? For one thing, Mirengoff says, when asked why the United States needs to be in Iraq right now, Huckabee answered it’s because “we broke it.” That kind of Colin Powell misjudgment is not appealing to Mirengoff (and not to me, either). We didn’t break Iraq any more than we broke west Germany in World War II.
We ended the totalitarian nightmare in both countries. As we did in west Germany, today we are replacing Iraq’s dictatorship with democracy, because democracy is a human right and it is the best bet for a lasting peace.
Mirengoff also doesn’t like the Huckabee “moralism” that too easily bends with the last people he’s talked with.
The matter of freedom. I confess I haven’t watched the presidential candidates closely enough to sense where each stands on freedom and democracy. Maybe Huckabee is doing the political dance that all candidates do, trying to sound acceptable to all. That doesn’t make it honest or inspiring, just understandable.
I’ll start paying better attention to these presidential wannabes. We all must. There’s an election in 11 months.
Frank Warner
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