There's A Huckabee Born Every Minute

[shagdrum]

Despite the overwhelming popular demand for another column on Ron Radosh's review of Stan Evans' book, this week's column will address the urgent matter of evangelical Christians getting blamed for Mike Huckabee.

To paraphrase the Jews, this is "bad for the evangelicals."

As far as I can tell, it's mostly secular liberals swooning over Huckabee. Liberals adore Huckabee because he fits their image of what an evangelical should be: stupid and easily led.

The media are transfixed by the fact that Huckabee says he doesn't believe in evolution. Neither do I, for reasons detailed in approximately one-third of my No. 1 New York Times best-selling book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism.

I went on a massive book tour for Godless just last year, including a boffo opening interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today," a one-on-one, full-hour interview with Chris Matthews on "Hardball," and various other hostile interviews from the organs of establishmentarian opinion.

But I didn't get a single question from them on the topic of one-third of my book.

If the mainstream media are burning with curiosity about what critics of Darwinism have to say, how about asking me? I can also name any number of mathematicians, scientists and authors who have rejected Darwin's discredited theory and would be happy to rap with them about it.

But they won't ask us, because, unlike the cornpone, we won't immediately collapse under gentle questioning. It's one thing to be "easily led" by the pope. Huckabee is easily led by Larry King.

Asked on CNN's "Larry King Live" Monday night about his beliefs on evolution, Huckabee rushed to assure King that he has no interest in altering textbooks that foist this fraud on innocent schoolchildren.

I don't understand that. Does Huckabee believe Darwinism is a hoax or not? If he knows it's a fraud, then why does he want it taught to schoolchildren? What other discredited mystery religions -- as mathematician David Berlinski calls Darwinism -- does Huckabee want to teach children? Sorcery? Phrenology? Alchemy?

Admittedly, the truth about Darwinism would be jarring in textbooks that promote other frauds and hoaxes, such as "man-made global warming." Why confuse the little tykes with fact-based textbooks?

Huckabee immediately dropped his alleged skepticism of Darwinism and turned to his main goal as president of the United States: teaching children more art and music. This, he said, was his "passion" because "I think our education system is failing kids because we're not touching the right side of the brain -- the creative side. We are focusing on the left side."

I think I know someone who has just read an article in Reader's Digest about left brain/right brain differences!

When not evolving his position on Darwinism, Huckabee insults gays by pointlessly citing the Bible's rather pointed remarks about sodomy -- fitting the MSM's image of evangelicals sitting around all day denouncing gays. (Which is just so unfair. I'm usually done denouncing gays by 10:30 a.m., 11 tops.)

And yet, Huckabee has said he agrees with the Supreme Court's lunatic opinion that sodomy is a constitutional right.

In the 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, a case only 17 years old (and with a name chosen by God) -- despite the allegedly hallowed principle of "stare decisis." As explained in Godless, stare decisis means: "What's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable."

Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in Lawrence was so insane that the lower courts completely ignored it. Since then, courts have disregarded Lawrence in order to uphold state laws banning the sale of vibrators, restricting gays' rights to adopt, prohibiting people from having sex with their adult ex-stepchildren, and various other basic human rights specifically mentioned in our Constitution.

Lawrence was promptly denounced not only by Republican governors and Christian groups across the nation, but also by anyone with sufficient reading comprehension skills to see that the Constitution says nothing about a right to sodomy.

But when Huckabee was asked about this jaw-dropping ruling from the high court, he said the majority opinion "probably was appropriate."

He made these remarks on his monthly radio show, "Ask the Governor," as was widely reported at the time, including a July 3, 2003, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article titled, "Huckabee Says Sex Lives of Adults Not State Affair." I stress that "Ask the Governor" was not a wacky, comedy-based, morning zoo-type radio program. It was supposed to be serious.

Employing the ACLU's "any law I don't like is unconstitutional" test, Huckabee said he supported the court's decision because a law "that prohibited private behavior among adults" would be difficult to enforce. Next he'll be telling us which of the Ten Commandments he considers "nonstarters."

How about adults who privately operate meth labs? How about a private contract between an employer and employee for a salary less than the minimum wage?

Hey! How about adults privately smoking cigarettes in their homes? Nope, Huckabee wants a federal law banning smoking but thinks state laws banning sodomy are "probably" unconstitutional.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a spirited dissent in Lawrence, joined by Justices William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas, raising the somewhat embarrassing point that homosexual sodomy is not technically mentioned in the Constitution. Otherwise, our Founding Fathers would have been our "Founding Life Partners."

Scalia said that inasmuch as the Texas law furthered "the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality and obscenity," the court's ruling placed all these laws in jeopardy.

Most important, Scalia said: "Today's opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions." At least no court has tried to legalize gay marriage since that 2003 ruling, so we can be grateful for -- Hey, wait a minute!

Huckabee claims he opposes gay marriage and says Scalia is his favorite justice, but he supports a Supreme Court decision denounced by Scalia for paving the way to a "constitutional right" to gay marriage. I guess Huckabee is one of those pro-sodomy, pro-gay marriage, pro-evolution evangelical Christians.

No wonder Huckabee is the evangelical liberals like.

COPYRIGHT 2007 ANN COULTER

 

[fossten]

Ann Coulter's take on Huck = not evangelical enough? What about taxes, nanny statism, clemencies of murderers, and immigration?

Not one of her best columns IMHO.

 

[shagdrum]

It seems to me what she is saying is that Huckabee seems to fit the media straw man stereotype of what an evangelical christian conservative is.

BTW, my father keeps calling Huckabee "Hucklebee". LOL

 

[turborich]

He is pro illegal alien just like Bush! I feel this is the #1 issue in this country right now. We need a president who will stop illegal aliens from entering this country, & toss the ones who are here out!

 

[shagdrum]

Mike Huckabee: Playing to our inner Jimmy Carter

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59258

Mike Huckabee: Playing to our inner Jimmy Carter
by David Limbaugh

At the risk of incurring a roundhouse kick from the great Chuck Norris, I must confess that I'm even more troubled by Mike Huckabee's direction than I was last week.
On "Meet the Press" in January 2007, Tim Russert asked Huckabee, "You said this: 'I have a hard time seeing (Sen. John McCain) being elected president, just because I think, at times, some of his views have alienated very important segments of the Republican Party. I'm not sure he can mend the fences with the evangelical wing of the party, the pro-life part of the party.' You stand by those words?"

Huckabee responded, "Well, sure, I said them. I, I have a lot of respect for Senator McCain. He's a great American hero. But I do think that there are going to be some challenges that he'll face, and some of them have to do with issues that really have alienated many conservatives."

Bingo – except now these words could apply equally to Huckabee – not concerning the pro-life issue but Huckabee's unfortunate piece in Foreign Affairs magazine, where he joined the Democratic amen chorus in indicting President Bush for his "arrogant bunker mentality."

Until now, Huckabee has been fairly Teflon, avoiding real damage with conservatives for some of the unappealing aspects of his record and policy agenda. But the Foreign Affairs article, "America's Priorities in the War on Terror," could be his "Howard Dean scream" moment – assuming Republicans are listening with a modicum of objectivity.

For taken at face value, a number of his statements in the piece surely will, to paraphrase Huckabee, "alienate very important segments of the Republican Party." Why? Because they wrongly trash President Bush in the words of ill-meaning Democrats who have slandered Bush's foreign policy from the beginning for their own partisan ends.

Huckabee's most offending words appeared at the very outset of the article, which should remove any doubt they were central to his theme. He wrote, "The United States, as the world's only superpower, is less vulnerable to military defeat. But it is more vulnerable to the animosity of other countries. Much like a top high school student, if it is modest about its abilities and achievements, if it is generous in helping others, it is loved. But if it attempts to dominate others, it is despised. American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. My administration will recognize that the United States' main fight does not pit us against the world but pits the world against the terrorists."

Are we to assume that Mike Huckabee agrees with the New York Times, which, in its editorial "America the Indifferent," once called the United States "the stingiest (country) in the Group of Seven industrialized nations"?

I believe America is the most benevolent and generous nation in the history of the world, which is all the more remarkable considering it is the world's sole super power. But our decency and generosity, Huckabee's theory notwithstanding, has not caused us to be loved universally by other nations, which have various reasons for hating us, none of which has anything to do with our mythical lack of generosity, benevolence or decency.

Nor have we attempted to dominate others. After removing Saddam, did we confiscate Iraq's oil? We sure could use it, couldn't we? Did we make Iraq our imperial subject, or did we help it establish its own constitution and republican government? Yes, plenty of critics say Bush has made Iraq an American satellite, but you should expect to find them on Daily Kos and Democratic Underground, not at Huckabee HQ.

Huckabee's most objectionable criticism, though, is that Bush had an arrogant bunker mentality and should have changed his tone and reached out. But what readers seem to have missed is that Huckabee applied the criticism to Bush's domestic as well as his foreign policies – "at home and abroad."

At once, Huckabee is validating the fraudulent Democratic critique that Bush conducted a "unilateral" foreign policy and, domestically, did not reach out across the aisle to Democrats, which he did on numerous occasions, only to be shot in the back by Ted Kennedy and company.

Everyone knows, though Democrats won't admit, that Bush has continually tried to reach out to other nations, as when he tried to build the coalition against Iraq. Many nations would not join – not because Bush didn't plead with them but because they had their own corrupt or ignoble reasons for abstaining. Huckabee should join Republicans in condemning those recalcitrant nations rather than joining Democrats in opportunistically condemning Bush.

Republicans might overlook some of Huckabee's other anomalous policy positions, but his betrayal of President Bush, wrapped in a virtual endorsement of Jimmy Carter diplomacy, will require some real explaining.

 

[Calabrio]

Huckabee Says Foes Piling On
Dec 20, 5:18 PM (ET)

By LIZ SIDOTI


DIKE, Iowa (AP) - Under fire, Mike Huckabee countered mounting criticism from GOP presidential rivals Thursday by playing the woe-is-me card - and then hitting back by suggesting they lack substantial agendas of their own.

"Everything but the kitchen sink is being thrown at me," the Republican leader in Iowa polls complained at nearly every stop. "If the only thing some of these candidates have to run on is what's wrong with somebody else, they must not have much of a platform to talk about."

The former Arkansas governor recently soared from behind the pack of GOP presidential candidates to overtake Mitt Romney in Iowa and now finds himself in an intense battle with the former Massachusetts governor. Fred Thompson, the one-time Tennessee senator trying to turn his soured fortunes around in Iowa, also has assailed Huckabee.

At one stop Thursday, Huckabee told an audience that the flood of "dishonest and desperate" criticisms were akin to candidates taking a hammer to his kneecaps. "It's amazing I'm still walking," Huckabee quipped to laughter.

With Iowa's caucuses coming up on Jan. 3, the race is growing more heated each day. Polls show Huckabee ahead, but his advantage has narrowed over the past week as Romney has cast him as a liberal on taxes and started running TV ads claiming he's soft on crime and immigration.

Huckabee lags his top opponents in money and manpower, and winning Iowa is crucial for him to continue his bid for the presidency. He used a four-day bus tour of the state this week to try to go on offense against Romney.

"If you want a president who gets elected because he attacks the other guy, I'm probably not going to be your choice," he said.

Throughout the day, and without using Romney's name, Huckabee tried to turn the tables on his chief rival as he defended himself against a Romney ad that criticizes him in connection with an Arkansas law on sentences for methamphetamine dealers and for his 1,033 pardons and commutations as governor.

Huckabee questioned Romney's record of refusing any pardons and commutations. "The real issue is one of judgment," he told reporters in Dike, adding that people "want a president who makes his decisions based on what's good for the people he's served, not what's good for his own political future."

He also said Romney was misinterpreting his methamphetamine record and argued that sentencing laws for meth dealers in Arkansas are "more than twice as harsh as they were in his state."

Before five friendly audiences, he repeatedly raised both issues as he lamented "negative TV ads and poison mail pieces."

"I've been attacked pretty brutally recently, in part because I had the audacity to say that I really do believe that we are one nation under God," Huckabee said at a midday event. He was referring to flak he's taken from independent groups - not candidates - for running an ad invoking the birth of Christ.

Huckabee also sought to lower expectations for his own performance - and ramp them up for Romney's.

"He ought to win, given the money," Huckabee said several times, claiming Romney has outspent him 20 to 1. "If we win, it will be a miracle."

Huckabee emphasized he wanted to run a positive campaign but when pressed by reporters he did not rule out running negative ads, saying he reserves the right to aggressively respond to attacks.

Although he often highlights his intention to stay positive, Huckabee frequently takes not-so-veiled shots at his rivals in his standard campaign speech. He usually doesn't name them. Sometimes he will go as far as referring to "my opponents" or "other people running for president."

As he talked of coming from a family of modest means, Huckabee said: "I didn't grow up with a last name or a Rolodex to open a lot of doors. ... I didn't go to an Ivy League school."

Romney is the son of a former Michigan governor, one-time presidential candidate and chief executive of a car company. He has two graduate degrees from Harvard and made millions of dollars as a venture capitalist.

At other points, Huckabee appeared to poke at Romney's chief vulnerability - his reversal on abortion rights and his shifts to the right on other issues.

"Some people are going to tell you everything and anything based on what they think you want to hear just so you'll vote for them - and that's not leadership," he said, assuring his audience that his positions are "what I truly believe from the depths of my heart."

 

[Calabrio]

American Pastoral
Mike Huckabee preaches to the choir, but not everyone's singing along.

Friday, December 21, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

I didn't see the famous floating cross. What I saw when I watched Mike Huckabee's Christmas commercial was a nice man in a sweater sitting next to a brightly lit tree. He had easy warmth and big brown puppy-dog eyes, and he talked about taking a break from politics to remember the peace and joy of the season. Sounds good to me.

Only on second look did I see the white lines of the warmly lit bookcase, which formed a glowing cross. Someone had bothered to remove the books from that bookcase, or bothered not to put them in. Maybe they would have dulled the lines.

Is there a word for "This is nice" and "This is creepy"? For that is what I felt. This is so sweet-appalling.

I love the cross. The sight of it, the fact of it, saves me, literally and figuratively. But there is a kind of democratic politesse in America, and it has served us well, in which we are happy to profess our faith but don't really hit people over the head with its symbols in an explicitly political setting, such as a campaign commercial, which is what Mr. Huckabee's ad was.

I wound up thinking this: That guy is using the cross so I'll like him. That doesn't tell me what he thinks of Jesus, but it does tell me what he thinks of me. He thinks I'm dim. He thinks I will associate my savior with his candidacy. Bleh.

The ad was shrewd. The caucus is coming, the TV is on, people are home putting up the tree, and the other candidates are all over the tube advancing themselves and attacking someone else. Mr. Huckabee thinks, I'll break through the clutter by being the guy who reminds us of the reason for the season, in a way that helps underscore that I'm the Christian candidate and those other fellas aren't. As a break from the nattering argument, as a message that highlights something bigger than politics, it was refreshing.

Was the cross an accident? Please. It was as accidental as Mr. Huckabee's witty response, when he accused those of questioning the ad of paranoia, was spontaneous. "Actually I will confess this, if you play this spot backwards it says 'Paul is dead, Paul is dead, Paul is dead,' " he said. As Bill Safire used to say of clever moves, "That's good stuff!"

Ken Mehlman, the former Republican chairman, once bragged in my presence that in every ad he did he put in something wrong--something that went too far, something debatable. TV producers, ever hungry for new controversy, would play the commercial over and over as pundits on the panel deliberated over its meaning. This got the commercial played free all over the news.

The cross is the reason you saw the commercial. The cross made it break through.

Mr. Huckabee is a telegenic presence, fluid and unself-conscious. The camera is his friend. It is not the potential exposer of his flaws but the conduit by which his warmth and intelligence can be more broadly known. This gift, and seeing the camera this way is a gift, carries greater implications in American politics than, say, in British politics. In Britain, public persona is important, as Tony Blair showed, but there you rise up in the parliamentary system. You have to learn to play well with the other children. You have to form alliances, handle a portfolio, create coalitions, lead within the party and then the country.

In American politics you don't have to go through that grueling process. You can be born on TV. Some candidates for president have a closer relationship with the makeup woman at "Hannity" and the guy who mics you up on "Meet" than they do with state party chiefs and union leaders. Experience, background and positions can be trumped by killer spots or a dominating debate performance.

This is some of Mr. Huckabee's power. There's the fact that he's new, and the fact that Americans are in a funny historic moment: The lives they lead are good, and comfortable, but they sense deep down that the infrastructure of our good fortune is in many ways frail, that Citi may fall and Korea go crazy and some nut go kaboom. In such circumstances some would think a leader radically different--an outsider, a minister, a self proclaimed non-establishment type--might be an answer.

Mr. Huckabee reminds me of two governors who became president, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Like Mr. Clinton, he is a natural, charming, bright and friendly. Yet one senses something unsavory there, something not so nice. Like Mr. Bush, his approach to politics seems, at bottom, highly emotional, marked by great spurts of feeling and mighty declarations as to what the Lord wants. The problem with this, and with Bushian compassionate conservatism, which seems to have an echo in Mr. Huckabee's Christianism, is that to the extent it is a philosophy, it is not a philosophy that allows debate. Because it comes down to "This is what God wants." This is not an opener of discussion but a squelcher of it. It doesn't expand the process, it frustrates it.

Mr. Huckabee is clever. He puts forth his policies, such as they are, based on a faith-based understanding of public policy, and if you disagree with his policies, or take a hard shot at them, or at him, he suggests the reason is that you look down on evangelicals. This creates a new fissure in a party already riven by fissures. He has been accused by some in the conservative press of tearing the party apart, but it was being torn apart before he got on the scene. His rise is not a cause of collapse but an expression of it.

He plays the victim well. Others want to "trip him up," but he'll "get my message out there." His foes are "Wall Street-Washington" insiders, elitists. On the "Today" show he said his critics are the type who never liked evangelical Christians. When one of them runs, these establishment types say " 'Oh my gosh, now they're serious, they don't want to just show up and vote, they actually would want to be part of the discussion and really talk about issues that include hunger and poverty and things.' "

This is a form of populist manipulation. Evangelical Christians have been strong in the Republican Party since the 1970s. President Bush and Karl Rove helped them become more important. The suggestion that they are a small and abused group within the GOP is strange. It is as if the Reagan Democrats, largely Catholic and suburban, who buoyed the Republican Party from the late '70s through 2004, and who were very much part of the GOP coalition, decided to announce that Catholics have been abused within the party, and it's time for Christmas commercials with floating Miraculous Medals.

Does Mr. Huckabee understand that his approach is making people uncomfortable? Does he see himself as divisive? He's a bright man, so it's hard to believe he doesn't. But it's working for him. It's getting him his 30 points in Iowa in a crowded field.

Could he win the nomination? Who knows? It's all a bubbling stew on the Republican side, and no one knows who'll float to the top. In an interview this week with David Brody of CBN, Mr. Huckabee said people everywhere were coming to him and saying, "We are claiming Isaiah 54 for you, that the weapons formed against you will not prosper."

Prayer is powerful. But Huckabee's critics say he's a manipulator with a mean streak and little knowledge of the world. And Isaiah 54 doesn't say anything about self-inflicted wounds.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father" (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays on OpinionJournal.com.

 

[04SCTLS]

The Huckster considers the evangelicals as sheep to be led and he's the shepperd.
Like Bush he has realized that these people are the low lying fruit on the tree , easily picked, influenced and led and won over as all they really seem to care about is homosexuality and abortion.
Both these demagogic issues fall under the MYOB category and shouldn't have anything to do with government policy.
Who cares about real issues that are too hard and complex to understand when we have GOD's candidate and our simple views. We'll put our "faith" in him as he talks to God and knows best.
The right words and they will follow the shepperd, chanting their softly spoken magic spells, over a cliff if nesessary.

Anyways here's some political cartoons on the Huckster

 

[fossten]

Huckabee should not win the nomination because he's too liberal. He WILL not win the general because the media will torch his religious stance.

 

[Calabrio]

Democrats are doing what the Republicans should have had the sense to do when Howard Dean was moving towards winning the nomination in '04.

They are shutting up and hoping we impulsively nominate the weakest candidate of the bunch. The stories about the Democrats stating that Hucakabe have a glass jaw are true. Why else have we heard virtually nothing about Huck's calls to quarantine AIDS patience, his pardoning of criminals because they were born-again Christians, or his desire to taxes in the mainstream media?