I don’t like Mike

Mike was easy to ignore and, given his wit, easy to like when he was at the back of the back. Now that he’s burst into prominence though, he can’t be ignored, and I like him less and less. Kyle-Anne Shiver doesn’t like him either, comparing him to two other Southern governors, Clinton and Carter. Shiver also exposes a little more of history, some of which (those hard drives) I didn’t yet know:

Mike Huckabee has done a better job of covering his tracks than even former Governor and First Lady of Arkansas, Bill and Hillary Clinton. Right at the end of Huckabee’s eleven-year stint as Arkansas’ Governor, he ordered the hard drives crashed on every computer so that no one would ever have access to his papers. Not only that, but now the churches where he served as pastor refuse to release any of the sermons he delivered, and I am truly dying to know what’s in them that Huckabee finds so potentially offensive to mainstream America.

This is perfectly Clinton-esque; hidden or destroyed records seems to play well in Arkansas.

Now Mr. Huckabee may look and sound very salt-of-the-earth, but I find it downright bothersome that he had 5 formal ethics violations while in office, and that he used the operating budget (taxpayer money!) of the Governor’s mansion to pay for personal expenses like a doghouse, clothes and take-out meals. And wouldn’t you know it? The Clintons used taxpayer money to pay for Chelsea’s full-time nanny.

Add to that the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Huckabee, who had been married a full 20 years, set up wedding registries upon leaving the Governor’s mansion so “grateful” citizens (think lobbyists) could furnish their new, expensive house. Sound familiar? This is exactly what Bill and Hillary did when leaving the White House.

Also like the Clintons, the Huckabees tried to claim $70,000 worth of furnishings from the Governor’s mansion as their own. Using public office to rip off the taxpayers seems to be something of a nasty habit in Arkansas.

Some folks complain that they don’t like rich people running for public office. I don’t like people running for public office so they can get rich!

Mike Huckabee is as socially conservative as anyone running in 2008. And that is the only thing he has going for him. He has governed as a high-taxing, high-spending, government-can-make-the-world-perfect liberal in every way.

He has zero foreign policy experience, thinks we should practice the golden rule with terrorists and wants to close Gitmo so that the Europeans will start liking us again. He doesn’t even have a foreign policy adviser and he needs one more than anyone running.

Just because General Petraeus is now winning the war in Iraq does not mean we can let our guard down, and giving Mike Huckabee the Republican nomination will give Americans a choice next November between the-war-is-lost Democrats and a candidate who thinks that going to war with the terrorists in the first place was “arrogant.” He sounds more like a Clinton everyday. That’s precisely the word Hillary Clinton has used to describe the President’s war policy: “arrogant.” Quite a coincidence.