Even For Huckabee, Pretty Scummy

I'm watching the memorial service for Ted Kennedy right now, and remembering how conservatives launched a full-court press this week demanding that Democrats not politicize the event and use it to rally for health care reform. Exactly what would you call this bile from Mike Huckabee other than rank politicization?

The 2008 Republican presidential candidate suggested during his radio show, "The Huckabee Report," on Thursday that, under President Obama's health care plan, Kennedy would have been told to "go home to take pain pills and die" during his last year of life.

"[I]t was President Obama himself who suggested that seniors who don't have as long to live might want to consider just taking a pain pill instead of getting an expensive operation to cure them," said Huckabee. "Yet when Sen. Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at 77, did he give up on life and go home to take pain pills and die? Of course not. He freely did what most of us would do. He choose an expensive operation and painful follow up treatments. He saw his work as vitally important and so he fought for every minute he could stay on this earth doing it. He would be a very fortunate man if his heroic last few months were what future generations remember him most for."

As it happens, Huckabee made his remarks shortly after he derided Democrats for using Kennedy's death to make the pitch that "Congress must hurry and pass the health care reform bill and do it in his memory,"

"That not only defies good taste," said Huckabee, "it defies logic."

Digby gets at most of what's wrong with this. Aside from the idea that "most of us" would choose an expensive operation when most of America does not have the means to use the upper tier of the health care system, it's simply disgusting to warn Democrats from making political hay out of the event of Kennedy's passing while doing exactly the same thing. Huckabee's lying about President Obama and the current bill, but even if he were talking straight, the duplicitousness is a bit much, even for him.

...I almost forgot that Huckabee was last seen claiming that evangelicals were more supportive of Israel than Jews, I guess because they want to prepare it for the Rapture more intensely.

Not Prepared For The Stupid

I just heard Ed Whelan, who's nuts, on NPR talking about the Sotomayor pick, and he predictably decried the Ricci opinion, saying that Sotomayor didn't even bother to give her opinion about those white firefighters who were discriminated against, in his view.

Yeah, um, Sotomayor didn't write the opinion at all. She participated in it. That's kind of how appeals court opinions go.

Mike Huckabee made known that he is opposed to Maria Sotomayor, so it's a good thing Obama picked Sonia.

Conservatives are desperate to oppose this nominee, both to fire up their base and to make money for their front organizations. But Sotomayor presents multiple problems. First of all, she plays the law down the middle in her opinions and seeks consensus. Second, eight Republican Senators already voted to confirm her in the past, including conservatives Robert Bennett, Thad Cochran and Orrin Hatch. Third, they spent years demanding an "upperdownvote" on judicial nominees. Fourth, as a Latina there are multiple political pitfalls for Republicans who oppose. SCOTUSBlog has a good post on the nomination, but I'm not sure I agree with all of it:

Equally significant for not only Hispanics but all Americans, Sotomayor has an extraordinarily compelling personal narrative. She grew up in a housing project, losing her father as an adolescent, raised (with her brother) by her mother, who worked as a nurse. She got herself to Princeton, graduating as one of the top two people in her class, then went to Yale Law. Almost all of her career has been in public service–as a prosecutor, trial judge, and now appellate judge. She has almost no money to her name.

For Republican Senators to come after Judge Sotomayor is not only hopeless when it comes to confirmation (something that did not deter Democrats in their attacks on Roberts and Alito) but a strategy that risks exacting a very significant political cost among Hispanics and independent voters generally, assuming that the attacks aren’t backed up with considerable substance.

Objectively, her qualifications are overwhelming from the perspective of ordinary Americans. She has been a prosecutor, private litigator, trial judge, and appellate judge. No one currently on the Court has that complete package of experience.

The most likely dynamic by far is the one that played out for Democrats with respect to Chief Justice Roberts. Democratic senators, recognizing the inevitable confirmation of a qualified and popular nominee, decided to hold their fire and instead direct their attacks to President Bush’s second nominee. Justice Alito was the collateral damage to that strategy. Here, with Justice Stevens’s retirement inevitable in the next few years, Republican senators are very likely to hold off conservative interest groups with promises to sharply examine President Obama’s second (potentially white male) nominee.

I'm not looking forward to the casual racism, demeaning of intellect, and general craziness from the right about this nomination. Contra SCOTUSBlog, I believe the Republicans will go all-out on this. They live for these fights.

...Kill me:

However, the fact that Sotomayor is a Latina could also present a political challenge for Republicans. Senators from the GOP, which has suffered from an internal rift over immigration issues and problem-plagued efforts to reach out to Hispanics, will have to decide how directly and sharply they want to attack a Latina single mother whose confirmation to the court is virtually certain.

Sonia Sotomayor has no children.

I've Got Your Convictions Right Here

I heard Mike Huckabee the other day say that what Barack Obama needs to do is to show convictions and stay true to his core beliefs, like Jesse Helms. Since those core beliefs involved him being an unapologetic racist, I thought it was slightly inappropriate. But if Huckabee wants to rephrase that, I actually do have a model for courage and conviction, and it's L.F. Eason III.

L.F. Eason III gave up the only job he'd ever had rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms.

Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, as called for in a directive to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley.

When a superior ordered the lab to follow the directive, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms. After several hours' delay, one of Eason's employees hung the flags at half-staff.

The brouhaha began late Sunday night, when Eason e-mailed eight of his employees in the state standards lab, which calibrates measuring equipment used on things as widely varied as gasoline and hamburgers.

"Regardless of any executive proclamation, I do not want the flags at the North Carolina Standards Laboratory flown at half staff to honor Jesse Helms any time this week," Eason wrote just after midnight, according to e-mail messages released in response to a public records request.

He told his staff that he did not think it was appropriate to honor Helms because of his "doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice" and his opposition to civil rights bills and the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Here's a guy that gave up everything he had and everything he'd ever known out of the principle of calling bigotry by its name. Seeing that Sen. Obama today capitulated on the Constitutional right of persons to be safe and secure in their homes, I'd say he could learn a lesson from this man. So could Mike Huckabee. Alternatively, he could do what conservatives have been doing for decades and call the black guy a Commie. The problem with that, of course, is that Eason is white.

Lying With Impunity

It's amazing to me how much of conservative thought is based on outright lying. These aren't opinions that you could see both ways, just total lies.

On Fox & Friends, Mike Huckabee falsely asserted, "When Katrina, a Cat-5 hurricane, hit the Gulf Coast, not one drop of oil was spilled off of those rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico." In fact, according to a report prepared for the federal government by an international consulting firm, damages related to Hurricane Katrina resulted in 70 spills from outer continental shelf structures with a total volume of approximately 11,104 barrels of oil and petroleum products.

You could see the Katrina-caused oil spill from space. There's documentary evidence. Yet not only every conservative columnist, but the current governor of the state of Louisiana insists that no oil was spilled there.

Of a similar ilk is this myth that China is drilling off the coast of Cuba, which conservatives have been spouting for three weeks despite it being totally untrue.

This is important to understand. You have one political party whose entire worldview is shaped by lies. You have another political party that is oftentimes too timid to call the lies for what they are. And you have a media completely unwilling to play referee.

If nothing changes, you literally have a country's citizens unable to get the truth.

Just Words

Hey, before you go off on this, just lighten up, 'kay? Mike Huckabee was only joking about the assassination of a leading black candidate for President in front of the NRA.

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

Why can't you libruls take a joke? Sure, the jokes normally take the form of violence against political opponents, but it's not their fault if you don't know what FUNNY is!



Yuk it up, you bastards! You know you love it!

The Obama/Race Speech Aftermath

The reaction to Sen. Obama's speech on race has been generally very positive, and apparently the YouTube has been watched 1.25 million times. While I think in the 24-hour news era we tend to overemphasize the historical impact of these speeches (for example, Bill Clinton's speech on the day of the Million Man March has a lot of parallels and candid moments, and yet that speech has been lost to history, so let's hold up on the "instant classic" notion), clearly something is happening. The problem for Obama is that he's lost a significant amount of ground over the last week nationally in the Rev. Wright flap. I agree that I don't really know why I know who any politician's pastor is, and if it were a truism that one was politically damaged by any possible statement of whoever they are close to, nobody could ever run for public office. In a way that was one point of Obama's speech. But clearly he's been hurt, and any positives from the speech will just bring us back to pre-Wright levels. Which isn't horrible for Obama - pre-Wright he was doing pretty good - but it's not like the Presidency is his now after this speech.

Today Obama pivoted to Iraq, with a speech in North Carolina and a policy document (PDF) that highlights returning to prominence the war in Afghanistan, fighting Al Qaeda, and drying up support for terror through economic, education, diplomatic, and personal outreach initiatives. Obama also sets "the goal of a nuclear-free world," prioritizes securing loose nukes, mandates a clean energy future that will end resource wars for oil, and more. It's a really good document, and in some ways it parallels the Responsible Plan, although it neglects the role of elite media and executive power in representing the broken institutions that allowed us to get into war. The speech is generally pretty good as well.

In a perfect world, everyone would be YouTubing and passing around the Iraq speech, and debating the merits of the policy. But that's not where we are, and instead there's a lot of wonder as to whether or not the American people are intelligent enough to grasp that racial divides resist Americans of like backgrounds to come together and face common problems. I'll say this - I didn't expect such wisdom from Mike Huckabee:

HUCKABEE: [Obama] made the point, and I think it's a valid one, that you can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can't. Whether it's me, whether it's Obama...anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.

Now, the second story. It's interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say "Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that."

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But, but, you never came close to saying five days after September 11th, that America deserved what it got. Or that the American government invented AIDS...

HUCKABEE: Not defending his statements.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I know you're not. I know you're not. I'm just wondering though, for a lot of people...Would you not guess that there are a lot of Independent voters in Arkansas that vote for Democrats sometimes, and vote for Republicans sometimes, that are sitting here wondering how Barack Obama's spiritual mentor would call the United States the USKKK?

HUCKABEE: I mean, those were outrageous statements, and nobody can defend the content of them.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But what's the impact on voters in Arkansas? Swing voters.

HUCKABEE: I don't think we know. If this were October, I think it would have a dramatic impact. But it's not October. It's March. And I don't believe that by the time we get to October, this is gonna be the defining issue of the campaign, and the reason that people vote.

And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

Other than the fact that Falwell's statement was right out in the open, and because fundamentalist Christians are supposed to be intolerant and are therefore dismissed, there are different standards for black and white preachers, Huckabee is spot-on. And I'm willing to give the American people just a little bit more credit than the pessimists.

Obama Takes Virginia

NBC just called it moments after the polls closed, as a "substantial" victory. This was Hillary's best chance at a good showing, so it's likely to be a bad night for him.

Also, McCain-Huckabee is too close to call in Virginia, and the exit polls intimate that Obama got a huge amount of independents, draining them from McCain in this open primary, raising Huckabee's number as that race becomes more conservative.

This could be 8 straight losses for Clinton since Super Tuesday, with Wisconsin and Hawaii looming next week. Ohio and Texas loom even larger now. Obama should be ahead in delegates, even with superdelegates, by the end of the night.

All Over, Including The Counting, In Washington

This is a very weird story. So the primary coverage was bouncing along Saturday, with Mike Huckabee trouncing John McCain in Kansas and winning a squeaker in Louisiana. The race in Washington appeared to be going down to the wire, too. And then... the Washington GOP just stopped counting and gave McCain the victory. Leading to this exchange between the head of the state GOP and Huckabee's lawyer (and his daughter-in-law):

Finally, Luke Esser, the chair of the state GOP party, returned the Huckabee campaign's call, saying the final results would be determined sometime within the week.

The only hitch? The state chairman had already declared John McCain the winner last night, with only a 242 vote lead. In a written statement last night, Esser said, “Congratulations to Sen. McCain for a hard-fought win, his second caucus victory in the 2008 presidential nomination process. And congratulations to Gov. Huckabee for his strong second-place finish.”

Huckabee campaign lawyer Lauren Huckabee (daughter-in-law of the candidate), who is skeptical of the fairness, asked for a lawyer to monitor the resluts.

The state GOP denied the request and hung up on Lauren Huckabee, according to the campaign. Campaign adviser Ed Rollins will be sending lawyers to Olympia, scheduled to land this evening, to investigate the matter.

At a hastily arranged press conference in a hotel room, Rollins was steamed.

“You don’t get to announce the votes until they are all counted. And obviously, by his attempts to project without any statistical data or even if he had statistical data, it’s irrelevant: we’re entitled to a fair, full count," Rollins said.

"Our lawyers attempted to contact him today, finally did so about ten minutes ago. He said, ‘Well I don’t know where the precincts, are, I just sort of did it. How dare Mike Huckabee challenge – he has to trust us. We’re going to count the rest of the votes today in the office.’"

"We asked to have someone go in to the office with them and count the votes and he refused us. He said he would have to notify the other campaigns."

Huckabee called it Soviet-style tactics and he's not wrong. The Republican Party is a top-down establishment outfit, and they clearly have an interest in wrapping up their race with the utmost speed. But stopping the counting? McCain is playing dumb about it and trying to say "trust the state GOP," but it's kind of hard to do so when they shut down the election and declare a winner before all the votes are in.

Ain't Goin' Out Like That

James Dobson, showing the stunning lack of an ability to count, endorses Mike Huckabee, who needs practically every single delegate available to win the nomination.

Dobson knows what he's doing, of course. He wants to have an argument to make after the election is over, that the Republicans lost because they didn't pick his preferred candidate. This is how they keep the movement alive; by calling anyone who loses an apostate, anyone who wins one of their own, and anyone who loses after he wins an apostate ex post facto.

The question, of course, is how actively Dobson and the theocons will undermine McCain. Will they simply not volunteer (evangelicals made up a substantial portion of Bush's ground team)? Will they stay home? Will they run Judge Roy Moore on a third-party ticket?

The world waits, and wonders.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, McCain gets the coveted 24% endorsement.

President Bush plans to give an implicit endorsement of onetime rival John McCain's conservative bona fides tomorrow as the Arizona senator seeks to consolidate the party behind his candidacy.

In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in the morning, Bush plans to say that the nominee of the party will be a strong conservative, according to excerpts released by the White House tonight.

"We have had good debates and soon we will have a nominee who will carry the conservative banner into this election and beyond," Bush says in the excerpts. "The stakes in November are high. Prosperity and peace are in the balance. So with confidence in our vision and faith in our values, let us go forward, fight for victory and keep the White House in 2008.

That's got to be good for a 5% drop in the polls right there, no? The political version of King Midas?

Turning To The Republicans

Mark Steyn, yes THAT Mark Steyn, was probably clearest about the events of last night.

Well, the heartland spoke last night and about the only message it sent was that, no matter what the talk radio guys say, they're not voting for a Mormon; no way, no how. The rationale for Romney continuing his campaign is that he's the conservative alternative to McCain. The message from Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee is that he will never be accepted as such by the conservatives' electoral base. With the loss of California, it's hard to see the point of Mitt pushing on. On the other hand, given the ongoing vote-softness of the "frontrunner," it's mind-boggling to think the GOP can't produce a viable alternative.

As to Huck for Veep, I assume, whatever anti-Mitt coordination there is between the two campaigns, McCain is planning to toss Huckabee overboard as soon as he's served his purpose.

The real story of the night, when you look at their rallies and their turn-out numbers, is that the Dems have two strong candidates either of whom could lead a united party to victory. Forget the gaseous platitudes: in Dem terms, their choice on Super Duper Tuesday was deciding which candidate was Super Duper and which was merely Super. Over on the GOP side, it was a choice between Weak & Divisive or Weaker & Unacceptable. Doesn't bode well for November.

The huge turnout disparity tells that story the best; it looks like Democrats had something like a 4 million-vote advantage last night.

Huckabee had a good night, but he didn't really complicate the GOP contest. He was the fallback option for those who hated McRomney in the South (remember, they were seen as identical in the early stages of this contest), but there's only one more Southern state left to vote - Mississippi (unless you count Texas). Some think that Huckabee's a VP lock because it would "unify the party," but the same people that hate McCain hate Huckabee more. Karl Rove flatly said no to a McCain-Huckabee ticket, and he's in the position to know. I think a Southern conservative is more likely. Here are some options off the top of my head.

South Carolina governor Mark Sanford? S.C. Sen. Jim DeMint? (I don't think he can get away with picking Huckleberry Graham.) Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour? Georgia Gov. Sonny "Pray for Rain" Perdue?

Something like that sounds right.

As for McCain, he is the Bob Dole of 2008 - the old coot whose time has come. Some elements point to him being a strong general election candidate (like the media love), some don't (like his total disinterest in national policy, his desire to militarize civic life as well as warmonger abroad, and the fact that he's running for Bush's third term). He's also a hothead and is ripe for a dramatic moment on the campaign trail that makes him look awful. Bring him on. I'm not worried. Let him spend the entire election cajoling his base, we'll go out and get the votes.

Here We Go

Top of the hour projections:

Illinois - Obama
Oklahoma - Clinton

NOTHING ELSE PROJECTED this early. That's fairly crazy. That means New Jersey, New YORK, Massachusetts, and Connecticut are too close to immediately call. This doesn't mean that Clinton will lose any of these states, but the closeness of them is pretty telling.

Republicans:

Illlinois - McCain
New Jersey - McCain
Massachusetts - Romney
Connecticut - McCain

McCain was campaigning in Massachusetts as late as yesterday. That looks like a bad move. Huckabee could win Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama, and Romney could take Missouri. Wow, McCain might not have nailed this one down after all.

UPDATE: New York hasn't stopped voting yet. Tennessee, Alabama and Delaware are too close to call on the Democratic side.

...Clinton gets Tennessee.

...Robert Menendez, Clinton supporter and Senator from New Jersey, made the interesting comment that what cost the election for us in 2004 was a big vote for Bush among "security Moms" and Latino voters. And those are Clinton's two strengths. Good point. However, I think the move of Latinos to the Democrats is going to be solid regardless of the nominee.

Huckabee has taken the lead in Georgia, McCain in Montana and Oklahoma, Huckabee in Missouri. Romney not doing a whole lot across the board.

...Clinton, Huckabee take Arkansas. No suprise, that's a home field advantage.

Huck-Mentum!

NBC News reports that Mike Huckabee wins the early-morning West Virginia caucuses, 52-47 over Mitt Romney in the second round of voting (McCain lost out after the first round). Huckabee doesn't like to call himself the spoiler, but I think it's pretty clear that he just cost West Virginia for Romney.

Of course, if Huckabee takes a little here and Romney a little there, maybe this race gets extended. Not gonna happen, but a guy can dream...

UPDATE: Looks like there was some wheeling and dealing to deny Romney the victory. This might have been coordinated, but also activists are generally just more knowledgeable about politics, and know that stopping Romney would help McCain.

It All Comes Down To Florida

It's about a 99% bet that the winner of the Republican nomination will be announced tonight in the Sunshine State. Even St. Rudy of the 9/11 admits this. Sure, the Super Duper Tuesday votes won't yield a clean sweep; Mike Huckabee is trotting out a Southern strategy that has him leading in Tennessee. But given that No Republican candidate is on the air with ads in any Super Tuesday state, the free media boost out of Florida for Mitt Romney or John McCain will be extremely important, especially for McCain, who soaks up the media love like no other candidate. That's why it's been so acrimonious; both sides know that Florida is really the end of the road for this race. So Romney and McCain lob charges of "You're the liberal! No, you're the liberal!" at each other, trying to appeal to conservatives in this closed primary.

Mr. Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, began attacking at dawn, accusing Mr. McCain of allying himself with liberal Democrats in the Senate and betraying conservative principles on legislation involving immigration, the environment and campaign finance.

“If you want that kind of a liberal Democratic course as president, then you can vote for him,” Mr. Romney said at a Texaco gas station in West Palm Beach at 6:30 a.m. “But those three pieces of legislation, those aren’t conservative. Those aren’t Republican.”

Mr. McCain volleyed back by describing Mr. Romney as a serial flip-flopper who had taken multiple positions on a variety of issues, including gay rights, global warming and immigration. “People, just look at his record as governor,” Mr. McCain said at a shipyard in Jacksonville. “He has been entirely consistent. He has consistently taken two sides of every major issue, sometimes more than two.”

Josh Marshall comments on how close the polls have been, and the winner is really up in the air. But with what's on the line being so clear, Florida voters aren't likely to throw away their vote. Expect moderates to move to McCain, and conservatives to line up with Romney, and the result will reveal itself in which faction has those numbers.

Huckabee Breaks Godwin's Law

It's a little useless to be pounding on Mike Huckabee, given that he's flat broke and is pulling out of Florida. But he's using a Southern strategy to pick up lots of Super Tuesday delegates (Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, West Virginia), and he's still a potential Vice Presidential candidate should McCain or Romney want to pick up evangelical support. So it's important to understand that yesterday he compared America to Nazi Germany.

In a speech to the Florida Renewal Project Monday night, which in an unprecedented move was live streamed on the American Family Association's Web site, Mike Huckabee compared America to Nazi Germany. He first implored the audience to renew their "commitment to Christ" and "to our nation, to its heritage, as well as to its future," adding "do we expect the seculars [sic] to do it? Do we expect the unbelievers to lead us, and if so, how will they lead us and where?" He then engaged in an extended description of his visit to the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem with his 11- year-old daughter, who asked, "why didn't somebody do something?" Huckabee, who has called abortion a "holocaust," then issued a dire warning:

... I pray that no father ever stands over the shoulder of his own daughter and after her witnessing the decline and the fall of a great nation, writes, and sees her write these words, "why didn't somebody do something?" You see, I believe the reason we're here is because we are the somebodies. And we're to do the something and if we don't, who will? And if we don't act now, when will it happen, and will it be too late? You leave this conference with this haunting question, and pray that no one would ever ask of you or of me, why didn't somebody do something.

It is beyond dangerous to give someone with this worldview even a slice of federal power.

Obama Fights Back Against Muslim Slur

Glenn Greenwald is trying to say that this mailer from Barack Obama, where he calls himself a "committed Christian" who is "Called to Christ," "Called to Bring Change" and "Called to Serve" is similar to Mike Huckabee's use of his faith as a front and center appeal of his campaign.

It may be that the criticism of Huckabee just for using the phrase "Christian leader" was too harsh. But if I were the victim of an email forward smear for the better part of a year claiming that I was a secret Muslim, educated in Madrassahs, and that I was sworn into Congress with my hand on the Koran, I'd do what I could to set the record straight, too. Obama doesn't have a choice. It's despicable what's been said about him, and let me add that the military should be praised for shutting down the email forward among their soldiers, and these Jewish leaders in the Senate deserve admiration as well. Wingers with agendas and even a few Democrats (my sister, a Hillary supporter, absolutely knows the email is false and is forwarding it to everyone she knows anyway) have been trying to discredit Obama in the dirtiest, most under-the-radar way possible, and I think he's perfectly within his rights to contrast that with the true sense of his beliefs. We also should not, especially on a day dedicated to the memory of a Reverand, be so squishy about this kind of overtly religious appeal. The Christian left has done a lot of good in this country's history. It is not analogous to someone who wants to change the Constitution to make it more like the Ten Commandments.

Furthermore, if Obama can overcome this in the primary, he'll be better tested for the general election, where what the Clintons are throwing at them will seem like a tea party. I have to say I've gained a bit more respect for him in the last 48 hours. He addressed problems in the black community to their faces, which was extremely noble and courageous. Frankly I think his advisors suck and are giving him bad advice. And I still think he's fairly moderate at a time when a progressive is needed. So rather than staying above the fray and promoting this message of unity, he needs to hit back hard at tonight's debate and make a forthright economic, moral and ethical case for his being in the White House. We'll see if he does so.

On To The Republicans

With me being in Nevada covering the Dems all weekend, I kind of neglected the twists and turns of the Republican race. I'm not talking about fringe candidates like Rudy Giuliani (even his money men in New York are jumping ship), but the ones who actually still have a chance of winning the thing. And I think it's coming down to a two-person race.

Rasmussen is showing Romney opening up a lead today. But he's been up with ads, while McCain starts them today. So that's subject to change as we get a week-plus of pretty intense campaigning down there, which will only be on the Republican side since the Democrats are forbidden from doing so as part of the state breaking DNC rules with their primary.

Romney or McCain will be the nominee. Huckabee's loss in South Carolina, aided by Thompson going all-out there and taking away some of his votes, seems to me decisive. If he can't win in a Southern Baptist state, after throwing every bit of dirt he could and associating homosexuality with bestiality and trying to make the frickin' Confederate flag an issue, then there's not much hope for him replicating the Iowa victory, where he was basically squeaky clean.

Florida is unique to all the states that have voted so far, in that it's a) a closed primary and b) winner take all for delegates. I don't think Romney has lost to McCain among Republicans in any state where he's actually competed. And Giuliani, who will get some votes, probably hurts McCain, in the same way that Thompson hurt Huckabee.

Romney would, obviously, be a great general election candidate for Democrats to face, simply by virtue of the fact that the media hates him so, and that he's been so successfully defined as a flip-flopper. But electability aside, I think he has a shot in Florida because the top issue in these primaries is starting to be the economy, and even though Romney actually does better among brainwashed Republicans who think the economy is doing great, at least he has an argument to make that he knows what he's talking about. McCain actually doesn't have a clue. After admitting that he doesn't know much about the economy at all, he's tried to catch up and take on these conservative ideas which are ill-fitting to him.

John McCain recently acknowledged, “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” He added, however, “I’ve got Greenspan’s book.”

I’m quite certain The Maestro isn’t helping. In South Carolina, McCain told an audience a couple of days ago, “Every time in history we have raised taxes it has cut revenues.” As a matter of reality, McCain was talking gibberish.

A few days prior, at a Republican debate, McCain said, “I don’t believe we’re headed into a recession. I believe the fundamentals of this economy are strong and I believe they will remain strong.”

Now, McCain, who presumably would have learned something about economics after serving in Congress for the last quarter-century, blamed government spending for creating an economic decline that he didn’t believe existed less than a week ago.

Government spending simply isn't a factor for a destroyed subprime mortgage market, the credit crunch, and sluggish consumer spending. He literally has no idea what he's talking about; the same with saying that tax raises cut revenues, which is from the planet Not True. I know the media covers for McCain as much as they cover for Brett Favre, but seriously, this is going to seep out.

But we shall see. Patrick Ruffini, a conservative, has an excellent roundup of the race. A quote:

Mitt Romney is fast becoming the candidate of conservatives in the suburbs and the exurbs. In Michigan, he dominated Oakland and Macomb counties with 46% of the vote in a multi-candidate field. In Nevada, he won most convincingly in Clark County. In Iowa, he did better in Des Moines than elsewhere in the state.

The Romney and McCain coalitions also overlap. They represent two different sides of the establishment coin, with McCain representing an older, mainline establishment — the Republican Party of Gerry Ford, Howard Baker, and Bob Dole — and Romney representing the brasher, post-Reagan establishment that was built on the tax issue and whose alliance with modern-day Huckabee voters allowed them to take control of the party in 1994 [...]

The trouble for McCain is although he has probably secured the moderate berth in the finals (sorry, Rudy), he hasn’t made many inroads with the base and his vote still looks decidedly unlike what that of a GOP nominee should look like. To say that conservative South Carolinians somehow embraced McCain is to ignore the fact that McCain lost conservatives, pro-lifers, and Evangelicals, and eeked it out against the most divided field to date.

With Romney’s suburban base secure, for McCain to start racking up victory margins in the 40s — which he’ll need as candidates fade or drop out — he’d need to add votes from the Christian conservative base — from supporters of walking wounded like Huck and Fred. Because of their candidates’ personal animosities towards Romney, that is a distinct possibility that such an alliance could be forged — but it would be an alliance of opposites — of pro-life and pro-choice, of liberal and conservative, of secular and evangelical. I don’t know if conservatives are going to overlook that fact.

In the traditional middle of this fight is Mitt Romney, who strives to represent a sort of Goldilocks conservatism. The question is if center is big enough to hold this year.

I think it's really anybody's guess. I wouldn't be surprised with Romney or McCain as the nominee.

South Carolina Nastiness

It's unquestionably true that the same South Carolina dirty tricksters who stopped John McCain's Presidential bid in 2000 are out this year. The latest revelation is that Mike Huckabee's army of robo-callers and push-pollers are spreading that McCain supports experiments on unborn children. Actually, Huckabee's outfit is push-polling all his Republican rivals in the state. There is one charge specific to McCain, however: a mailer from a group called "Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain. It's pretty weak stuff, accusing McCain of collaborating with his captors. Only thing is, the mailer wasn't mailed anywhere.

Recently, the group sent a mailer to approximately 80 newspaper editors in South Carolina accusing McCain of selling out his fellow POWs in Vietnam. On Tuesday, the McCain campaign (which is working hard to appeal to vet voters) made one of McCain's former fellow POWs available to the media to respond to the smear. The story, picked up by the AP and Wall Street Journal among others, got national play -- undoubtedly more play than the group would have been able to get on its own.

I spoke to the founder of Vietnam Veterans against John McCain, Jerry Kiley, yesterday. He told me that the group hasn't "actively sought donations at this point," and that the next step for the group will be mailings "going out to our network," with the intention that the mailing would then be forwarded on to local media there. The group just doesn't have the funds to send mailings directly to voters -- nor, as they declared they would in their statement of purpose, to run radio and TV ads. Things "could change," he told me, "if we received a sizable donation," but he wasn't holding out much hope.

Instead, they're planning "an email campaign." Groups of like-minded vets throughout the country will get the email chain started, he said, "so it will spread very quickly throughout the country."

So, this is an unfunded group trying to get some media attention. The McCain campaign went nuclear on it, to "prove" that groups are out to get him in South Carolina. I have to say that this is NOTHING compared to what Rove and the boys did to McCain in South Carolina last time. That was an establishment attack. These are a few guys with a flyer and some time on their hands. The question is, does McCain run the risk of over-publicizing this smear to the extent of it actually rebounding back on him?

The Huckabee Biblical Agenda

Sometimes Mike Huckabee will come out and say something that just scares the fuck out of you.

"[Some of my opponents] 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," Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

This is a guy who's telling you that the Bible will be his Constitution. People tell you who they are. And this is why young evangelicals are flocking to him, as opposed to the evangelical leadership which is really more concerned with keeping power than anything the living God has to say. Huckabee represents a movement to quite literally take back the nation for Christ. I wonder, however, if he missed the memo on the commandment that says "Thou shalt not bear false witness":

I got a call from Huck's "independent" push pollers [Friday night]. It was a robo-call with a script that was micro-targeted for my Democratic union household. The robo-voice, which asked "poll" questions and left me time to answer, was an African-American male voice. Wanted to know if I was aware that "there is no real choice in the Michigan Democratic primary this year" and encouraged me to vote in the Repub primary instead.

Also asked if I was aware that the Machinists Union had endorsed Huckabee "for the first time in history..." (I assume by tonite they will add the Painters, too.) And if I knew that Huckabee was a fighter for working families, etc.

At the end, the robo-voice said the poll "was not affiliated with or authorized by any candidate or committee," but all the "questions" were designed to communicate positive information about the Huckster.

It's a classic ploy for these types of calls to play on ethnic and racial stereotypes -- though in this instance, the pollsters seem to have chosen their voice with the idea that a typically African-American male voice would appeal to Democrats. (When I asked Common Sense Issues' executive director Rick Davis whether it was accurate to characterize the voice in these calls as "an African-American male voice," he said "it could be.") Former dirty trickster Allen Raymond writes in his book How to Rig An Election that he had an array of actors available to portray a range of stereotypes, including "angry black man," which was deployed to frighten middle-class whites.

Huck's boys even called Republican Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, which was probably a bad idea.

I'm sure the Christian leader can reconcile dishonest push polling and robocalling in some way. Maybe Jesus worked phone banks!

The Huckster Advantage

I do think that this Wayne Dumond ad, which will likely be brutal in a Republican primary, could significantly impact what I'm about to say. But I do think Mike Huckabee has the clearest path to the nomination as anyone.

The road to the GOP nomination will certainly not be based on issues; antiwar Republicans went for John McCain in New Hampshire (though you have to wonder what "antiwar Republican" really means; maybe it's someone who wants to get out the most honorable way possible, in which case they consider McCain the most experienced option). It's going to fall on identity issues, much as the Democratic race is falling along identity lines in kind of an ugly way. And there's no doubt in my mind that Southern conservatives, who will end up deciding this nomination, will end up rejecting John McCain, whose fundamentals in New Hampshire were weaker than in 2000, and who still has no love from mainstream conservatives. McCain has problems with tax-cutters, too, and while Huckabee doesn't inspire confidence on this front, his embrace of the FairTax has blunted that criticism to a degree. And if Huckabee were smart, he would attack McCain at his strength, pointing out all of the earmarks he has received for his constituents in Arizona.

Money is a non-factor, in my view. The guy with the most is in a do-or-die situation in Michigan, and the only other candidate with even a little money is hanging out in Florida trying to gin up "security" events to get attention. And I maintain that Huckabee has more money on hand right now and eligible to spend than McCain; that's why they're going the 527 route to beat him.

But like I said, this is about identity. And I think it will be hard to wave base voters off of Huckabee. He still has the national lead, and is the only candidate at or near the lead in all the big states to come (Michigan, South Carolina, Florida). Michigan would be a pipe dream for him but would clearly put him on a path to the nomination; if he loses, I believe South Carolina will come through. Plus there's this analysis:

If Huck exceeds expectations--even marginally--then he can probably knock Mitt out of the race. Huck has a real possibility of bumping Mitt to third place in his Daddy's state, which I gotta believe would chase him from the race.

And then we'd be left with Huck versus McCain. A Baptist preacher who will chase away the corporatists versus a war-monger who will chase away the nativists and evangelicals. While I think either Huck or McCain may do well in the General election (I'd rather be running against Mitt), I think a two-way contest between Huck and McCain has the real potential to cause the GOP a while lot of angst between now and whenever they do get to the General.

I gotta believe that Huck looked at this polling and realized he had the ability to hit Mitt with a real body blow, taking out the one other guy who can appeal to the values voters. Which makes this very interesting indeed.

Knocking out Mitt would be fatal for the guy who doesn't connect with base Republican voters, McCain. And South Carolina is a closed primary.

I truly believe Huckabee is the front-runner right now, such as it is. And only a really gut-level smear campaign can derail him.

The Huckabee Shuffle

As I mentioned earlier, Mike Huckabee is soaring in South Carolina, traditionally where the Republican nominee has been determined in recent years. Considering that another Southern state, Florida, comes up right after South Carolina, and considering that Huckabee now has the national lead, there's no question that he's the front-runner on the Republican side right now, no matter what the McCain-fluffing media seems to think. The biggest sign of this is Bill Kristol's quasi-endorsement of him in the New York Times yesterday, a sign that the conservative establishment is no longer putting up a firewall, but trying to cultivate Huckabee as someone they can work with.

Indeed, Kristol’s column goes on to praise Huckabee as “likable regular guy” with a compelling personal narrative who may appeal well to younger voters. He concludes that the “Republican establishment spent 2007 underestimating Mike Huckabee,” and insists that “Huckabee is a talented politician.”

Kristol didn’t go so far as to endorse the former Arkansas governor — he said, “I’m certainly not ready to sign up” to back Huckabee’s campaign — but that he was willing to be as laudatory as he was should be enough to raise a few eyebrows.

As regular readers know, the Republican establishment, especially throughout the month of December, experienced what John Cole aptly labeled the “Huckabee Panic.” All of a sudden, it seemed to dawn on the party that the GOP nominee may be a former governor who raised taxes, supported immigration “amnesty,” has a record of making extreme comments, and whose understanding of foreign policy and national security issues rivals that of a small child [...]

And yet, here’s Kristol, effectively giving Huckabee his blessing. It suggests the Republican establishment freak-out, at a minimum, is subsiding, and the party is coming to grips with the former governor being a reasonable alternative to their preferred candidates.

As John Cole noted, watching the establishmentarians turn on a dime if Huckabee can't be stopped will be great fun. But I think you'll see more of Huckabee going to the establishment than the establishment going to him. His movement on immigration, from a position of compassion to a position of wanting to deny birthright citizenship, has already occurred.

But I think it's going to be easy for Huckabee to become "acceptable" to the money boys on the right; his campaign isn't really about anything but the fact that he's a good Christian and an aw-shucks kind of guy. I actually took a look at a Huckabee campaign rally on C-SPAN. It's like a stand-up comedy/variety show. The jokes come fast and furious, with lines like this one which he made on Letterman last night being indicative.

"If I win New Hampshire, it's because I did this show. If I lose New Hampshire, it's because I did this show."

He's funny and charming and he plays bass guitar almost everywhere. The policy specifics are amazingly lean. There was an entire campaign event this week based on a diner naming a burger after him. As far as the establishment is concerned, he can demagogue about the economy all he wants, as long as he's not prepared to do anything about it. And the indications are that he wants to talk about these things but actually go in the opposite direction, by proposing regressive taxes like the FairTax plan. As long as he can keep the grunts in the pews excited, they'll have an army of volunteers at the polls in November. A certain kind of army:

"When we become believers, it's as if we have signed up to be part of God's Army, to be soldiers for Christ," Huckabee told the enthusiastic audience.

"When you give yourself to Christ, some relationships have to go," he said. "It's no longer your life; you've signed it over."

Likening service to God to service in the military, Huckabee said "there is suffering in the conditioning for battle" and "you obey the orders."

I don't think the Big Money Boys are comfortable with this at all, but they may have to live with it. After all, their alternatives are dwindling.