The ‘Huckabee Panic’

December 15, 2007

It may be an exaggeration to say conservatives are having a major-league freak-out over the prospects of Mike Huckabee winning the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, but only slightly.

In the new issue of the Weekly Standard, conservative Stephen Hayes warns of the “perils of Huckaplomacy,” highlighting all of the many ways in which Huckabee seems to have a child-like understanding of international affairs. In the new issue of National Review, conservative Rich Lowry writes that Huckabee’s nomination “would represent an act of suicide by his party,” in large part because the Arkansan is “manifestly unprepared to be president of the United States.” Both Charles Krauthammer and Peggy Noonan devoted parts of their columns yesterday expressing discomfort with Huckabee’s faith-based presidential campaign.

This is hardly limited to the GOP establishment. John Cole, in a post headlined, “The Huckabee Panic,” noted that several major far-right bloggers are “beginning to squirm in the face of Huckabee’s surge.”

It’s pretty obvious why the left is frightened by the notion of a Huckabee presidency — we’ve already seen the results of electing a nutty southern governor who doesn’t know anything about policy, who runs on his charm, his evangelical religion, and his appeal to far-right activists — but what’s up the right’s apoplexy?

Part of it surely has something to do with their confidence that Huckabee would lose. For that matter, some conservatives are probably genuinely uncomfortable with Huckabee’s record, which includes tax increases and a generally liberal approach to illegal immigration.

But that’s only part of the picture. There’s clearly a broader phenomenon here.

At the risk of linking to Kevin Drum in every post, his reaction to this is right in line with mine.

[A]s with blogosphere conservatives, mainstream conservatives are mostly urban sophisticates with a libertarian bent, not rural evangelicals with a social conservative bent. They’re happy to talk up NASCAR and pickup trucks in public, but in real life they mostly couldn’t care less about either. Ditto for opposing abortion and the odd bit of gay bashing via proxy. But when it comes to Ten Commandments monuments and end times eschatology, they shiver inside just like any mainstream liberal. The only difference is that usually they keep their shivering to themselves because they want to keep everyone in the big tent happy.

But then along comes Huckabee, and guess what? He’s the real deal. Not a guy like George Bush or Ronald Reagan, who talks a soothing game to the snake handlers but then turns around and spends his actual political capital on tax cuts, foreign wars, and deregulating big corporations. Huckabee, it turns out, isn’t just giving lip service to evangelicals, he actually believes all that stuff. Among other things, he believes in creationism (really believes), once proposed that AIDS patients should be quarantined, appears to share the traditional evangelical view that Mormonism is a cult, and says (in public!) that homosexuality is sinful. And that’s all without seeing the text of any of his old sermons, all of which he refuses to let the press lay eyes on.

Quite right. The Republican Party’s religious right base is supposed to be seen, not heard. Candidates are supposed to pander to this crowd, not actually come from this crowd. They’re supposed to be the foot-soldiers come Election Day, and then quietly sit back while the party directs its attention to billionaires, oil companies, and the neocons.

Except it’s not working out that way this time. The GOP has fallen into a trap of its own making — Republicans have been creating a far-right religious party for years, and now Huckabee couldn’t be more pleased to reap the rewards.

Lowry admitted as much in his NR piece.

The GOP’s social conservatism inarguably has been an enormous benefit to the party throughout the past 30 years, winning over conservative Democrats and lower-income voters who otherwise might not find the Republican limited-government message appealing. That said, nominating a Southern Baptist pastor running on his religiosity would be rather overdoing it. Social conservatism has to be part of the Republican message, but it can’t be the message in its entirety.

In other words, “You guys are supposed to have a seat at the table; what are you doing trying to run the meeting?”

Republicans played Frankenstein, and are no longer happy with their monster. They should have thought of that before.

It’s pretty obvious why the left is frightened by the notion of a Huckabee presidency

Sure, but hopefully the left is salivating about a Huckabee nomination. This guy would be the death of the republican’ts in the oval office.

Come to think of it, maybe God is behind this “surge” after all. . .

  • In the new issue of the Weekly Standard, conservative Stephen Hayes warns of the “perils of Huckaplomacy,”

    I don’t understand this. Is he saying there is something wrong with hicks?

  • 2Ch 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

    -God

  • When it comes to political debate, the fox news and National Review is the same as the liberal media, and their ideology shows. No wonder their argument is weak and out of touch. Democracy means one man one vote and money not necessarily can buy.

  • I’m right with Kevin Drum, until he says:

    But when it comes to Ten Commandments monuments and end times eschatology, they shiver inside just like any mainstream liberal.

    I think he’s painting the people he’s describing with too broad a brush. At the higher end of the socio-economic ladder, he’s probably more right. But when it comes to the more modern-middle-class conservative- the social climber who left the suburbs behind to try to be a bigshot (in his own mind) middle manager or lower-rung office employee in the city, or who tries to “move up” within his own small town by becoming a cop or something, and who thinks one day he might make it big investing or buying houses- for those people, I think the reaction often is, “Well, geez, I don’t know.” They’re willing to let the far-righties drag them along for the ride, in part because they think it’s fitting or exciting that America should have its own far-right religious fanatics- something about religious fanaticism scares a lot of people, and makes them think we don’t have quality warriors or a fierce population unless we have our own, similar fanatics, I think. To the extent they have doubts or reservations, I think some of them may partly be reluctant to believe all the supernatural claims- rather than revulsion against the specific persecution of minorities (including homosexuals, and whatever else) that tends to come from the religious right.

    But, I think among very sophisticated right-wingers, people who are maybe a little more like what Kevin word-for-word is describing, there is a beginning of seeing how far the religious right has gone as being dangerous, a wordly acknowledgement that all the rel. right’s current interpretations of Bible doctrine are not necessarily very practical ways for our country to live. And that, I think, is why the Peggy Noonan and Charles Krauthammer articles tag on the lines about being reluctant about the religious character of the campaign. They’re against Huckabee because they don’t think he’s a winner, but as long as they’re doing the yeoman’s work of dissuading people from backing the loser, they’re also trying to “go for extra credit,” and slip in some long-term strategy-moves, trying to plant the seeds to get righties to be more comfortable with thinking or expressing that the religious right sometimes goes too far. Long story short, right wing leadership has discovered it wants to be able to put the brakes on the Evangelicals every once in a while, and that it believes we really can’t live with everything the Evangelicals want to do.

    Don’t be too encouraged by that, though, because they still have their support for lots of terrible things on the table. What they don’t want is things like anti-abortion going too far, for example, but these righties are by no means going to become like liberals.

  • Social conservatives really care about social issues. Liberals care about social issues, frequently on the opposite side. The Republicans who fear a Huckabee nomination don’t care about social issues one way or the other. Ten Commandments on the courthouse lawn? Prayer in schools? Don’t care one way or the other – just don’t raise my taxes.

    Huckabee represents a takeover of the Republican Party by the religious social conservatives they have courted and manipulated for over twenty-five years. The chickens are coming home to roost.

    Huck would be a disaster for Republicans in the general election. And I think he’s going to get the nomination!

  • I think what’s scaring them is not just that the religious faction has a candidate in Huckabee, but that, in their heart of hearts, they realize that all of the alternatives are also manifestly unprepared to be president of the United States. No one really likes any of the ‘mainstream’ candidates enough to offset organized enthusiasm of the Christianists for one of their own.

  • Candidates are supposed to pander to this crowd, not actually come from this crowd.

    That’s a good way of putting it. They’re people to be used and confused. It would be too weird for them to take the reins themselves.

    That said, I think it’s worth remembering that the right leadership really do want the far right social movements- they want the Hitler Youth, the nazi skinheads and the Klan, or stuff like that, in the streets in big numbers (even if specific Republican politicians would never openly praise stuff like that, nowadays). But they want to e able to keep different aspects of the populist social movement cordoned off, they want to be able to pick and choose.

    Again, in short, they want the common far-right right wingers in the street making noise and intimidating people, not actually telling the (in reality) more sober and more expert, (for example) prestigious public servant right-wingers what the exact governmental policy is going to be.

  • But they want to be able to keep different aspects of the populist social movement cordoned off, they want to be able to pick and choose.

    That is, they want to cordon off the specific issues that are important to the movement that actually get advanced, that win government action and not just lip-service, from the politicians and other public servants.

    They don’t want the social movement to be able to put it’s agenda whole-hog on the table for adoption/action.

  • […]conservatives are having a major-league freak-out over the prospects of Mike Huckabee winning the Republican Party’s presidential nomination[…] — CB

    Serves them right. As the twig is bent…

    They’ve been bending that twig for years, training that tree to grow in the direction they thought they wanted. And now, that tree is grown big enough to let them all swing off of it… *Now* they don’t like the fruit? My heart bleeds for them, but all I have to offer in comfort is still: tough titty.

    Instead of dragging religion into the public arena all those years and paying lip service to it, they should have studied it at home. They might have learnt that, “as ye shall sow, so shall ye reap”…

  • The bottom line is, conservatives are happy with a leader who says he talks to God regularly and does what He says, but mostly confines himself to tax breaks for the rich and dancing a marionette’s boogie to the string-pulling of Big Business. They (except for the down-on-the-floor-rolling-in-fundamentalist-self-denial whackjobs) are, however, uncomfortable with the idea of somene who might interpret The Word literally. Bush knows full well that there have been as many religious edicts issued against sloth, indolence and greed as there have been against murder or sleeping with family members – but he spent a disproportionate amount of his presidency on vacation, and is quite comfortable with the idea of having more money than you could ever spend. THAT’S the kind of religious leader the conservatives like.

    I agree with those who suggest Mike Huckabee is totally out of his depth, and doesn’t have the first clue how to run anything bigger than a state, if that. In this he is little different than Fred Thompson with his folksy aphorisms and manly smell. He seems overwhelmed with the notion that the presidency might actually lie in his grasp, and has fallen into a pattern of nodding his head and saying “sure”, and then trying to go further than whatever the questioner proposed. I’ll do better than using less energy – Americans will use no energy. Not only will I keep guns out of schools, nothing metal will be allowed. He hasn’t the scent of a clue on how any of these things will be accomplished, but he’s ready to promise anything if he can just be president.

    I frankly don’t think he could do as much harm as Bush has – for starters, he’s smarter, even as unschooled as he appears to be. But I don’t think we’ll ever know. For one, I still think the nominee is going to be Romney; it’s early days yet. For another, either Obama or Clinton would cut Huckabee to ribbons in a debate.

  • Huckleberry doesn’t blow up small animals, kick opposing players from the sidelines, bullying everyone, getting filthy rich from the process and keeping everything secret.

    He’s just too tame for the NotRightroots who believe in applying hatefulness and deathdealing to everyone. I mean, he’s a freak but he’s gotta advocate eating babies for the real love to flow from the nuke ’em all punditocracy.

  • I wrote:

    But, I think among very sophisticated right-wingers, people who are maybe a little more like what Kevin word-for-word is describing, . . .

    That is, word-for-word, except for the “mainstream” part.

    The shortest way to describe my truck with Kevin’s comment is, I think the people he’s describing are more like “elite” Republicans, and that “mainstream” Republicans are more like: what he described in his first paragraph in the excerpt, minus his “shudder” sentence I objected to, plus my additional description in the first big paragraph of my #5 comment.

    I think with the elite Republicans, there can be a shudder, but for the even-more-elite Republicans, it tends to become less of a shudder, and more (at least, now is the trend) a practical rejection.

  • I find it somewhat encouraging that Huckabee’s mixed message–simplified, it’s “we can still hate the gays, but we gotta love the poor”–is ascendent over Il Douche’s “hate everyone.”

    And I absolutely love that he’s got the Greed Wing of the Republican Party crapping their collective pants.

  • To be clear: I could never vote for Huckabee, solely because of his hate for the gays. Anti-choice I can respect, though I disagree with; homophobia, never.

  • Nooner said religiousity was OK for Reagan. Times have changed, though, and the real objection is simply fear that egregious religiousity would antagonize too many general election voters.

    If the elites thought Huck could win, they would not be much bothered by the religion. It’s all about winning, simple.

  • yes, huckabee is a republican and a southern baptist minister but… is anyone actually listening to what he’s saying? preventative healthcare, an emphasis on education and reintroduction of the _arts_ back into schools, a philosophy of leadership thru serving and understanding (interpretation: there’s some humility at work there). seems to me he’s at least trying to live by the good book vs. hiding behind it as a justification of some warped sense of manifest destiny.

    of all the republican evils out there he’s by far the lesser of them, imho. i think i could actually sleep at night if it came down to a matchup between obama and huckabee.

  • The bigger picture of course is not what Hukabee is but what he isn’t. He isn’t Guiliani, Romney, McCain or Paul. I mean the GOP is looking at a handful of crazies all around. This is by far the worst group of candidates ever competing for the nomination and the party finds itself deeply divided over what it can accept to represent it. Nothing but bad choices to choose from.

    One group of candidates act like they will continue the Bush disaster and then Hukabee acts like he IS the Bush disaster personality. Thank God I will never have to worry about Hukabee becoming president.

    Out of fear the voter has been forced to become more aware and more involved in our political process because of the serious consequences we’ve had to accept from the current regime. It is out of desperation to prevent the total destruction of our democracy and the awareness of a biased and corrupted media spouting government propaganda that is making Americans pay a lot more attention to this election and to the government’s activities.

    More than anything else Americans are out to set things straight and some feel that only God and prayer is capable of doing that. Fortunately, most of us know that God has given us free choice to determine our own destiny and for those who don’t believe in God they too believe it is up to man to decide how to deal with the issues of our times. The point is that we can no longer avoid taking responsibility for governing our nation without facing the resulting consequences.

    Hukabee’s frivolous attitude toward the seriousness of the intense and urgent issues facing the country will not be so easily dismissed in this campaign. He really has no plans and has been gliding along on the “I’m a good ole boy who believes in God” as if that is all it takes to lead a nation such as ours. It will not stand man. Thanks for coming.

  • Il Douche, Rudi’s authoritarianism scares me because I think he’d be Cheney on meth. But electorialy Huckabee scares me more. I am pretty convinced he could beat Hillary and maybe even Obama in a general election. He has many many problems, ok, I am not for him as a candidate. But he is very personable and funny. His populism is quite appealing. And if you listen to him, he’s running as the anti-Bush. Of all the Rep candidates, other than DrPaul, his stances are anathemic to what the Reps have stood for these last long 7 years. As the other candidates try to outdo each other in championing the absolute worse aspects of the Bush doctrine, he (and DrPaul on empire) is the only one offering an alternative world view, that is truly evangelically based. The country hates Bush and yet the other candidates are all trying to take up the Bush mantle. You’d think that after 06 elections most candidates would be running away from anything Bushie, but has it happened? Not just no, but hell no. I’d bet money that a large percentage of W’s 27%ers would give passing grades to anyone, just out of respect for the office.

    Hillary is running on a Bush-lite platform and if you don’t think Huckabee’s populism and willingness to talk to enemies and to have the counrty act as a good steward for the world won’t appeal to many Independents and conservative Dems, all I can say is, you’re just wrong. The country is aching for a break from the Bush years, Hils is not that break. The base will come out en masse to vote against her. The monied are already hedging their bets and donating to her campaign. And with a Romney and Guiliani as candidate the base would stay home, except against Hillary.

    And the reason the “clothcoat” Reps are afraid of a Huckabee primary victory is not that they think he can’t win the general, they fear he won’t lose it. And if he did win, their own power would be greatly diminished within the party itself. Then the fundies would have absolute primacy because a “true” one of their own had won. Despite the monied and the media.

    So, no matter what happens in the 08 election, the Republicans are going to have a “come to jesus” talk amongst themselves. And the party will splinter.

  • A conservative may not personally care about gays or abortion; as long as it doesn’t effect him, he’s perfectly willing to let other people not have survivor benefits or get bad-mouthed by Bill O’Reilly, or whatever. But let’s say you’re a life-long public servant for the Department of Defense, and you get to call some of the shots, and you’re actually (quietly) a fanatically right-wing and nationalistic person. Then, you may read about such-and-such nation having fanatical tribesman who allegedly are not scared to die because they believe dying in battle will send them to Allah. This may make you feel kind of inferior, and make you feel like our own country should have our own fanatical religious squadrons, and that our religious fanatics should be better than everyone else’s religious fanatics. You don’t care about any other effects of having religious fanatics in our society, because life is a video game to you– all you care about is, for instance, tanks blowing up stuff, and you’ve never read about or cared much about the basic principles of governance and civil society. Then you feel like the religious right should be promoted. It’s independent of any religious doctrine on your part. You’re content to be polite out loud, because you are shrewd, but you keep your (what basically amounts to) agnosticism to yourself. But then, what if you realize after time passes that our country is going to be in a real jam if we don’t have abortion (do to the press of increasing population). You don’t believe a rapture is coming to bail us out, either within 15 years from now, or any time at all, really. And you really love America. So while the abortion thing is good, politically, to motivate the really-right-wing movement you feel the right needs to make the right powerful in America, and the anti-abortion movement provides fodder for that, ultimately you’ve decided you don’t want them to win the political battle over the issue, and you’ve decided you’lll do what you can to hinder them.

    That doesn’t make you a friend to someone who needs an abortion, or (in a similar analysis) a gay person. You may hate women who get pregnant before they get married, or hate gay people, or just not give a shit about them, so long as it doesn’t effect you (and you might be shitty if you meet them in person and talk about those issues, or you may be polite and patronizing, but no more actually on their side for the fact that you acted like that- there are all types). It’s just that in the long run, you’ve decided to work against the “conservative” position on those issues gaining ground.

    All of the above, to me, is a pretty good “for instance” description of the very-high-rung elites among conservatives I mentioned in earlier comments.

  • So, besides the macho-military-might rationale I speculated on above, there is one more reason the type of conservative I described wants people to be religious:

    Being religious binds them to you. It makes them easy to motivate and manipulate. All you have to do is appeal to the religion interest- push the button. If people were alienated from their religion, they might start thinking a lot more about the world and about the nation of the human race and it’s position in things. And it might make them go over to the liberals- at least, they would stop sticking stamps and licking envelopes for you.

    But, that does not mean you want them to follow every doctrine of their religion all the time. And it doesn’t mean you’d like them to stop listening to you and to start following the leadership of a sincere religious person who is going to lead them in a religious-bound direction. So you want them to have “too much” of religion after a point; to get really religious and motivated by religion, but to be able to get “turned off” by it after a while, and to listen to another point of view.

  • I wrote: the nation of the human race

    Should have been ‘the nature of the human race.’

    Also comment #22, (do to the press of increasing population), should have been ‘due to,’ of course.

  • So you could see, if you think about it, how fascist-rightwing-secular conservativism and religious-wacko-rightwing conservativism could be at loggerheads. A lot of things a secular person might think are best for the nation could be offensive to the religious, and the secular rightwinger has to pretend to be religious or has to be polite to the religious ones to give that movement room to breathe.

    But the thing, all this religious mythology isn’t real. Regardless of whether you believe in some core parts of Christianity we mostly all can agree on, there are a lot of myths and stories out there that people hold out as true that are just not true at all, except in a certain mythological sense, for the message they impart. So, if the religious keep insisting on those beliefs and their supremacy, eventually all of us who live here in the real world have to confront the consequences whether we are religious or not.

  • The funny thing is, the moneycons think that they’re the grown-ups who’ve been playing the theocons for chumps all along. But from where I stand, the moneycons are scarcely less nutty than the theocons. “Tax cuts always pay for themselves” versus “God wanted the U.S. to invade Iraq”; “abolish Social Security” versus “repeal Griswold v. Connecticut” — it’s an embarrassment of embarrassments, isn’t it?

    My own prediction is that the moneycons will win, and that the MSM will rejoice that the Republicans have been purged of their loony wing. Because while Huckabee is a nut, clearly Giuliani is the very image of prudence and moderation.

  • In this corner, the Ghoulists; in that corner, the Huckavangicals. They’ll devour each other, rapture each other, and leave this world a much better place for three unique reasons:

    1.) Neoconservativism will be driven into the sea, its last ragged vestiges rallying around RooDee in a final defense against the Legions of WingNuttia.

    2.) The Religious Right will drown in its own maniacal xenophobia, blaming each other for not being true to one or another of the fanatically-literal interpretations of their holy book as they march to the final redoubt that they imagine the Huck-n-Chuck show to be.

    3.) The “Battle Royale” that ensues will demote the GOP to a permanent fringe-party status, with (a) those mainstream conservatives still standing after 2008 and (b) Paulist quasi-libertarians relegated to Quixotic ramblings about non-existent imperialist conspiracy theories no longer able to forge any viable concept of unity.

    The vacuum effect created by the sudden void should, within two to three election cycles, cause the democratic Party to assume a more natural boundary between Liberals and Progressives, eventually causing a somewhat-amicable split. This event, coupled with the eviscerated GOP in its final, fragmented form, should result in four actual parties—Conservative, Libertarian, Progressive, and Liberal—no one of which can gain a majority, but with the most likely coalition (either Libertarian/Progressive or Progressive/Liberal being capable of forging some measure of alliance, with Progressive/Liberal perhaps being the most likely) being held in proper check by those parties not within the coalesced majority.

    All this, due to the fragmentation of the GOP brought about by the Bu$h administration and the bizarre weirdness of Huckleberry Huck….

  • It’s all well and good that Huckebee has acknowledged that there are poor people in America, but he doesn’t get points for stating the obvious. In some circles, he gets demerits for doing it because if we acknowledge there are poor people, maybe we have to address the problems of poor people – and if there is no way to do that through the GOP favorites of the private sector and market forces, if there is no way for some contractor to make a gazillion dollars off the whole thing, it’s better to pretend that all is well and there are no poor people.

    The things that make some within his own party uncomfortable and panicky are not the things that worry me. I get panicky when I think about Justices Stevens and Ginsburg retiring from the Supeme Court. I get panicky when I think about Roe v. Wade being overturned. I get panicky when I think about Duncan Hunter as Secretary of Defense. I get panicky when I think about a religious war breaking out in this country.

    It is not a given that if the GOP is opposed to something, it must be something we are – or should be – for. That there is growing unease with Huckabee should not equate to more ease among Democrats – it might just mean that Huckabee is the wrong person across the spectrum.

  • In the new issue of the Weekly Standard, conservative Stephen Hayes warns of the “perils of Huckaplomacy,”
    >>
    Given his track record, why does anyone take Stephen Hayes seriously? I mean, come on, that half-witten buffoon hasn’t been right about anything in his entire career. Perhaps Huckabee should be encouraged that Hayes is critical of him, since he’s been wrong about everything.

  • “The vacuum effect created by the sudden void should, within two to three election cycles, cause the democratic Party to assume a more natural boundary between Liberals and Progressives, eventually causing a somewhat-amicable split. This event, coupled with the eviscerated GOP in its final, fragmented form, should result in four actual parties—Conservative, Libertarian, Progressive, and Liberal—no one of which can gain a majority, but with the most likely coalition (either Libertarian/Progressive or Progressive/Liberal being capable of forging some measure of alliance, with Progressive/Liberal perhaps being the most likely) being held in proper check by those parties not within the coalesced majority.”
    >>>
    Wow, what a fantastic possibility. However, I’m afraid it is just a chimera, my friend.

  • Does anyone remember Gov Long of Louisiana? He was folksy and said humorous things and made every dilemma simple. He and Gov Huckabee have a lot in common. Coat everything with cinnamon and sugar and the people will buy it.

  • Huckabee Panic, the video game:

    Huckabee runs around, converting sinners with the power of the Lord, on an impossble mission to save the world before the Rapture.

    Play as Huckabee himself, or as one of six bible-thumpin’ interns working on his campaign.

  • This whole idea of the Republicans becoming a fringe party any time soon is a little bit too sugar-n-spice for me.

    There are tons of people who are not for what the Democratic Party stands for.

    I don’t know how it’s going to shake out, and maybe they won’t want to vote, but maybe they’ll just come out and vote out of habit.

  • The vacuum effect created by the sudden void should, within two to three election cycles, cause the democratic Party to assume a more natural boundary between Liberals and Progressives, eventually causing a somewhat-amicable split. This event, coupled with the eviscerated GOP in its final, fragmented form, should result in four actual parties—Conservative, Libertarian, Progressive, and Liberal—no one of which can gain a majority,

    Steve –

    A nice theory, but not possible given the US political system. The two party system is so embedded in everything that happens at a state and federal level that, even if such splits occur, the natural rebound would be to have two new coalition parties form from the remains.

    A more likely scenario is that with conservative, libertarian and theocratic factions all addled by the upheaval in the GOP, the liberals and progressives have a small window of opportunity to pull the discourse to the left for a few election cycles. Assuming of course that the conservative factions in the Democratic party can also be discredited and successfully fought against for those same cycles (they’re making it easier to make the case against them with their bumbling incompetence and stonewalling tactics lately – we’ll see how the leadership battles in the Senate play out next year). This is a useful corrective and one that has been needed in our political process for a few decades now, but I wouldn’t expect anything more than that. Eventually the conservatives will rally again and the cycle will repeat. Hopefully we can get a saner conservative movement the next time around.

  • Several posters have pointed out that Huckleberry is not fit or qualified to be President. Those weaknesses didn’t prevent the Repubs from nominating Bush. He is no more qualified that Huckleberry, even less so. Huckleberry would no doubt be an improvement over Bush, but then so would Homer Simpson or Cedric the Entertainer or your average Basset Hound.

  • I can’t believe no one is jumping on Huckster’s DuMond pardon, and the NEAR-pardon of another guy by the name of Glen Green back in 2004. This guy assaulted an 18 year old girl on Little Rock AFB, tried to rape her before she briefly escaped, then recaptured her, thoroughly beat her senseless, then threw her in the back trunk of his car and drove off-base to another county to have his way with her. To finish her off, he drove over her body and dumped her in a bayou. All of this was back in 1974…

    Flash-forward to 2004, and Huckabee, at the request of a fellow minister who claimed this murder/rapist had found God, tried to get a pardon…and Huckabee WOULD HAVE GIVEN IT had there not been a massive stink about the pardon from the victim’s family, victim’s rights advocates, and just about every SANE person in the state of AR….yeah, nice going there Huckabee, real sign of compassion there…(see Salon article for more details, and the post from above in this area too).

    If H-boy gets the Republican nomination, this pardon program is going to be the death of him…don’t think for a moment that the Democrats won’t return the “Willie Horton” favor the GOP so richly deserves. Can you just imagine how EASY this would be if Hillary is the messenger?

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