Defining Liberalism Down

Dave Weigel claims — plausibly — that Huckabee has gotten soft coverage because reporters like him. He also claims — rather less plausibly — that this is because of Huckabee’s “liberalism.” I guess this is the flipside of arguments that George Bush’s statism makes him a liberal (as opposed to the statist conservative he actually is), but it’s a strange assertion. Unless anybody who doesn’t believe that tax cuts are the appropriate response to every conceivable fiscal situation is a liberal, then fiscally Huckabee governed as a moderate conservative (in the context of a strongly Democratic legislature), and he’s campaigning as a right-wing crank on fiscal matters by making a regressive, unworkable national sales tax his centerpiece. In addition, of course, liberals tend not to believe that abortion is a “holocaust,” support amending the Constitution to make gays and lesbians second-class citizens, etc. He may not be the first choice of the powerful Donald Luskin wing of the GOP, but he’s not a liberal in any sense.