The New, Scary Mike Huckabee

I miss the old Mike Huckabee. No, not the circa-1998 porker who could have given John Madden a run for his money in a turducken eating contest; I mean the Mike Huckabee of 2007—the charming, warm-hearted country preacher who, it seemed, genuinely wanted to give a good account of his religion and his political ideology.

This was the Huckabee who, rather than simply catering to anti-abortion conservatives with fiery rhetoric, challenged those who call themselves pro-life to think about the implications of that label.

“I believe that life begins at conception,” he told Time in March ’07, “but I don’t believe it ends at birth. I believe we have a responsibility to feed the hungry, to provide a good education, a safe neighborhood, health care…That's why I talk so much about the need for music and art programs in our schools. I know some conservatives think it's foolish, but I just believe it's necessary to build whole, creative individuals.”

This Huckabee was intent on replacing the judgmental, condemnatory, and reflexively anti-government model of Christian conservatism pioneered by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson with one that recognized the responsibility of government to provide earthly help to all of God’s children.

“I’m a grace Christian, not a law Christian,” he said in that same Time story.

This Mike Huckabee didn’t apologize for raising gas taxes to pay for badly needed infrastructure repairs in Arkansas, refused to support President Bush’s ’07 veto of the expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and took exception to the right’s push to strip government benefits from the families of illegal immigrants.

“[Y]ou don’t punish a child for the crimes a parent commits,” he declared. “And that’s my position.”

The appeal of that Mike Huckabee was accentuated by his opposition on the ’08 G.O.P. campaign trail. Maybe you didn’t agree with Huckabee on everything—he ran, don’t forget, as the anti-evolution candidate—but by all measures he seemed like a sincere man, more than could reasonably be said for the shifty, spineless Mitt Romney. And he seemed like a nice guy, too!

That was then.  Since last November’s election, a new Huckabee has emerged—one primarily interested in catering to the fears and biases of the G.O.P.’s right-wing base, no matter how calculating, or disingenuous, or just plain mean this makes him seem.

Take his latest venture into the headlines, courtesy of his inflammatory—and baldly dishonest—assertion that, under the health care reform program championed by Barack Obama, a dying Ted Kennedy would have been denied care and told to “take a pain pill and ride it home.”

That came a few weeks after his used his Fox News show to help foment the right’s Town Hall rage with a hysterical, fact-free monologue that savaged Obama’s nonexistent effort to create a Canadian-style, single-payer health care system in the U.S.

Before that, Huckabee—the same guy who used to defend his Arkansas tax hikes for all of the good work and job creation they helped achieve—blasted Obama’s economic stimulus package as, of all things, “anti-religious.”

Oh, and then there was the trip to Israel, where—on foreign soil—he did his best to feed the Obama-is-anti-Israel madness, attacking the American president for “telling Jewish people in Israel where they should and should not live.” (Presumably, Huckabee was talking about Jewish people in the Palestinian territories, and not Israel proper.)

And these are just his greatest hits. It’s clear what’s going on here: Huckabee has learned his lessons from his ’08 campaign and, in the run-up to the inevitable 2012 follow-up bid, has morphed into Romney.

Just like the former Massachusetts governor skipped the hard work and simply embraced every position and talking point that polled well with conservatives last year, Huckabee is now only interested in giving his target audience what they want.

And right now, likely ’12 Republican primary voters want mindless anti-Obama vitriol, and lots of it. All that ’07 talk from Huckabee about good education, safe neighborhoods, and health care? Forget it.

This was probably inevitable. After all, the Huckabee of ’07 was an unknown and ill-defined figure, new to the national stage. His preacher-man status gave him credibility with much of the party’s base, but his warm, folksy persona is what really sold him. But when he became a serious threat to win the nomination, the Club for Growth crowd had a field day with his economic populism.

He’s not going to let that happen again—especially now that he faces a new threat on the right, from Sarah Palin, who will not be saddled with the burden of Romney’s Mormonism in ’12. Huckabee has a decent shot at being the next G.O.P. presidential nominee, and he’s modified his behavior accordingly.

It’s too bad. For three decades, Christian conservatism in America was defined by the ugly divisiveness of Falwell, Robertson and their ilk. Huckabee’s ’08 campaign did much to alter this image, prompting some non-fundamentalists to think that, yeah, maybe we can find some common ground with these folks.

This was no small achievement—one that Huckabee is now merrily flushing down the toilet.