Husking the Huck

Brother Mike Huckabee, Republican Christianist candidate for President (Photo: David Bell, Wikimedia)

Now that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has soared in the polls in the race for the Republican Presidential nomination, his opponents and the mainstream press are giving more attention to his record. Here are a couple of good pieces, both from today, about the Huck.

The San Francisco Chronicle editorial page (What he won't say 12/12/07) addresses how much American politics has changed since the 1960 Presidential campaign, when John Kennedy could deal with Protestant queasiness about his being a Catholic by emphasizing his commitment to freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. The Chronicle editorialists make the important point that Huckabee is making his particular Christian religious faith a central justification of his candidacy:

The former [Southern] Baptist preacher has been touting his faith as a presidential credential - and it seems to be paying off in the polls, which now show him near the top of the Republican field.

He quotes Scripture on the campaign trail, he suggests that divine intervention might be helping lift his prospects and he appeals to Christian conservatives with his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage and his support for the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in schools. One of his TV spots flashes "CHRISTIAN LEADER" in capital letters as he talks about how his faith "defines me."

Just as Islamist parties in Turkey and elsewhere face scrutiny for their "faith-based" policies and the philosophy behind them, Huckabee's brand of Christianism needs to be taken seriously and viewed critically. The editorial continues:

As likable and iconoclastic as Huckabee may seem on the surface, there is something deeply disturbing about allowing anyone's religious tenets to drive public policy. ...

Christians who think Huckabee's faith-based appeals are benign, or even endearing, should think about whether they would be similarly moved by TV spots for a "Muslim leader" or "Jewish leader" or "Mormon leader."

Also today, Gene Lyons takes on Huckabee in There’s more to character than being charming Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 12/12/07. He addresses the substantive questions around Huckabee's successful efforts to free Wayne DuMond, a serial rapist, from prison. Superficially, DuMond's rape and murder of another victim after he was freed recall the "Willie Horton" case that became notorious in 1988 for the way Old Man Bush used it to none-too-subtly tell white voters that the Republicans would protect them against bad black people.

But the DuMond case is another vivid example of the consequences of the Republicans' "Southern Strategy", which absorbed not only the "white backlash" voters into their Party but also adopted the values and methods of the old Southern segregationists. Among them, a remarkable willingness to use scams, sleaze and blatant confabulations. Lyons notes that DuMond himself was a skilled scamster:

DuMond was a cunning con-man, a predatory psychopath adept at playing victim. A naïve and inexperienced Huckabee went for it, hook, line and sinker. So did others for whom professional skepticism is supposed to be a job requirement. In springing DuMond, the Arkansas Republican courted praise from the Clintonhating right-wing press, whose responsibility for the murder the ex-con committed after his release shouldn't be overlooked.

The way Huckabee got drawn into the scam is that one of DuMond's rape victims was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton's. And there was another twist that undoubtedly had a mighty fascination for segregationists' minds. As Lyons explains, while DuMond was out of jail on bond pending trial, what almost certainly happened was that DuMond got drunk and castrated himself, which sex offenders are sometimes known to do (although I'm not sure it's necessarily a "sympathy ploy", as Lyons suggests). But he claimed that he was attacked by two masked men, though apparently the evidence heavily indicated a self-inflicted wound.

So the segregationist, Clinton-hating types concluded that DuMond had been the victim of the great sinister Clinton Conspiracy. For Christianists like Huckabee, both the Clinton Conspiracy and the votes of those who were gullible enough to be conned by the stories, were tremendously appealing. It was evidently that angle that led the Huck to push for DuMond's release even in the face of numerous warnings that DeMond would likely rape other women if released. (And, no, lacking testicles does not make all those in that condition incapable of rape or remove the urge to do so.)

Lyons explains how the story looked from the rightwing Republican and Christianist perspective:

New York Post columnist and "Current Affairs" correspondent Steve Dunleavy churned out articles of near-hallucinatory inaccuracy championing DuMond’s cause. He portrayed DuMond as a blameless Vietnam vet with no criminal history. In fact, DuMond avoided prison in Oklahoma by testifying against men tried and convicted of beating a man to death with a claw hammer. He’d been convicted of second degree assault in Oregon, and charged with but not tried for a previous rape in Arkansas.

Dunleavy claimed DNA evidence exonerated DuMond, but that a vengeful Clinton prevented his release. Both were categorically false. No DNA evidence existed; Clinton had recused [himself from DuMont's case because of his distant kinship with the victim].

DuMond became a right-wing cause célèbre. One Guy Reel wrote a book entitled "Unequal Justice," parroting the same bogus claims. Most significantly, Jay Cole, a Fayetteville, Ar., Baptist pastor and pal of Huckabee's, bought into the delusion.

Here's how Lyons describes the position in which the Huck put himself with his championing of DuMond's cause:

Today, Huckabee alibis that nobody could have predicted DuMond’s Missouri crimes. Many people did. Even this column warned that: “Rape’s not a crime of passion; it’s a crime of rage. Violent sex offenders, innumerable case studies show, keep at it until something stops them. If Huckabee doesn’t understand that, he’s got no business getting involved.” Instead of backing off, Huckabee got tricky. He held an improper closed-door meeting with the parole board, several of whom say they’d felt pressured. Last week, Huckabee’s then-chief counsel, Olan “Butch” Reeves, basically seconded their claims. After the board voted to parole DuMond to Missouri, Huckabee wrote a “Dear Wayne” letter stressing “my desire... that you be released from prison” — the proverbial smoking gun he can’t now rationalize or whine away. Angry Missouri cops say DuMond's victim’s severed bra straps were like a calling card. They found his DNA under her fingernails. Huckabee's latest book claims that DuMond died in prison before coming to trial. In fact, he was convicted of murdering Carol Sue Shields on Nov. 12, 2003, and at the time of his death was a leading suspect in the murder of a second Missouri woman. You’d think Huckabee might have noticed.

Tags: authoritarianism, christian right, christianism, gene lyons, mike huckabee