Weigel

Mike Huckabee Defends the Nanny State

He’s the most outwardly affable candidate in the Republican field, and yet he’s the most apt to spit fire at another conservative for criticizing him. Today, Mike Huckabee goes after his (for now) Fox News colleague Glenn Beck for delivering his umpeenth rant about the incipient fascism of Michelle Obama’s fitness/eating well campaigns.

This week Glenn Beck has taken to his radio show to attack me as a Progressive, which he has said is the same as a “cancer” and a “Nazi.” What did I do that apparently caused him to link me to a fatal disease and a form of government that murdered millions of innocent Jews? I had the audacity—not of hope—but the audacity to give respect to the efforts of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign to address childhood obesity. I’m no fan of her husband’s policies for sure, but I have appreciated her efforts that Beck misrepresented—either out of ignorance or out of a deliberate attempt to distort them to create yet another “boogey man” hiding in the closet that he and only he can see. The First Lady’s approach is about personal responsibility—not the government literally taking candy from a baby’s mouth. He seems to fancy himself a prophet of sorts for his linking so many people and events together to describe a massive global conspiracy for pretty much everything.

Huckabee regularly fights with the Club for Growth – a big chunk of his post-election memoir was an attack on libertarians – and this is a piece of that.