They <3 Huckabee!
Seriously, even if you're not voting for the guy, you have to admit that Star Parker and Jim Geraghty are making some pretty darn solid points this morning.
Parker poses:
My own work over the years trying to get the conservative message into the black community has been made infinitely more difficult as a result of the multiple millions that America's corporations have poured into left-wing black organizations like the NAACP.
Ironically, Huckabee is the only Republican candidate to propose fundamental reform of our tax system. Credible economists, including one Nobel Prize winner, support the Fair Tax idea that Huckabee has put forth. Critics charging that the Fair Tax is politically impossible to enact also speak to the unfortunate state of mind of many Republicans today who can no longer conceive of major and sweeping change as achievable.
Inside-the-beltway Republicans have also lost touch with the increasing seriousness with which grass roots conservatives relate to the traditional values agenda. More and more folks are feeling personally assaulted by the meaninglessness that is gripping our culture and do not see our moral health as separate and apart from our economic health.
Rather than attacking Huckabee, folks would be better served to take a more careful and less dismissive look at why he's garnering such broad support.
And Geraghty the indispensable adds:
The various causes of social conservatism - the promotion of a culture of life; the desire for entertainment options that won't teach your kids the exact wrong lesson; the commodification and commercialization of childhood; a healthy caution of strip-mining human embryos for the miracle cure du jour that scientists promise to deliver; the desire for a community where the values of the family are reinforced when the kids walk out the front door - they could use a gifted advocate. Too often the most high-profile advocates of these causes hand their enemies plenty of ammunition - must I name names?
I have my gripes with Huckabee, but when this show is over, I don't want him to wrap up his tent and go home. The man's a fighter, a communicator, and a silver-tongued persuader - skills the Republican Party doesn't exactly have a surplus of these days.
That is what you refer to as a one, two punch...