The Problem With Pastor Mike

In this article Peter Wehner, of National Review, goes after Mike Huckabee. It is fair to say that this magazine has endorsed Mitt Romney. The article is still illuminating. This writer starts with this quote from Huckabee which I mostly agree with:

American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. My administration will recognize that the United States' main fight today does not pit us against the world but pits the world against the terrorists.

Wehner takes issue and then cites the war of conquest in Iraq as an example to the contrary:

Perhaps the place to begin is with his contention that America is ungenerous, which (according to Huckabee) explains the animus now directed at the United States. The fact is that the United States has sacrificed an enormous amount of blood and treasure to help other nations. Any suggestion otherwise is wrong and even offensive.

We have, for starters, liberated more than 50 million people from two of the most repressive regimes in modern history (the Taliban and the Baathist police state in Iraq).

[...]Beyond that, the belief that if we are modest and generous we will be “loved” by other nations, and that anger at America is based on our attempts to “dominate,” is both naive and foolish. Some nations (like Cuba, Syria, Iran, North Korea, and others) will oppose us because they are totalitarian states that hate our efforts to curb their ambitions and advance freedom and self-determination.

Not persuasive enough:

As for his claim that the Bush administration’s “arrogant bunker mentality” has been counterproductive at home and abroad, the same point applies. Many Middle East dictatorships recoiled at the president’s decision in 2002 to sideline Yasser Arafat (who in many ways is the father of modern terrorism), and his insistence that Palestinian authorities renounce terrorism as an instrument of state policy if they ever hope to have a homeland. Was it “arrogant” to do so? Does Huckabee wish the president had done more to stand with dictators in the Middle East? Does he wish the president still abided by the ABM Treaty with Russia?

Governor Huckabee also seems ignorant about the extent of cooperation that, on a daily basis, is garnered for the war against militant Islam. Contrary to the portrait he paints, we are seeing unprecedented cooperation in tracking, arresting, and blocking funding for terrorist organizations. Is Governor Huckabee familiar with the Proliferation Security Initiative, which more than 70 nations have joined in an effort to deny terrorists, rogue states, and their supplier networks access to weapons-of-mass-destruction-related material? Is he aware that America and its allies shut down a sophisticated nuclear black market network headed by A. Q. Khan?

The problem with Huckabee is that he wears his religion on his sleave. This ad furthers this point. If you play the video on this site and look in the background you can see a cross. This is a sinister attempt at subliminal brainwashing. He is using religion to get elected:

In a new ad set to debut tomorrow in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Mike Huckabee puts the "Christ" back in Christmas. Wearing a red sweater and standing before a glowing Tannenbaum as "Silent Night" softly plays, the former Arkansas governor asks viewers if they're "about worn out of all the television commercials you've been seeing, mostly about politics."

(Insert mental image of red-sweatered Iowans, New Hampshirites and South Carolinians nodding in agreement here.)

"I don't blame you," he says. "At this time of year, sometimes it's nice to pull aside from all of that and remember that"--pause, inhale, smile sincerely--"what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ." After which he mentions "Christmas" twice more and closes with a final "God bless."