Gala wrote:Nonetheless, he has a sense of social responsibilty which I admire.
But how deep does it go? Skin-deep at best, apparently:
Quote:THE LIMITS OF HUCKABEE'S OUTRAGE....
Way back in May, at the first debate for the Republican presidential candidates, there was an interesting exchange that signaled the kind of talk we could expect from Mike Huckabee.
The former governor explained, "The most important thing a president needs to do is to make it clear that we're not going to continue to see jobs shipped overseas ... and then watch as a CEO takes a hundred-million-dollar bonus to jettison those American jobs somewhere else." After decrying CEO pay and vulnerable worker pensions, Huckabee concluded, "That's criminal. It's wrong. And if Republicans don't stop it, we don't deserve to win in 2008."
At the time, it surprised some people that a Republican candidate would even pay lip service to the concerns of working people. It led some to argue that Huckabee had something of a populist streak.
He doesn't. For one thing, it's hard to even take the notion seriously given Huckabee's enthusiastic support for a 23% national sales tax. For another, his talk about how "criminal" it is for CEOs to reap a windfall while workers are losing their jobs is just pleasant-sounding rhetoric, which he has no intention of taking seriously.
Huckabee made this abundantly clear during a CNBC interview on Monday night.
HARWOOD: Governor, let me ask you, which is the criminal part, the loss of those jobs and the loss of pension, or the golden parachute for the CEO? And what would you do about either one?
HUCKABEE: It's a combination. It's when one person is losing his job who helped make the company successful and the person who steers the company either into bankruptcy or selling off it in pieces has that golden parachute of $700 million.... What the government ought to do is to call attention to it, put some spotlight to it. I don't think it's about coming up with some new regulation. Corporate boards ought to show some responsibility. If a board allows that kind of thing to happen, shame on that board.
Asked if he, as president, would actually want to do something about the problem, Huckabee said he would "like" to see corporate boards "show responsibility." He would oppose efforts to regulate, though, because government action "only exacerbates a problem."
So, in May, Huckabee insisted that it was "criminal" to see CEOs cleaning up while workers are losing their jobs, and said Republicans have no choice but to intervene and "stop it." But in December, Huckabee believes the government should do nothing more than "call attention to" the problem.
I suppose it's the difference between a long-shot in the spring, and a credible challenger in the fall. Seven months ago, Huckabee could pretend to care about working people, because few knew his name, and even fewer thought he had a chance. Now, Huckabee wants to win, so he's dropping the pretense.
Something to consider the next time the media mentions Huckabee's "populist" streak.
nimh, the more he rises in the poles, the scarier he gets. What's extra uncomfortable is romney is equally a phony-- and it looks like they're the front runners.
How about his latest "I'm not going to release and attack ad, but let me just show it to the mainstream media so they know I made an attack ad but decided to take the high road and not air it." The man's a little koo-koo.
January 2, 2008, 11:33 am
Two-Buck Huck
The rap against Mike Huckabee, the Baptist preacher and ex-Arkansas governor now doing for the Republican Party establishment what three-alarm chili does for an afternoon nap, is that he's too inexperienced to be president, too naïve ?- a rube straight out of Dogpatch.
Few of Huckabee's critics have actually come out and said what many of them think. The language is coded, as it usually is with class and race in this country. The Wall Street Journal, the anti-tax jihadists at the Club For Growth, the National Review - these pillars of Old School Republicanism have signaled that Huckabee is Not One of Ours. But they're careful to say it's not about class, because, of course - it is!
Class war is forbidden in the Republican playbook. But Huckabee, despite an inept last week of campaigning, has forced the Republican party to face the Wal-Mart shoppers that they have long taken advantage of. He's here. He's Gomer. And he's not going away.
Huckabee revels in the class war. He's Two-Buck Huck, and darn proud of it. He likes nothing better than playing the Hick from Hope. He and his wife lived in a trailer for a while, he points out. His son killed a dog one summer, "a mangy dog" at that, as Huckabee explained to the befuddled national press corps. He said he used to eat squirrels, cooking them up in his popcorn popper. Ewwwwhhh!
And what's up with that Chuck Norris shadow, following him everywhere like a late-night rerun? To the establishment, Norris is a B-lister with a bad hair dye and a '70s-era karate shtick. They prefer Bruce Willis - bald Republican action hero.
Huckabee has been telling people in Iowa that Republican higher-ups would never let him become the nominee because he "has a hick last name." Wow. I'd like to be in on that focus group.
"For my family, summer was never a verb," he says. Take that, Mitt Romney and your perfect family, costumed in Ralph Lauren casual wear down by the shore. And this: "Wall Street types are afraid to death of a guy like me." You mean, a guy who lost 110 pounds and cooks squirrels in his popcorn popper?
In his book "From Hope to Higher Ground," Huckabee wrote that just before he moved into the governor's mansion, "dozens of hate-filled letters proclaimed that we lacked the class to live in such a fine and stately home."
Of course, he didn't help himself when he finally moved out of the mansion and into a fine and stately home of his own. A gift registry was set up so people could help the Hucks furnish their new 7,000-square-foot casa. This from a man who accepted more than $130,000 worth of gifts as governor, everything from a $600 chain saw to a discount card at Wendy's.
At the root of all the sniping at Huckabee, he sees a common cause. Some powerful Republicans dislike him, he said on the "Today Show," because "I'm not one of them."
It's okay to have faux rubes, a la Bush senior and his pork rinds, or George W. and his Midland malapropisms. But when something that looks like the real thing comes along, the Republican royalists get apoplectic. They were appalled at the recent YouTube debate because it looked like a parody of one faction of their party - complete with Bible-waving wackos, trigger-happy gun nuts and Confederate-flag enthusiasts.
Among fellow Republican candidates, Huckabee is certainly "not one of them" in the bottom-line sense. All the other leading contenders would be comfortable on the massage table at a Trump seaside resort, in between seminars on how to keep poor people from getting health care. Romney, with a net worth estimated by Money magazine at upwards of $250 million, made his pile with an investment firm. Rudolph Giuliani is close to the $50 million club, enriched by such heavy-lifting as trying to help the makers of OxyContin stay out of jail.
Huckabee tells audiences that he is one generation removed from folks who slept on a dirt floor, and that he's the first person in his family to graduate from high school. It's a terrific narrative, as American as they come.
There is some evidence that he's bringing lower-income Americans into the party. The latest Des Moines Register poll shows that Huckabee runs strongest among people earning $50,000 or less a year.
Still, there's not much for the other end to fear from Huckabee. He bashes the "Wall Street to Washington axis." But would he put some restraint on the new Gilded Age titans, or abolish the gravy train that lets guys like Fred Thompson and Trent Lott get rich by selling the ex-senator part of their resume? Nope.
And his astonishingly regressive tax plan, getting rid of the income tax for one that takes revenue from sales, would do for the rich what the late Leona Helmsley did for her dog in that infamous will.
Republicans in the three-home set should relax. Huckabee may occasionally lack class, but he's no class warrior. You can have him over for dinner. Honest. Just hide the popcorn popper.
I love the boy. Sure he's nutty, but I figure I could talk to him about it and he would engage me straight up.
But much more importantly, he is helping to rip apart the coalition. They hate him over at Fox. Serious hate. As does Rush. And Coulter. And the National Review, etc.
However, Blatham, they hate Ron Paul even more! Never bfore has such a popular candidate been so incredibly ignored!
nick
Oh yeah. For certain. The last thing the corporate Republican power structure wants is 'small government'. They are huge and they want to BE the government...its deciders, its military, its bureaucrats, its planners and, most importantly, its beneficiaries.
Another thing I actually like about Huckabee is that he is not (quite the opposite of what Coulter claims) stupid. The christmas ad was quite brilliant. And how about this comment from last night...
Quote: Mike Huckabee said Wednesday that he's doing so well in the polls because "people are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off."
Leave it to the Reps to bring us another certified moron/nut. Of course, he is no worse than GWB, Nixon, Agnew, Quayle, or Reagan.
Advocate wrote:Leave it to the Reps to bring us another certified moron/nut. Of course, he is no worse than GWB, Nixon, Agnew, Quayle, or Reagan.
Ah. Of the people you've listed I am going to rate them in order of their moron/nutt-itude. One being the highest moron/nut of all.
1. GWB, Nixon, Agnew, Quayle, Huckabee
2. Reagan (although, he really ought to join the others)
Gala wrote:Advocate wrote:Leave it to the Reps to bring us another certified moron/nut. Of course, he is no worse than GWB, Nixon, Agnew, Quayle, or Reagan.
Ah. Of the people you've listed I am going to rate them in order of their moron/nutt-itude. One being the highest moron/nut of all.
1. GWB, Nixon, Agnew, Quayle, Huckabee
2. Reagan (although, he really ought to join the others)
I love your term "nuttitude." May I have it? I would put Reagan at or near the top. Contacts, who were nonpartisan, said he was senile and completely removed from reality. He was scripted and controlled during his entire time in office. I could give you many supportive examples . Otherwise, I go along with your list.
Advocate wrote:Gala wrote:Advocate wrote:Leave it to the Reps to bring us another certified moron/nut. Of course, he is no worse than GWB, Nixon, Agnew, Quayle, or Reagan.
Ah. Of the people you've listed I am going to rate them in order of their moron/nutt-itude. One being the highest moron/nut of all.
1. GWB, Nixon, Agnew, Quayle, Huckabee
2. Reagan (although, he really ought to join the others)
I love your term "nuttitude." May I have it? I would put Reagan at or near the top. Contacts, who were nonpartisan, said he was senile and completely removed from reality. He was scripted and controlled during his entire time in office. I could give you many supportive examples . Otherwise, I go along with your list.
Are you aware that you are talking about a republican saint :wink:
Bless you for warning me. I lost my head.
au1929 wrote:January 2, 2008, 11:33 am
Two-Buck Huck
Au, that was great :-)
A very entertaining read :-D
A National Review symposium on Huckabee from this morning...
Quote:January 4, 2008 12:25 AM
One Night in Iowa
What does Huckabee mean for conservatism?
An NRO Symposium
In the wake of Thursday night's Iowa Caucus victory for Mike Huckabee, National Review Online asked a group on Right-minded commentators: What does Huckabee's victory mean for conservatism?
Richard Brookhiser
Preacher cleans rich guy's clock in Iowa ?- what a story! No wonder it filled the headlines ?- in 1988, when Pat Robertson finished ahead of Vice President George H. W. Bush (Bob Dole came in first that year).
Evangelicals began engaging in Republican politics in the late Seventies. Dinesh D'Souza's biography of the late Jerry Falwell gave an early and amusing account of the process. In a meeting with Falwell, Paul Weyrich came up with the name Moral Majority, but thought it was too peppery. Falwell jumped on it. In crowded fields, an evangelical champion, if there is one, can shoot to the front. 1988 was a cattle call, just like this year: Bush, Dole, Kemp, DuPont, and even Al Haig, besides Robertson.
In one important respect, Huckabee's supporters have made a wiser choice than their soul-mates 20 years ago. Their man has been a governor and a lieutenant governor. Unlike Robertson (and the host of tyro candidates who have run recently) he would know the way to the bathroom.
Expect much hand-wringing about religious politics, but remember that this is a religious country, whose believers have often picked sides in our electoral battles. For decades Catholics made their home in the Democratic party; Ray Donovan, Reagan's Secretary of Labor, used to say that the two pictures on the wall of his home growing up were of FDR and Pius XII. Black Protestants are Democrats now, and two of them have sought the Democratic nomination (Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton).
Iowa is early days, and Huckabee will now get a full mauling; Ed Rollins will know just what to expect. But jockeying is the sign of lively coalitions, and the delight of connoisseurs.
I just wish he wasn't such an eye gouger.
?- Richard Brookhiser is a National Review senior editor.
Daniel Casse
I don't know what Huckabee means for conservatism. But it promises a helluva party for the angry Left. Since Thanksgiving, the New York Times has been positively giddy about the possibility that the GOP was firmly in the hands of a genuine Bible-thumper. "They're arguing about Jesus again," was the plain meaning of the half dozen front-page "news analyses" the paper feverishly put together on the Huckabee surge. People for the American Way appears to have an entire team posting news about Huck's progress, including a story crowing "We Like Mike." And why not? They are scripting the fundraising video, likely set to the music from Jaws, as we sit here. Ditto the American Civil Liberties Union, where they are probably studying his "Silent Night" ad in Iowa as if it were the Zapruder film. Can you imagine the gleeful warnings about Huckabee's American that you will be hearing on the Air America Guatemala cruise in February? Liberal interest groups haven't had such an enviable fundraising opportunity since George W. Bush raised the arsenic level in kids' drinking water. The Democratic direct-mail barons are doing handsprings. "I Like Mike," they are shouting. School prayer. Back-alley abortions. Supreme Court nominees. Christian Nation. For them, happy days are here again.
?- Daniel Casse is a senior director of the White House Writers Group.
John Hood
Both major political parties in the U.S. are coalitions. Right now, the Democratic coalition is energized and coherent. The Republican coalition is dispirited and divided. The outcomes in Iowa illustrate these conditions ?- though history and common sense tell us that they did not necessary predict the eventual party nominees.
Look at Mike Huckabee's solid win over Mitt Romney. Of the five major GOP candidates, two are running as the candidates of optimism and reassurance: Romney and Thompson. They seek to hold together and mobilize the traditional triad of fiscal, social, and defense conservatives. For Huckabee, McCain, and Giuliani, the strategy is entirely different. Each in his own way rejects key positions and elements of the triad in an attempt to pull new voters into what they see as an inadequate GOP base.
While the pessimists' goals are similar, only one can prevail. In reality, Huckabee and McCain are effectively operating as agents of Giuliani. Romney's modest performance in Iowa may set up McCain to sting him in New Hampshire, seriously weakening if not destroying Romney's early-state strategy. Since I believe neither Huckabee nor McCain has the resources, issues, and temperament to win the nomination, the beneficiary is obvious.
Fortunately for Mitt Romney ?- and defenders of the current conservative coalition ?- Obama's Iowa win will likely set off a huge and exciting battle in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, thus potentially pulling independents away from the GOP primary and undercutting McCain a bit. The game's not yet over. But Giuliani is now back in it, thanks to Huck.
?- John Hood is a president of the John Locke Foundation.
David Limbaugh
Most expected Huckabee to win Iowa, but his actual victory is somewhat sobering. I believe a Huckabee nomination would be a major step backward for conservatism, given his liberalism, apart from social issues. It's true that George Bush isn't completely conservative either (e.g. spending and immigration), but he has strong conservative credentials on the "big three": taxes, national security and social issues (judges). Huckabee is weak on immigration and only a sure thing on one of the big three.
The question, then, is whether Huckabee's Iowa victory substantially increases his chances of capturing the nomination, without which it will have no impact on conservatism.
It seems the Iowa caucus system and demographics were made to order for Huckabee's identity politics. Very large percentages of the Republican voters are self-described evangelicals. New Hampshire presents a different picture, but Huckabee's impressive win might increase his stature enough to make him more competitive there and elsewhere. He has the advantages of likeability, charisma, and eloquence and could capitalize on the respective weaknesses or perceived weaknesses of the other candidates.
Romney, once thought by pundits to be a strong favorite, looks much more vulnerable having been beaten by a grossly under-funded and recently second-tier candidate. If tonight starts him on a downhill path, the question is whether one of the other candidates ?- Go Fred! ?- will fill the void.
I still think Huckabee is very much a long shot to win the nomination. While large percentages of Republican voters are Christians, they are also conservatives and eventually, Huckabee's dubious conservative bona fides and record should sink his bid. But I admit that could be wishful thinking on my part.
?- David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His book Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party was recently released in paperback.
John J. Pitney Jr.
Huckabee's victory highlights a populist strain in the GOP. Populism has a long history and variety of features, but we can roughly define it as the union of traditional moral values and "little guy" economics. It's God vs. Gomorrah in the bedroom, David v. Goliath in the boardroom.
Thursday night was hardly the first time that populism had left its mark on a GOP nomination contest. In 1988, Pat Robertson placed second in the Iowa caucuses, ahead of George H. W. Bush. Four years later, Pat Buchanan won a surprising 40 percent in the New Hampshire primary. In 1996, Buchanan came close to Bob Dole in Iowa and actually beat him in New Hampshire.
Robertson and Buchanan faded quickly, in part because of their demeanors. Robertson seemed weird, while Buchanan looked mean. Huckabee could last longer because he comes across as sane and nice.
More than mere image, Robertson and Buchanan suffered from limited appeal to orthodox conservatives. According to the Club for Growth, Huckabee takes "profoundly anti-growth positions on taxes, spending, and government regulation." For Huckabee to succeed where Robertson and Buchanan failed, one of two things must happen. Either he must mislead GOP voters into thinking that he is an economic conservative, or those voters must stop caring. Either way, a Huckabee victory would be very bad news for conservatism as we know it.
?- John J. Pitney Jr. is Roy P. Crocker Professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College.
Pat Toomey
Huckabee's win in Iowa is a temporary setback for conservatism. Fortunately, the celebratory mood at Huckabee headquarters will likely end soon. Huckabee is a social conservative, but otherwise liberal populist who managed to capture a plurality of the vote in a large and splintered field in one of the most socially conservative electorates in the union. But there is little chance of this plurality growing into the majority Huckabee needs to take the nomination. In fact, it often seems like Huckabee goes out of his way to anger the other elements of the conservative movement instead of courting them, dismissing his critics who believe in economic freedom and a strong national defense as members of the Washington establishment, Wall Street millionaires, and secular elitists. Huckabee is going to need some of those critics if he is ever to win 50 percent of the vote in any primary. Iowa has a history of voting for candidates who do not go on to win their parties' nominations, and there is a very good chance that will be the case here. Huckabee is a fringe Republican, and does not represent the conservative movement on economic policy, domestic programs, law and order, and foreign policy. It is hard to imagine a candidate so out of step with most in the conservative movement assuming the stage in Minnesota in eight months as its leader.
?- Pat Toomey is president of the Club for Growth.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2IxYWMzNGNkNGY1YTY3YTQ2NTU4YjI3OTY5YzQyMTg=
xingu,
Quote:Makes one wonder what influence his interpretation of the Bible will have on our domestic and foreign policy if he's elected president.
If you are old enough to remember, the same sort of thing was said about John Kennedy, because he was a catholic.
Except with him, the religious bigots were afraid he would take orders from the Vatican when it came to making decisions about running the country.
I have said it before, but anyone that worries about a mans religion instead of his stated policies and ideas is a bigot.
Yes, that includes you.
But Kennedy was not a priest. Huck is a Baptist minister, who has never backed away from his radical beliefs.
He believes in the rapture. Under this belief, those saved would be lifted to heaven just before the imminent destruction of earth. Thus, why should Huck have any interest in making long-term improvements to the country?
Advocate wrote:
He believes in the rapture. Under this belief, those saved would be lifted to heaven just before the imminent destruction of earth. Thus, why should Huck have any interest in making long-term improvements to the country?
Why would he run if he wasn't interested in doing this? His beliefs influence him positively as well -- like his biblical belief that man is supposed to take care of his environment.
I think it's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that he's a Baptist preacher, and believe me when I say that nobody's knee jerks quicker or harder than mine on this particular point, but I think he's actually fairly progressive as far as Republicans go and that's most likely because of his religious beliefs.
FD, could you please elaborate on how Huck is progressive relative to the other Rep candidates. I haven't seen this. As you probably know, he doesn't believe in evolution.
