Huckabee’s ethics problemsre-emergeas an issue.

We remain surprised that the U.S.-Turkey relationship is thought to be so fragile that this non-binding resolution or other verbal acknowledgements appear to pose a problem. ~Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian

Oskanian went on:

“Armenia has been careful not to voice an opinion on the resolution. We have maintained that this is a matter between those in the U.S. Congress and their constituents [bold mine-DL],” he said.

“But when Turkey and its lobbyists dragged us in, implying that such a resolution would hurt some non-existent bilateral process between Armenia and Turkey, then we spoke up.”

“We’ve held out our hand for more than a decade. Turkey has kept the door shut tightly. Worse, Turkey has become more radical and extreme in its denialist policies.”

This is a helpful corrective to the story being told by some opponents of the resolution that its passage will “set back” efforts at Armenian-Turkish reconciliation.  Ankara isn’t engaged in reconciliation efforts.  For there to be a “setback” there would actually have to be a process that is being set back.

Here it is again.  There is the idea circulating out there, it seems mainly among neoconservatives and interventionists, that Huckabee’s foreign policy is simply unacceptable.  Krauthammer:

Yes, I know. I’ve left out Huckabee, whom some of my colleagues are aggressively trying to promote to the first tier. I refuse to go along. Huckabee is funny, well-spoken and gave a preacher’s stemwinder that wowed the religious right gathering in Washington last Saturday. But whatever foreign policy he has is naive and unconvincing. In wartime, that is a disqualification for commander in chief.

Now that you’ve stopped laughing after seeing Krauthammer describe someone else‘s foreign policy as naive, I’ll continue.  He thinks Huckabee would be a good Interior Secretary.  That’s the harshest backhanded compliment I’ve seen in a while.  This is frankly bizarre.  Does Krauthammer mean to say that Mitt “It’s About Shia and Sunni” Romney is a more serious candidate than Huckabee on foreign policy?  I’d be glad to throw the lot of them out, but this rejection of Huckabee seems very odd.

Opposition is cropping up more and more now that he has become a semi-serious contender (who also still has next to no money).  John Fund at The Wall Street Journaldoesn’t like his claim to be a conservative (no surprise there).

Come to think of it, Huckabee occupies some of the same foreign policy space that Candidate Bush did in 2000 in that he is a “compassionate” conservative governor with no real foreign policy experience.  Where Bush tried to play the role of a Republican realist during the campaign, Huckabee has simply adapted to the more belligerent and interventionist ideas prevalent in the party today.  Just as McCain was The Weekly Standard‘s candidate of choice in 2000, the leading candidates, all of whom are being advised by neoconservatives or interventionists, have been deemed acceptable on foreign policy.  It is that the “inexperienced” governor who seems to have at least a few foreign policy ideas that aren’t terrible, unlike his top-tier competition.  Of course, he still has many ideas that are terrible, but this is why I find it hard to understand why he is being shunned by the people who specialise in terrible foreign policy ideas.

U.S. right-wingers like to use Sarkozy as a rhetorical bludgeon, showing that Europe is moving toward the U.S. rather than vice versa. I wonder if this will cause any of their little pea brains to short-circuit. ~Dave Roberts

Via Yglesias

This comes in response to news not only that Nicolas Sarkozy supports introducing a carbon tax, but also proposes putting levies on non-Kyoto-ratifying countries’ imports.  Not very Bush-like or “pro-American,” is it? 

But the Sarkophiles don’t care that much about his views on industrial and environmental policy.  They will overlook this the same way they have overlooked every daffy Tony Blair domestic policy for a decade.  Yes, some have enthused over Sarkozy’s supposed interest in deregulation, but the thing that Sarkophiles really like about him is that he strikes a pro-American pose and drives French leftists up the wall.  In this way, the admiration for Sarkozy is like the conservative admiration showered on Giuliani.  Sure, it makes no sense, but that’s how it works. 

Since he has started taking a hard line with Iran, they are positively swooning, and this is the key to understanding all present-day talk of “pro-American” and “anti-American” sentiment in Europe.  According to this view, the people who wanted to keep us out of Iraq were hostile to us, and those who cheered us on and offered to help were our friends.  Looking back on it, it sounds like a sick joke.  Five years later, given all that has happened in Iraq, you’d think this kind of thinking wouldn’t exist anymore, but it is thriving.  The difference is that the interventionists dub those who support a strike on Iran as our friends, while vilifying those governments and countries that tell us that this is a crazy idea.

Score one for the genocide deniers.  I agree with this:

Advocates of the bill predicted that Congress would eventually regret backing off in the face of a threatened backlash from an ally. “This sets a terrible example,” Mr. Hamparian said.

Not that it really matters, but I did happen to see that the ever-shifting subtitle of Liberal Fascism is now markedly less idiotic than it used to be.  Now it is Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.  And, yes, it does still have the same ridiculous cover.

Ross wrote:

Whereas Obama and to a lesser extent Edwards both have a higher ceiling, but also a much lower floor, since neither has been through the fire already the way Hillary has (indeed, Obama has never run against significant GOP opposition of any kind), and either one could flame out disastrously in the heat of a general-election campaign.

Perhaps I am missing something, but it isn’t clear to me why Obama has a higher ceiling of support than Clinton.  Lower floor, sure, but why higher ceiling?  The enthusiasm he generates is mostly limited to journalists and progressive and independent twenty and thirtysomething professionals.  That is, people who write things like this.  Obama must appear as a god for people who feel “overwhelmed” by the plethora of do-gooding crusades that confront them, because he promises to take them all on at the same time.  That’s a sure sign that he would probably be a terrible President in the strange events that he won the nomination and general election.  

Amusingly, he has assumed the role of a tribune for these people, when his avowed style of governance would be a kind of High Broderism on steroids–the very thing many of the young progressives who adore him claim to loathe.  His promise of “change” and unconventional thinking is shrouded in mists of warmed-over cliches about unity, bipartisanship and pragmatic “problem-solving.”  He is just radical enough to frighten away a large majority of voters, and just boring enough to inspire too few to take a chance. 

His campaign style thus far actually makes tapioca pudding seem zesty and exciting by comparison.  His “attack” rhetoric takes a page from Rumpole of the Bailey, in that he is intimidated by She Who Must Not Be Named.  If he is so readily outmatched by a fairly passive Clinton campaign (and he clearly is), how on earth would he compete with a GOP machine designed to drive up its opponent’s negatives?  By talking about hope?

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) is considering endorsing Rudy Giuliani for the GOP presidential nomination and will meet with him Thursday in Washington to hear his views on abortion. ~The Hill

Via Noam Scheiber

Now I was pretty sure that Brownback wasn’t going to endorse Huckabee, and his loathing for Romney has been obvious for a long time, but I confess that this option hadn’t crossed my mind.  That was because, despite all my criticism, I still retained some shred of respect for Sam Brownback.  I assumed that the protection of human life was, as he has so often claimed it to be, one of those non-negotiable principles that animated and guided Brownback’s entire view of the world.  His conclusions and policy recommendations might drive me up the wall in many cases, but I still assumed that there were some deals he would not be willing to strike.  This meeting has some remarkable symbolism to it: one of the leading pro-life politicians in the party will seek an audience with Giuliani.  That helps make this outcome, which ought to be inconceivable, much more plausible. 

Update:  Brownback has been taken in by Giuliani, but perhaps not enough to win an endorsement:

Sam Brownback said he was reassured about the abortion position of Rudy Giuliani after meeting with the pro-abortion rights former mayor for over an hour this afternoon. But the Kansas Senator, who last Friday abandoned his White House bid, said he was not yet ready to offer his endorsement.

Standing just outside his Senate office suite next to Giuliani, Brownback, an ardent abortion opponent, said twice that he was “much more comfortable” with his former rival’s stance on what he called the issue “of life.”

Even Brownback expressing his increased “comfort” with Giuliani makes it that much easier for social conseratives to buy into the “we must stay united to defeat the she-demon” rhetoric that is daily coming from the various leading presidential campaigns.  It’s much easier for these voters to sell out in the name of unity if one of their leading figures gives them a pretext for believing that they aren’t really selling out their principles.

Sullivan points out that the Atheist Alliance International has chosen a symbol for atheists:

Atheists Who Are, Unfortunately, On Earth

Atheists In Space!