My problem with Mike Huckabee

George Will's column expresses so much about Mike Huckabee's candidacy that troubles me. It seems like his major selling point is that he's a good Christian. Obviously, as a Jew, a candidate who sells himself as a "Christian leader" leaves me very cold.

Mike Huckabee's candidacy rests on serial non sequiturs: I am a Christian, therefore I am a conservative, therefore whatever I have done or propose to do with "compassionate," meaning enlarged, government is conservatism. And by the way, anything I denote as a "moral" issue is beyond debate other than by the uncaring forces of greed. His is a moralist's version of the intellectual vanity once ascribed to Oxford's Benjamin Jowett:

My name is Jowett

Of Balliol College;

If I don't know it,

It is not knowledge.

Many Iowans think it would be wise to nominate a candidate who, when the Republicans were asked during a debate to raise their hands if they do not believe in evolution, raised his. But, then, Huckabee believes America can be energy-independent in 10 years, so he has peculiar views about more than paleontology.

Huckabee combines pure moralism with incoherent populism: He wants Washington to impose a nationwide ban on smoking in public, show more solicitude for Americans of modest means and impose more protectionism, thereby raising the cost of living for Americans of modest means.

Although Huckabee is considered affable, two subliminal but clear enough premises of his Iowa attack on Mitt Romney are unpleasant: The almost 6 million American Mormons who consider themselves Christians are mistaken about that. And -- 55 million non-Christian Americans should take note -- America must have a Christian president.

I don't mind a politician whose values come from his religion and help inform his decisions. I just find Huckabee's selling of himself literally as a "Christian leader" a phrase he uses in his latest Iowa ad to be quite jarring and distasteful. It might work in Iowa in the same way that Pat Robertson was popular there. But I just don't see it selling on the national level.

Check out the rest of Will's column for how he blasts the Democratic candidates for their flaunting of how they're no longer interested in our traditional checks on federal and presidential powers.