Who's Afraid of Ron Paul?

Not Jonah Goldberg, he's afraid of Mike Huckabee.

What's troubling about The Man From Hope 2.0 is what he represents. Huckabee represents compassionate conservatism on steroids. A devout social conservative on issues such as abortion, school prayer, homosexuality and evolution, Huckabee is a populist on economics, a fad-follower on the environment and an all-around do-gooder who believes that the biblical obligation to do "good works" extends to using government -- and your tax dollars -- to bring us closer to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

For example, Huckabee has indicated he would support a nationwide federal ban on public smoking. Why? Because he's on a health kick, thinks smoking is bad and believes the government should do the right thing.

And therein lies the chief difference between Paul and Huckabee. One is a culturally conservative libertarian. The other is a right-wing progressive.

I like that framing. My problems with Ron Paul are due to his association with the cultural right; Doug Mataconis is right to express concern about the Paleo-Popular front of "conspiracy theorists, southern secessionists, Nazis and fascists, anti-Semites and racists" as described by David Bernstein. Huckabee, on the other hand, is only different from progressives on how he wants government to be a nurturing mother.

In this respect, Huckabee's philosophy is conventionally liberal, or progressive. What he wants to do with government certainly differs in important respects from what Hillary Clinton would do, but the limits he would place on governmental do-goodery are primarily tactical or practical, not philosophical or constitutional. This isn't to say he -- or Hillary -- is a would-be tyrant, but simply to note that the progressive notion of the state as a loving, caring parent is becoming a bipartisan affair.

All you have to do is look at the donor map to dispel that notion. A SocialCon driven grassroots following would have a far different map profile, primarily with the heavy concentrations being in the South.

In fact, if you want to define a core base for Paul, it would be techies like myself, those who work in technical or technology/software related fields. That's what i have found. Indeed, the Ron Paul online community really reminds me a lot of the sometimes fanatical Linux community. Just write an article or leave a post saying something like "Linux is not ready for the desktop" or "Linux is not ready for the enterprise" and se what kind of comments you would get.

Concerning the Berstein article, that Paul's online and ground-grassroots activism is embedded with racists and Stormfront Troopers is blatantly false, a fact he seems to grudgingly acknowledge in this follow-up post.

To me, the issue of the degree of libertarianism of Paul was effectively addressed earlier this year by Brian Doherty at Reason and the latest slime attacks against Paul were effectively addressed by Radley Balko.

That being said, there is a major point of contention I do have with Paul, and no it's not abortion(leave up to the states) or immigration(Paul's actual position is actually much closer to Friedman than Tancredo)...And that is the Incorporation Doctrine with respect to the Bill of Rights. Obviously, being a member of the ACLU, I'm not too predisposed to an opinion that the Bill of Rights don't apply to the states. And if we didn't have a Patriot Act, that would probably be a more of a point of contention for me. However, the Patriot Act clearly absolves the Federal Government from having to respect the Bill Of Rights, so what's the rationale for believing this same Federal Government somehow can be an effective enforcer of the Bill of Rights. It doesn't compute with me. To me, supporting someone who unequivocally supports repealing the Patriot Act is much more important than what their theoretical view on the incporation doctrine is...it's a moot point, at this point in time.

And as a side bar, I do think left-libertarians should at least demonstrate some degree of critical thinking when it comes to the 14th amendment..after all, I don't think many of them have a high opinion of the Lochner Era or desire for a return of pro-Lochner judges being appointed on the Federal Courts or the Supreme Court, something that has happened under Bush(Janice Rogers Brown) and would likely happen under Rudy.

With respect to Huckabee,why not the outcry over Huckabee embracing the endorsement of Ted Nugent and even featuring Nugent on his website, given this widely known video?

Not all people who are culturally conservative have to be the same as the Religious Right. I just think it's worth pointing out that on abortion, immigration, and yes, as you point out, the 14th Amendment, are closer to the paleo-cons than more socially liberal cultural libertarians.

would be accurate...

But pro-free trade, anti-farm subsidies, anti-regulation of entertainment media content, pro-euthanasia rights, and a whole host of other stances of Ron's are clearly libertarian stances that contradict paleoconservative viewpoints.

kal has it right... Ron is a paleolibertarian. Sure, he's more federalist than I know a lot of libertarians would like him to be, but I don't see anything contradictory about a federalist system and libertarianism. But still, he is a legit libertarian that disagrees with the LP platform on only two issues.