Ediblog.com
Selwyn Duke
The Huckabee Hustle
©
2007 Selwyn Duke
When
evangelicals embraced Jimmy Carter during the 1976 presidential campaign, they
didn’t know he would repudiate the Southern Baptist Convention a generation
later. Today the very same
constituency has glommed onto Mike Huckabee, and I can’t help but lament how
history truly does repeat itself.
One
can see why the man I dubbed “Huck the Huckster” would appeal to
evangelicals. He’s a pro-life
Southern Baptist minister with charm, wit and a good-ol’-boy, yuck-it-up
style. Yet this resplendent exterior
only serves to obscure the stain of liberal sin.
Huck
would be a disaster – a disaster – on immigration.
In fact, in 2006 he compared those who would crack down on illegals to
antebellum slave masters, saying,
One
of the great challenges facing us is that we do not commit the same mistakes
with our growing Hispanic population that we did with African Americans 150
years ago and beyond. We're still paying the price for the pathetic manner in
which this country handled that.
Outrageously,
it seems Huck can’t distinguish between denying citizens the protection of the
law and requiring non-citizens to follow it.
According
to Roy Beck, president of the immigration reform group NumbersUSA, this isn’t
out of character for Huck. Says
Beck,
“He
was an absolute disaster on immigration as governor.
Every time there was any enforcement in his state, he took the side of
the illegal aliens.”
This
was evident when Huck condemned Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on
chicken plants in Arkansas. But his
stance was no surprise. The chicken
industry’s powerful lobby was said to be a supporter of Huck’s, and he and
Tyson Foods Chairman John Tyson partnered
in pandering when speaking to the League of United Latin American
Citizens (LULAC), a group sympathetic to illegal immigration.
While advocating what seemed to be an “open-door policy,” Huck
espoused the Golden Rule, saying,
“Do
unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
My
response? Huck, if I were in another
country illegally, I would fully expect its citizens to demand I go home.
But
I wouldn’t prevail on Huck. This
is the man who said that Arkansas needed to cherish diversity in culture and
language. He’s the man who
opposed a ban on providing state services to illegals and supported in-state
college tuition rates for them He’s
the man who criticized an Arkansas measure to require proof of citizenship to
vote. Like President Bush,
he’s a man who would compassionately conserve us into Mexico North.
But,
much like Hillary and the flip-flop over drivers’ licenses for illegals, Huck
sees the writing on the wall and now preaches holier doctrine.
He has promised to complete a border fence and just released a plan
mandating that illegals must return to their native lands to be considered for
citizenship (this, too, is a form of amnesty, but Huck’s version of
accountability). Yet, in this
interview, he is clearly tepid about even the latter and seems to mock the idea
of a border wall. What did he stress
instead?
A
path to citizenship.
But
that is the Church of Huck: Our Lady of Political Expediency.
He is more old-time politics than old-time religion.
Selwyn Duke is a freelance writer out or Larchmont, NY. He has written for various publications including: IntellectualConservative.com, AmericanThinker.com and is a regular columnist for RenewAmerica.us.