Larry Beinhart's Body Politics

The Evolution of Mike Huckabee

by Larry Beinhart, February 25, 2008

Mike Huckabee is my candidate for entertainer of the year.

Folksy, fresh, and funny. It’s like Andy Griffith has come to life. Now that the field is down to him, Ron Paul, and John McCain it means that fully one third of the Republican candidates for president officially don’t believe in evolution.

“Huck” is the favorite of “values” voters. Values is a contraction of “traditional moral values and beliefs” in the way that “ain’t” is a contraction of “are not.”

He’s pro-war and anti-abortion. (Kill the foreigners, save the fetuses.) He’s for a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman, building the Great Wall of America along the Mexican border, rounding up illegal aliens, and shipping them out.

Someone who is not a “values voter” may wonder how these are “moral” positions. In order to answer that, we have to figure out what morality is.