Huck Upchucks

Sigh.

On Thursday at the Republican National Committee winter meeting, Huckabee did not name any names, but he sent a clear signal to organizations like the Senate Conservatives Fund, Heritage Action, FreedomWorks and others who are supporting efforts to defeat elected Republicans, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Just stop it, Huckabee said.

“Whatever differences we have, compared to the differences that we have to the other party, they’re small,” Huckabee said at a lunch. “And that’s why I’ve asked Republicans, let’s stop using the term ‘RINO’” — Republican In Name Only.

But Huckabee does have a contentious relationship with some outside conservative groups. The Club For Growth spent $750,000 running ads against Huckabee in 2008, according to Federal Election Commission reports, accusing him of raising taxes as Arkansas governor and framing him as fiscally irresponsible.

“Let’s stop calling each other somehow less Republican than someone else. Be for the person you’re for,” Huckabee said.

He said that he will be traveling to Auschwitz next week for the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp, and noted that the horror of the Holocaust began with the devaluation of people.

“It all started when people were devalued, when people were deemed ‘less than someone else,’” Huckabee said. “We look back on that time in history and we think, ‘How can educated people, university trained, how can a nation like Germany with all of its resources, with its vast level of its population with higher education, get to a place where they can do something so heinous?’ You realize that the only way you can end up there is when you start with the idea that people just aren’t as valuable as you are.”

It also takes a madman with a plan for exterminating people, and an assembly of people who are just as evil and bloodthirsty. I don’t see that in any of FreedomWorks’ leadership or literature. Let’s not Godwin ourselves over the RINO thing.

We social conservatives have to be careful. Mike Huckabee is a so-con but he is a big government guy. The criticism above is self-serving and, in the end, unprincipled.