Huckabee’s Weak Mind by Kevin

I wanted to approve of Mike Huckabee’s prominence in the GOP, I really did. I would never vote for the man, mind you. Abortion is not murder and it is not the place of the state to force one set of religious beliefs upon its citizens and it is not right to discriminate against homosexuals. Those are both statements that Huckabee would disagree with to a significant degree and those are very important, even deal breaking, issues to me. So I would not vote for him, but I was truly hoping he would become something of a presence in the GOP. He doesn’t believe in torture. He isn’t reflexively anti-tax. He realizes that the government should work for the benefit of all its people, not just the campaign donors. Those are all very good things, and the GOP would benefit from a strong dose of those ideas, and thus the country would benefit.

But then came the Wayne Dumond fiasco. Worse, it appears that the Dumond mess is part of a pattern of what can only be called weak-mindedness. The case for Dumond was created out of whole cloth by some in the right wing media essentially becasue they hated Clinton more than they loved the truth. Publius has some of the more outrageous quotes here, but the point is that Huckabee listend to the lunacy on the right wing and bought it hook, line and sinker:

In an effort to stem the political fallout, Huckabee and his staff agreed to meet for the first time with Dumond’s victim, Ashley Stevens, her family, and Fletcher Long, the prosecuting attorney who sent Dumond to prison. In interviews, both Walter “Stevie” Stevens, Ashley’s father, and Long both said they came away frustrated that Huckabee knew so few specifics about the case.

“He [Huckabee] kept insisting that there was DNA evidence that has since exonerated Dumond, when that very much wasn’t the case,” recalled Long. “No matter that that wasn’t true … we couldn’t seem to say or do anything to disabuse him of that notion.”

In fact, there had never been any DNA testing in the Ashley Stevens case.

Johnathon Chait has an interesting look at where Huckabee’s fondness for the “fair tax” (actually a national sales tax) came from, and it follows the same basic pattern as the Dumond case:

So how did Huckabee come to support the fair tax? He was asked about the idea by fair-tax supporters on the campaign trail, bought the book touting it, and was persuaded. Lord help us if he gets his hands on a copy of Das Kapital.

Twice may be coincidence, but considering the consequences of the Dumond matter you would have hoped that Huckabee would have learned to be a little less trusting of his right wing compatriots. The fair tax idea is lunacy. It is literally the creation of the Church of Scientology and it is designed as nothing more than a tool to get back at the IRS. No serious economist on the left or the right thinks it is anything other than a sick joke at best. And yet Huckabee, much like the Dumond case, was persuaded by people he thought of as fellow travelers and has refused to budge from his position no matter what the facts.

Huckabee is simply not intellectually storng enough to be President. He appears to be easily persuadable by people he trusts, whihc is bad enough. Worse, though, once he has decided what is “true”, it appears that no amount of argument or evidence can push him off that position. That is a terrible trait in any leader and can be disastrous in a President.

I wanted to approve of Mike Huckabee’s prominence in the GOP, I really did. I wanted him to inject some basic humanity back into the policy of the GOP. But it increasingly appears that Huckabee simply does not have the strength of intellect necessary to be a serious leader. We’ve already had one president disdainful of expertise and reality. We don’t need another, and we don’t need the GOP lead even farther down the anti-intellectualism path it has already tread.