Back to “true vs phony conservatives”. The WSJ boys are NOT conservatives! The Minutemen and other anti-Invasion activists who are trying to keep our country from further invasion ARE conservatives! The Bill Kristols and Mike Huckabees are not. There ARE no conservatives in the Bush Inner Circle, or even in his Outer Circle!

Larison IS right about one thing, however. Mike Huckabee is finished in national politics. Conservatives like me who backed Thompson and Romney will remember how Huckabee teamed up with McCain in FL and S.C. which cost Romney the nomination. When anti-conservatives Ed Rollins (who was part of the Perot org and other losing candidates) and Chuck Norris joined Huckabee, I knew the guy was a two-bit phony. He belongs on the pulpit down in Arkansas, not in The White House.

There is a strong and growing movement to conservative third parties this year, particularly to The CP and Rev. Chuck Baldwin. Huckabee and every other GOP candidate is “passe” to me. He’s a favorite of the MNM because he’s NOT a conservative. The only real conservative in this race is Chuck Baldwin.

Rockefeller Republicans have nothing to do with any of this, and we don’t complain about such people because, on the whole, they don’t exist. I have sometimes used the label to abuse some of the big-government conservatives, but it isn’t really the right label for them. If there are people anything like the Rockefeller Republicans today, they are closer to Huckabee in their views about expanding the welfare state. But the confusion Huckabee’s terminology creates is part of the problem–anything that can confuse moderate Republicans with libertarians is obviously deeply flawed as analysis. Rockefeller Republicans were not necessarily fiscally conservative at all. Today’s Republican moderates are well to the “right” of Rockefeller et al. on taxes and spending.

And yet you say libertarianism – or fiscal conservatism, or neoliberalism, or what have you – has little influence on American politics! Aren’t these people the very Rockefeller Republicans we see paleos complain about so often? Have we forgotten Russell Kirk’s warning against “chirping sectaries”?

Ask any self-described political “moderate” what their positions are on various issues, and invariably you will find that they reject socially conservative positions on abortion, gay rights, etc – yet they are vehemently opposed to government waste, higher taxes, etc. Keep in mind, these “independents” or “moderates” are supposedly the voters Republicans need to appeal to in order to win elections, although I think an actual assessment would find that appealing to blue collar Democrats – by running on a platform similar to Huckabees – is easier and will yield better results.

I honestly don’t see why anyone here is upset about this; it seems perfectly sensible. Has anyone who has run on a platform of lower taxes and smaller government kept their promises? Is it even possible to reduce the size of government in this day and age? Should reducing the size of government take precedence over social issues such as abortion and gay marriage (which was legalized in California very recently, as you are well aware)?

You mean like GOP nomineee John McCain, who was broke and declared dead last summer — versus, say, Ron Paul, who raised $35 million, or Mitt Romney and his bottomless bank account?

A year ago, I would have agreed, but if there’s one takeaway from this cycle, it’s that money ain’t everything.

The question I would pose is: What electorally significant constituency opposed new entitlement spending and soured on the GOP as a result?

What’s your basis for arguing that the Bush Administration’s loss of electoral support arises in large part to its entitlement spending? Its my understanding that new entitlement spending is extremely popular among the electorate, Republican and Democrat alike. Rightly or wrongly, people like Social Security, they like Medicare and they do NOT like people threatening those programs. A fact that Newt Gingrich learned the hard way.

It’s certainly true that libertarians and small government conservatives were repelled by the Bush administration’s entitlement spending. However, that group of people has never struck me as electorally significant–probably because there are so few of them.

As his own candidacy demonstrated, social conservatism and something less than strict economic conservatism pack a lot more punch electorally, and meaningful Hayekian libertarianism in the GOP is generally so scarce and strongly opposed that Huckabee warning against it is a bit like warning about a Zoroastrian takeover of Iran. He is not alone in this, since some people at Cato have made a cottage industry out of inflating the political strength of libertarians by conflating libertarianism with “social liberalism and economic conservatism,” but this is wrong.

What Huckabee is saying is not so much that there isn’t a constituency for what he calls “libertarianism” as it is that he’s saying that it’s un-American and a threat to the GOP. He implies that there isn’t a constituency for it, but if there were absolutely no consituency for it it would hardly be in the position he says it is in. Indeed, I agree that the constituency for small government conservatism is small and not very influential, which is why Huckabee’s analysis is quite wrong, at least so far as the “threat” goes.

Larison read this and was all like Boo! Hiss! You just blew the whole thing, Huck!

I read it and was all like Wow! That cat’s gonna be tough to beat. Dumb he ain’t and he really has an ear for what the average American wants to hear.

One can always hope, but I doubt it. Sadly, Huck is right about one thing: there’s virtually no constituency for small government anymore. Spend, spend, spend is the motto of both the Dems and GOP. The sound I hear is the continued GOP excommunication of Ron Paul and his supporters.