Huckabee’s Anachronistic Brand of ProgressivismWe could shorter this "farrt" and call it a day, but let me give you the gist: Because he wants the state to meddle in people's business, as has every Bible-beater since time immemorial, Huckabee is actually a "right-wing populist-progressive." Sure, why not -- Goldberg already told us liberals are fascists so why can't right-wingers be progressive? The explanation is, as usual, that William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson did racist or repressive things, therefore progressives are racist and repressive.
You can catch some of Goldberg's related argumentation in a remarkable Twitter debate with Jamelle Bouie; Goldberg leans heavily on the assertion that he didn't mean anything bad by "ideologue" because it just means somebody who has an ideology -- you know, like when your smartass friend in middle school told that Jewish kid he was anti-Semitic because he didn't like Arafat. Some Goldberg highlights: "Hey, I don't have a huge gripe with you. But the idea you're not a liberal ideologue because you say you're not is...unpersuasive" (this is known to rhetoricians as the argumentum ad ellipsis) and "the term 'ideologue' was largely invented by Napoleon and Marx to do exactly the kind of thing you're trying to do to me."
The column ends with Goldberg saying even though Huckabee is bad because he's a progressive, he's not as bad as those progressive-progressives because he believes in God. If nothing else, it proves the wisdom of this old saw.
