What They Got for Their Contributions

Columnist David Sanders has his ear pretty close to the GOP ground in this state. That is why his recent column on Mike Huckabee has such a high impact. In unusually blunt language, Sanders communicates that the loyal Republican contributors in this state are tiring of Huckabee. As one contributor told Sanders concerning the former Governor, "You really have to ask yourself what we got out of the deal."

The answer is less than nothing on most issues.

When I say less than nothing, I mean that by splitting Republicans in the legislature he actually advanced liberal causes faster than a Democratic Governor could have done in the same circumstances. Government grew faster, education was centralized faster, and taxpayer debt increased faster, than it could have under the Democrats he was running against. More than one former Republican legislator said that when Huckabee proposed a big-government idea all of the liberal Democrats would be for it. Half of the Republicans would go along with it just because it was a Republican's idea. The principled conservative Republicans would oppose it, but they then found themselves isolated from their own party and Governor.

Only a united front could have prevailed against the state's abhorrent print media, but Huckabee curried their favor, and got it as long as he betrayed conservatives.

Former legislators like Randy Minton, Peggy Jeffries, and others found out what it was like to try and be the conservative you campaigned as when Huckabee ran the party and the Executive branch. It was to be marginalized by people whose ideas were not as good as yours. Huckabee, as a phony conservative on most issues, did not like real conservatives around to show up his counterfeit.

What the GOP loyalists got for their contributions to Mike Huckabee was a knife in the back. Not only did he make no effort to build a GOP bench in the state, he (like Clinton) actively discouraged any other stars to rise up lest they become rivals. They acted alike in that it was all about them. When each left, their party on the state level took a dive because of the vacuum. The Democrats were entrenched enough to bounce back from that, but the GOP was not.

The state Republican party under Mike Huckabee found itself with the biggest FEC fine of any party in our nation's history. That is what GOP loyalists got for their contributions to Mike Huckabee.

What GOP loyalists got was a man so determined to represent the interests of illegal aliens over the legal citizens that worked hard to elect him that ICE felt he was a security risk who could not be advised of upcoming actions. A man who illegally used Arkansas taxpayer monies and facilities to bring a Mexican consulate to Little Rock and who hurled multiple insults at people who wanted the rule of law to prevail over corporate and foreign interests. That is what they got for their contributions.

What they got, because he actively encouraged it, was a cult of personality built on a man, not good governance based on intellectually sound policy.

Readers who have followed these pages know that I have long testified to what Sanders has now confirmed- Mike Huckabee may have done well for himself here, but he was bad for conservatism and bad for his state party.