The longtime Southern Baptist preacher [Huckabee] sounds the usual conservative themes on abortion and marriage, but like a growing number of high-profile evangelicals, Huckabee tries to tie his socially conservative values to a broader agenda. "I earn the right to push for a strong pro-life agenda only by making sure I'm concerned about poverty, hunger and homelessness," he told a columnist for the Des Moines Register. "If I don't care about those issues, then my faith is incomplete."While I agree that "my faith" (as applied to gov't policy) is broader than opposing abortion or homosexual "marriage," I hesitate to agree that it is little more than increased spending on existing, fundamentally flawed gov't programs. I personally believe that gov't intervention (you might want to take a seat, Liberal readers) often exacerbates problems or certainly masks the real problem and ultimately ends up costing more (or causing more/greater problems) in the long run than the original problem did.
So while Huckabee favors President Bush's capital gains tax cuts, he also wonders if his faith "confuses Republicans who are only concerned about how we preserve wealth." He is for a flat tax while also advocating increased funding for arts education, No Child Left Behind, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, and an enlarged government role in preventive health care.
So, yes, I'm very concerned about children and education and the environment; I'm just less convinced than Statists that a new agency or more gov't spending is the way to accomplish good for said subjects. In sum, I hardly share Statists' faith in government.
As was not done (or not the case) with "Compassionate Conservatism," Huckabee and Brownback must tread lightly to establish that such rhetoric is actually just a different way of presenting the Religious Conservative agenda, as opposed to a "broader" agenda.
