Mike Huckabee recently gave an interview with Will Mari of the Huffington Post describing his vision for the "Next Republican Revolution." Interestingly, Huckabee reiterates a theme from this earlier post that essentially views libertarianism the greatest ideological threat to a Post-Bush reshaped GOP.

Republicans need to be Republicans. The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it's this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it's a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says "look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don't get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it." Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it's not an American message. It doesn't fly. People aren't going to buy that, because that's not the way we are as a people. That's not historic Republicanism. Historic Republicanism does not hate government; it's just there to be as little of it as there can be. But they also recognize that government has to be paid for.

If you have a breakdown in the social structure of a community, it's going to result in a more costly government ... police on the streets, prison beds, court costs, alcohol abuse centers, domestic violence shelters, all are very expensive. What's the answer to that? Cut them out? Well, the libertarians say "yes, we shouldn't be funding that stuff." But what you've done then is exacerbate a serious problem in your community. You can take the cops off the streets and just quit funding prison beds. Are your neighborhoods safer? Is it a better place to live? The net result is you have now a bigger problem than you had before.

What has becoming increasingly clear is that Grover Norquist and Mike Huckabee are busy rearming themselves and poised for Round II in the aftermath of a likely November GOP bloodbath. Norquist has already laid out his vision of a post-Bush GOP, reshaping it starkly along more "libertarian" lines with his Leave Us Alone Coalition. Huckabee, of course, will have none of this "Leave Us Alone" business, making the standard SocialCon refrain that libertarianism is an existential threat to the social fabric. Legal porn leads to violence against women and thus more domestic violence shelters. Legal alcohol leads to the need for more alcohol abuse centers, etc, etc, etc. Huckabee is making a simplistic negative externalities argument against "social liberalism" and then decries "libertarianism" as a greater evil because it would deprive the government of a tax base to address these externalities. I also dare say Huckabee's "negative externalities" argument is his "public" argument. In private, behind the pulpit, his real argument is that libertarianism would bring "God's Judgement" down on America, which, I suppose, is the ultimate Negative externality argument. Can I hear an Amen...