Morning reads

I'm going to put these up for our readers, and you all can enjoy them. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Huckster is reeling. While the polls are showing him closing in on Mitt (BTW, Mitt had a nice little bump from his speech, just as we expected he would), conservatives -- REAL conservatives -- aren't standing by while the Huckster spins.

At NRO, two important pieces were posted yesterday that deserve a good read. The Editors take a serious swing at him over his foreign policy ideas. From their piece:

But Huckabee is off the mark in accusing the administration of having a “bunker mentality.” We have maintained good relations — in a difficult balancing act — with both India and Pakistan, and with both China and Japan. Relations have warmed with “Old Europe” following the election of leaders in France and Germany who are less vested in anti-Americanism. For better or worse, we have cut a nuclear deal with North Korea, and have had an offer on the table with Iran to break with 30 years of U.S. policy and directly negotiate with them if they fulfill their international obligation and quit enriching uranium. This isn’t the stuff of a “bunker mentality.”

On Iran, Huckabee is at his most troubling. He accuses the administration of “proceeding down only one track with Iran: armed confrontation.” This is false, and the kind of rhetoric you’d expect from DailyKos bloggers, not a Republican presidential candidate. Huckabee thinks it has been a lack of diplomatic engagement that has soured our relations with Iran: “We haven’t had diplomatic relations with Iran in almost 30 years, my whole adult life and a lot of good it’s done. Putting this in human terms, all of us know that when we stop talking to a parent or a sibling or a friend, it’s impossible to accomplish anything, impossible to resolve differences and move the relationship forward. The same is true for countries.”

This is the kernel of Huckabee’s foreign policy. He wants to anthropomorphize international relations and bring a Christian commitment to the Golden Rule to our affairs with other nations. As he told the Des Moines Register the other day, “You treat others the way you’d like to be treated. That’s to me the fundamental issue that has to be re-established in our dealings with other countries.”

This is deeply naïve. Countries aren’t people, and the world is more dangerous than a Sunday church social. Threats, deception, and — as a last resort — violence must play a role in international relations. Differences cannot always be worked out through sweet persuasion. A U.S. president who doesn’t realize this will repeat the experience of President Jimmy Carter at his most ineffectual.

Then David Sanders opens up with both barrels on the Huckster's tax-and-spend ways. While the previous column on his foreign policy ideas was definitely an "ouch" moment for him, the one by Mr. Sanders is simply brutal. It shows him acting rather vindictively, a lot like Nixon in our opinion, when he was criticized by economists.

Both of these pieces serve as the next phase in the perpetual, and well-deserved, beating that the Huckster's enduring right now. Last week wasn't all that great of a week for him, and by the look of things, this week doesn't look like it's going to get much better. Welcome to the big leagues, Mike.

Publius II