You Say You Want Change?

What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas - especially if you're the wife of a presidential candidate. Just ask Janet Huckabee, who attended a middleweight prize fight this past weekend in Las Vegas - where she stayed at the Hooters Casino Hotel.

That eye-opening combination - a title bout in Sin City, which celebrates gambling, drinking and all things wild, along with a hospitality chain favoring buxom waitresses in low-cut garb - could potentially shock the armies of evangelical conservative Christians who have made her husband, the former governor of Arkansas, the only remaining GOP opponent to party front-runner John McCain.

  SF Gate

Well, she would certainly be a change from Laura, now wouldn’t she?

And I guess Ron Paul is now invisible.

On the Cheap

The Huckabee press van ran out of gas - twice. When they ran out the first time, the driver only put a gallon in, and the press onboard waited for rescue in 20 degree Arkansas weather.

That'll put 'em in a good mood for reportage. In fact, they titled the article: Metaphor Alert!

Dear Chuckles, Drop Dead Out

Gov. Rick Perry. R-Texas, who has endorsed John McCain, called Mike Huckabee on Friday asking him to drop out of the race, according to a senior Huckabee campaign aide. Huckabee declined Perry's request.

Huckabee had asked for Perry's support earlier in the election cycle and Perry had said he would support Huckabee if he thought he could win but decided to support Rudy Giuliani instead. When Giuliani dropped out last month, Perry switched his allegiance to McCain.

  CBS

Sounds like a little cat fight to me. Our governor Perry is a piece of work, isn’t he? I wonder if Chuckles called him back today.

"I'd like to think the Republican Party is mature enough, big enough, and smart enough that it actually knows competition brings excellence. And the lack of competiton brings mediocrity," Huckabee said.

Which is how we keep getting what we keep getting. Two parties and media who play up two or three candidates for each of them does not make for much competition.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Mike Huckabee, Not a Crook, Or a Weirdo, Or a Mormon

Lee Stranahan video

God and the Constitution

Mike Huckabee: “I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.”

  W3IAI

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. -- Aristotle

When fascism comes to this country, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. -- Sinclair Lewis

Wherein We Learn the Meaning of "Vertical Thinking"

Josh Marshall clues us in on Mike Huckabee's "vertical" reference and concludes that Huckabee is throwing code to evangelicals. I don't think it's code necessarily, because Huckabee doesn't seem to be trying to hide his "Godliness" from anyone. But it definitely is God clique jargon.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

A Mistake

The ad [that Huckabee said he pulled rather than run a negative campaign against Romney] ran at least 10 times on four different stations in Davenport and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Huckabee campaign called those airings a mistake.

  Fact Check

Negative Ads

Mike Huckabee pulled a fast one showing reporters the negative ad he said he'd pulled. And he may continue that underhanded approach if his campaign chairman has his way.

In a testy exchange just after his candidate won Thursday's Iowa caucuses, Mike Huckabee's campaign chairman acknowledged discussing the potential Huckabee would "go negative" in South Carolina.

[...]

Ed Rollins, who ran Ronald Reagan's 1984 bid and recently joined Huckabee's campaign, was overheard discussing the Republican primary race as he lunched in Iowa Thursday.

[...]

"To me, hitting somebody, knocking somebody down, is a great feeling," he said. "Firing out a negative ad just feels amazing."

  Raw Story

He'd also like the feel of "knocking out Romney's teeth." More of Rollins' sterling character comes out in overheard conversations.

....hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Update:

The ad [that Huckabee said he pulled rather than run a negative campaign against Romney] ran at least 10 times on four different stations in Davenport and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Huckabee campaign called those airings a mistake.

  Fact Check

Election News

You probably already know that Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama won their respective parties' Iowa caucus, if not indicating the eventual 2008 presidential candidates, at least bearing witness to two things we already knew: 1) Iowa Republicans are far and away Christian Conservatives, and 2) as long as white men hold the strings to America, a black man will still win the presidency over any color woman, particuarly if she's seen as a woman who won't be told what to do by a man. The Democrats would do well to remember that if, come nomination time, they are still thinking about running Hillary.

Meanwhile, here in Texas, we are still in the business of scandalous politics.

Harris County (Houston) Republican DA Chuck 'Hang-em-High' Rosenthal, just three minutes before filing deadlines for elections, withdrew from the upcoming DA race after having been busted for sending amorous emails to his assistant (he's married - adultery being a Republican sin - if you get caught), and erasing other emails that might have information about a case filed against Rosenthal and the Harris County Sheriff for alleged prisoner abuse.

The filing deadline had to be extended 48 hours to allow somebody else to jump in, and now that she has, Rosenthal is pulling a Larry Craig. He thinks maybe he'll run after all.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

He Sings! He Dances! He Crawls on his Belly Like a Reptile!

In a surprise move, Mike Huckabee said today that he won't air negative ads against Mitt Romney.

Claiming that he changed his mind this morning, Huckabee told reporters gathered in anticipation of seeing the spots that he would no longer attack Romney off the air, either, and would run a positive campaign in the final days before the caucuses.

  Politico

However, he made his remarks in front of placards with still shots of a negative ad he had worked up for Mitt Romney and then showed the ad to all the reporters present. He said he only did it because otherwise they wouldn’t have believed him that he actually had a negative ad ready to roll.

Score one for the Huckster, eh?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Huckabee: Be Very Afraid

"We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there's any unusal activity of Pakistanis coming into the country. We just need to be very, very thorough in looking at every aspect of our own security internally because, again, we live in a very, very dangerous time," Huckabee said during a news conference Thursday night in West Des Moines.

  Radio Iowa

Now he’s afraid specifically of murderers coming in hordes from Pakistan. How stupid. They didn’t come streaming in after the earlier failed attack on Bhutto that killed 136. Pakistan didn’t just now become a center of terrorist activity.

Fear-mongering. Generalized profiling. Fascism.

Huckabee called Bhutto's death is a tragedy, but he suggested she had been a threat to Islamic fundamentalists. "An educated, sophisticated, strong, capable woman leader -- that does pose a threat to those who don't believe that women should be given that platform and that level of equality," Huckabee said.

Not-so-subliminal message: if Hillary is elected, we can expect terrorist attacks here.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

More Huckabee

Boy, let a guy get a little boost in popularity and the stories just start streaming from the woodwork.

Reporters recall Huckabee as combative, even malicious, in response to critical coverage. He was known to attack reporters, fire off scathing e-mails to newsrooms, and complain to editors about probing questions. "I was just astounded at how vindictive he was," says Joan Duffy, who covered Huckabee for The Commercial Appeal of Memphis in the '90s. "He took it all so personally. . . . You're either with him, or you're a mortal enemy."

  The New Republic

We're accustomed to that attitude, though.

The Preacher's Son

[Utopia Animal Rescue 1998] (Miller County, Arkansas) Two boy scout counselors, 17 year old Clayton Frady and 18 year old David [Huckabee], the son of Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, have admitted to catching a stray dog during their summer session at Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, AR, and hanging the dog by his neck, slitting his throat and stoning him to death.

Lambert notices that Michael Isikoff’s coverage of the story for Newsweek is particularly lacking in investigative curiosity on how David Huckabee killed the dog, which as you can see above, really does color the event.

  Crooks and Liars

They were fired from their counselor jobs.

The Huckabee Family

Shameless Political Pandering

According to their respective speeches, John Kennedy may not have been the Catholic candidate for President, and Twit Romney may not be the Mormon candidate for President, but Mike Huckabee is the Batptist candidate for President.

"My faith is my life -- it defines me. I don't separate my faith from my personal and professional lives," he says on his campaign Web site.

  WaPo

Indeed, a taste for how Huckabee would intertwine faith and state came early into his foray in government. When asked why he chose to move from his position as pastor of Arkansas' 490,000-person Southern Baptist church into a life of politics, he said he did so at the behest of a higher power. "I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."

[...]

In 1998 he signed a statement urging wives to "graciously submit to their husband's sacrificial leadership."

[...]

He hired church groups to run welfare and youth programs. When the Arkansas' divorce rate skyrocketed, Huckabee turned to his Baptist roots, instituting "covenant marriages," which encouraged training on healthy relationships and made it harder for people to divorce. Even the cars in Arkansas bore Huckabee's religious fingerprint. In March 2003, he approved, as several other governors had, specialty license plates with a "Choose Life" message on them.

[...]

[A]t a rally for a group called Put God Back in Public School, he was videotaped offering his support for the idea of a "public Christian school."

[...]

[However,] Huckabee signed off on legislation to significantly expand gambling at Arkansas' historic racetracks, despite obvious religious objections. Without the measure the sites would have gone under, and jobs and revenue would have been lost. Huckabee, even his supporters admit, simply chose pragmatism over faith.

[...]

Asked to explain his recent rise in the polls, he once again resorted to the providential. "There's only one explanation for it," Huckabee proclaimed, "and it's not a human one."

  Huffington Post

Sadly, it’s all too human. Mike Huckabee is a shameless panderer.

Huckabee used God as a prop in a 2004 Republican Governors Association Dinner speech, pretending to take a phone call from him on stage. (YouTube)

He's also a liar and a fool. Cliff Schecter records three times that Huckabee has publicly stated he has a Theologian’s Degree. Did he think no one would check? Joe Carter, Huckabee's director of research, had to send out an email correcting the thrice-told lie:

Governor Huckabee doesn’t have a theology degree. He only spent a year in seminary.

Whatever his religious character flaws may be, at least we know Huckabee is experienced in the great tradition of political secretiveness:

Huckabee depleted the governor's emergency fund before he left office, the state Bureau of Legislative Research reported, including spending $13,000 to have computer hard drives in his office crushed.

  Arkansas News

And playing funny with the money:

Huckabee, in his political debut, was preparing to become the Bible-thumping, abortion-decrying Republican challenger to U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers, the Democratic incumbent. With a playbook straight out of James Dobson, he tried to portray Bumpers as a pornographer for his support of federal grants to the arts.

[...]

In the 1992 contest with Bumpers, Huckabee used campaign funds to pay himself as his own media consultant. Other payments went to the family babysitter.

In his successful 1994 run for lieutenant governor, he set up a nonprofit curtain known as Action America so he could give speeches for money without having to disclose the names of his benefactors. He failed to report that campaign travel payments were for the use of his own personal plane.

After he became governor in 1996, he raked in tens of thousands of dollars in gifts, including gifts from people he later appointed to prestigious state commissions.

[...]

Furniture he'd received to doll up his office was carted out with him when he left, after he'd crushed computer hard drives so nobody could ever get a peek behind the curtain of the Huckabee administration.

[...]

Until [...] the Arkansas Times blew the whistle, he converted a governor's mansion operating account into a personal expense account, claiming public money for a doghouse, dry-cleaning bills, panty hose and meals at Taco Bell.

[...]

He ran the State Police airplane into the ground, many of the miles in pursuit of political ends. Inauguration funds were used to buy clothing for his wife. He once took control of the state Republican Party's campaign account -- then swore the account had been somebody else's responsibility when it ran afoul of federal election laws.

[...]

Three decades after the Huckabees' wedding, his wife registered at department stores so their new home, post-governor's mansion, could be stocked with gifts of linens, toasters and other suitable furnishings.

[...]

[U]ltimately Huckabee ended press services, which are publicly financed, to […] the Arkansas Times.

  Salon

We also know that, like Bush, he is qualified to pander to the Religious Right without really meeting their demands.

He professed opposition to alcohol and gambling, but he allowed passage of legislation that made it easier for restaurants to obtain private-club mixed-drink permits in dry counties. Over the angry objection of the church lobby, he sped final action on a bill to allow video poker at the state's racetracks, an act followed not long afterward by a $10,000 campaign contribution from the owner of the state's biggest race track, at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs.

  Salon

He also, like Bush, surrounds himself with other schoolyard bullies.

Back in August, following the circulation of an anti-Catholic letter by a Huckabee-supporting Iowa pastor (to which Catholic then-presidential contender Sam Brownback took offense), the Huckabee camp refused to apologize. Instead, they urged Brownback to show "Christian character" and "stop whining."

  Spectator

Because Catholic-bashing shows so much Christian character.

Huckabee studied theology as a seminarian, yet when asked about Mormonism he becomes a country bumpkin who doesn't know anything beyond the rumors he has heard. He apologizes later -- as he did this week for his false suggestion that Mormons believe Satan is Jesus's brother -- but by then, of course, the damage is done. Huckabee could easily allay fundamentalist voters' qualms about Romney's beliefs, or at least put them in context. He chooses not to.

That doesn't strike me as a very Christian way for an ordained minister to behave.

  WaPo

Well, no. But there’s a lot in religious practices that isn’t very Christian, and Huckabee is a politician and a panderer.On the other hand, I myself am sure that Jesus and Satan are brothers, even if the Mormons aren’t aware of it. And yet, I say…

....hey, believe what you want....you will anyway.

Republican Debate

I intended to watch the Republic debate on the economy. (How dull do you suppose that was?) I completely forgot about it. Check out the report at W3IAI.

And since Ron Paul is not going to get any play from the national media, I’ll give him some here from The Raw Story - for all five of my readers. I’m not endorsing him, but I can appreciate some of the things he has to say, and it emphasizes the inequity of our system that only the “front runners” as designated by the powers that be are followed around and reported on widely, so who knows what he's saying elsewhere in his campaign.

"As long as we live beyond our means, we are destined to live beneath our means" Paul had said, citing the financing of an "extravagant" foreign policy and excessive domestic spending that was disproportionately impacting poorer Americans.

"Everybody doesn't suffer equally, or this wouldn't be so bad," Paul said.

[...]

As the debate's focus transitioned into foreign policy issues, moderator Chris Matthews asked the candidates whether any of them, as president, felt they would have to seek authorization from Congress prior to taking military action against Iran.

"You sit down with your attorneys and tell you what you have have to do," Mitt Romney said, adding that a president had to do whatever it took to protect the country.

Asked if President Bush had needed congressional authority to invade Iraq, Romney again invoked lawyers, saying "We're going to let the lawyers sort out what he needed to do and what he didn't need to do."

"This idea of going and talking to attorneys totally baffles me," Ron Paul shot back later. "Why don't we just open up the constitution and read it."

  

It’s a little dusty, Ron.

I did hear that clip on NPR, and from the sound of his voice when he said it, he must have been fairly hopping.

Huckabee and McCain said they’d go forth without Congressional approval, so I guess they're not interested in reading the Constitution.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

For Your Listening Pleasure...

Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! has Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on today's show. The whole show (which will be available online at 2:00 pm ET) is quite good (in no small part thanks to the week's news), and host Peter Sagal comments that Bush bragged to Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile that the US is "kicking ass" in Iraq while at the same time cautioning everyone to wait for General Petraeus' report before coming to any conclusions about what's happening. Sagal says that's like Edgar Bergen claiming he's waiting to hear what Charlie McCarthy has to say.