In “Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That’s Bringing Common Sense Back to America,” Mike Huckabee opens up aboot his life as a pizza delivery boy in Brooklyn amidst the racial turmoil of the late 1980’s. Actually, that’s not true, but Gov. Huckabee had to know what he was in for when he named his book after a Spike Lee movie. No, “Do the Right Thing…” was mainly aboot Huckabee’s 2008 campaign for president and I have to say, homeboy sure sounds bitter.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of Huckabee. He has ideas and a voice that I feel is vital to the Republican Party, and they’re ideas that it’s hard to get people to listen to. Every interview with Huckabee can be broken into two parts: Part 1 is the reporter criticizing Huckabee for talking aboot religion, Part 2 is the same reporter then asking him nothing but questions aboot religion. Mike Huckabee literally had to ask people to ask him aboot education and healthcare.

But those ideas get lost even more in what amounts to a manifesto aboot everyone he feels wronged him over the past year. While Mitt Romney is out talking aboot the auto bailout, Mike Huckabee is out there talking aboot Mitt Romney…and seemingly for no other reason than to prevent him from ever becoming President. If Huck can never have it, it’s like he wants to make sure Mitt never gets it either.

I can understand his being upset with the various social conservative leaders. The message from “the conservative base” seemed to be that the social con’s were to speak out against sanctity of life and marriage issues…but otherwise just shut up and do what you’re told. And if I was a social-con candidate and watched people like Pat Robertson endorse a candidate like Rudy Giuliani, or watched John Hagee endorse John McCain…only to have McCain denounce him because the media told him too, I’d be annoyed. But when has putting important political figures on blast in a book ever helped you future political career?

That’s not all to say the book wasn’t entertaining, and it gives you a lot to think aboot. There was the predictable chapter aboot the fair tax in it, plus a look at the difference in Huckabee’s eye between “conservatism” and “libertarianism.” The hundred or more pounds that he lost give his views on healthcare a certain degree of extra authority. And when he talks aboot the sanctity of life not starting at conception and ending at birth, that’s exactly the way we need to start talking aboot life issues to a growing secular electorate.

Bottom line, if you’re a political junkie like me, you’re going to thoroughly enjoy this book. I just think it would have been better had it been more on ideas and less on how much Mike Huckabee doesn’t like Mitt Romney.

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