The Republicans' leading theocrat on how women should do what they're told

Now that the Huck is a major national figure in the Christian Republican White People's Party, the Arkansas Blog at the Arkansas Times Web site is becoming a daily online stop for me.

In Did Pastor Huck Flub Marriage Question? 01/16/08, ABC's Justin Rood seems willing to believe that the Huck was in favor of dames doing what their husbands tell them to do before he was against it. Except the quote in Rood's article didn't say Huck was changing his mind, only restating it in "moderate" terms that those not hip to fundi lingo like "servant leadership" wouldn't get:

At a debate sponsored by Fox News last week, Huckabee, who has made his faith a central component to his campaign, was asked about his public endorsement of a controversial 1998 statement on family and marriage by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the organizing body of Southern Baptists.

The statement, which ran along with signatures from Huckabee, his wife and more than 100 other prominent figures, said that while "husband and wife are of equal worth before God," the wife "is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband[.]"

"Women voters in both parties harshly criticize that," Fox's Carl Cameron said to Huckabee. "Is that position politically viable in the general election of 2008, sir?"

"The point," Huckabee responded, "is that as wives submit themselves to the husbands, the husbands also submit themselves, and it's not a matter of one being somehow superior over the other."

Speaking of the Huck, Southerners often complain - and often with good reason - that Yankees have dumbass stereotypes of Southerners. But one reason for that impression is that Southerners like the Huck happily play to Hee-Haw! notions. As in the Huck's fond memories of eatin' fried squirrel:



Yeah, boy, we et us a lot of fried squirrel back in the good ole days.

There is a point to this cornpone nonsense, though. In some ways, being a Southern Baptist minister is particularly good training for being a candidate in today's Republican Party. Because since the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) takes a fundamentalist hard line on Protestant theology and "culture war" issues, a Baptist minister has to learn how to defend the SBC's often unpopular and even stigmatized positions while at the same time finessing them to people who don't share those positions.

That submissive wives quote above is an example of this. Saying, "The point is that as wives submit themselves to the husbands, the husbands also submit themselves, and it's not a matter of one being somehow superior over the other," could be taken by someone who wants to give the Huck a break - or who wants to sell him to other voters - to mean that husbands also are expected to submit themselves to their wives. But when the SBC statement, which caused a bit of a stink in the already thoroughly fundamentalist denomination when it was adopted 10 years ago, talks about the husband's "servant leadership", that says to the faithful that the husband is servant to God, and the wife is supposed to be servant to the husband who has the family-head franchise from God.

The Gomer Pyle act shouldn't mislead anyone, especially Democrats, about the Huck's theocratic orientation.

Max Brantley at Arkansas Blog ('Radical cleric' Mike Huckabee 01/16/08) notes:

Mike Huckabee's proposal Monday night to rewrite the U.S. Constitution in the words of his God got virtually no mention in mainstream media today. But it's all over the web, including this piece on Alternet. It won't go away because it captures the radical lurking behind the aw-shucks demeanor.

In time, web commentary will drive the conventional media to catch up. Also due for a catchup: The lightly mentioned reference to Huckabee's idea to block U.S. borders to legal immigrants from countries that have harbored terrorists. He invoked 9/11 in the process. Somebody must have enlightened him that the 9/11 attackers came from such allies as Saudi Arabia and likely drew support from people there. ...

His staff's response to the God gaffe was instructive. He was just reaching out to evangelicals in Michigan then. He'd worry about alienating other voters later. This is SO Huckabee. Say whatever is necessary moment. Worry about contradictions, flip-flops and other consequences later, when there's time to get a change-of-direction fart or constipation joke at the ready. (my emphasis)

He also links to this article on the Huck's new strategy adviser, James Pinkerton, New Huckabee Adviser Called For ‘A Cop In Front Of Every Mosque’ Just ‘For Safe Keeping’ Think Progress 01/16/08.

- In a 2005 column, Pinkerton advocated genocide in Iraq, writing that America can make "anti-American violence in Iraq end" by unleashing "the Shia Arab Muslims and the Kurds to finish the job, all the way to the bloody extreme."

- On Fox News in June 2006, Pinkerton complained about people who feel the "military needs to be carefully restrained with legal rules and procedures," exclaiming "I’d rather lose our civil liberties than lose the war."

- In December 2006, Pinkerton argued that "proximity to Mexico is at least partly to blame" for corruption in Texas.

- In September 2007, Pinkerton warned in the American Conservative of "Muslimization," concluding that "to keep the peace, we must separate our civilizations."

Brantley's own comment is "Wowza".

Can't you just feel the Christian love pouring off this Pinkerton guy? And can't you just picture Jesus hanging on the cross telling people, "We can't have any laws apply to our brave noble Roman soldiers like the ones who just nailed me up here. They have to have a free hand to protect us from Samaritan terrorists"? That must be in the Gospel of Cheney.

Brantley also links to the 01/16/08 installment of Sarah Posner's weekly FundamentaList at The American Prospect Online. She talks about how the Huck has developed a method of going around the senior radical clerics of the Christian Right and take his message directly to the Christian soldiers in the pews:

Although Huckabee has denied that he is a dominionist, it is the religious right's quest to Christianize government (and the GOP) that has driven the groundswell for his candidacy.

The ground troops in Huckabee’s populist march have been cultivated in mega-churches, through televangelism, and through a mass-marketed, consumer-style religion. These soldiers in "Huck’s army" consume the dominionist message, believe that they need to evangelize the country and the world, and believe that they are doing God’s work through their vote. Through a panoply of mediums - church, television, magazines, conferences, the Web, and even movies - they are activated on a daily basis to political action. Networks tying pastors to political activism propel the process; when Huckabee spoke at John Hagee's church in December, for example, he reached about 10,000 people, was promised an airing of the sermon on television, and potentially reached Hagee's network of thousands of pastors, and their own followings of thousands.

This viral marketing approach is what's rendering people like Focus on the Family's James Dobson, the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land, Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, and American Values' Gary Bauer - all leaders of the influential Arlington Group that has failed to coalesce around a candidate - largely irrelevant to Huckabee's remarkable success. And they are shell-shocked that the train has left the station without them. They are left standing on the platform, emasculated by Chuck Norris. (my emphasis)

If you like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, you're gonna love Brother Huck.

Posner also alludes in her post to the idea that the Christian Right see the Huck as really one of them but see Dear Leader Bush as cynically using them. I think that notion needs to be qualified a bit. I don't know if God speaks to Bush as often as he does to the Huck. But from what we know in the public record, it seems that Bush's fundamentalist faith is sincere, though that hasn't removed other characteristics like the wealthy heir's sense of entitlement. And he has tried to follow a Christianist program because that's his personal orientation, not just because pollsters tell him that's what the Republican base wants.

But I don't doubt that a lot of fundamentalists may now be feeling that Bush was just playing them. Because many of them are looking for a sense of religious and personal fulfillment in the Christianist political program that it can never really deliver. But at the same time, their belief structure doesn't allow most of them to say, "Well, we tried Christianism under Bush and them results look pretty bad. So maybe we should go back to accepting the separation of church and state and stop equating the Christian religion to Republican partisan doctrine." So they have to conclude that the last dose wasn't enough, and that we need someone who will really, really push the Christianist agenda this time. And I think Posner is correct when she observes, "the prospect of a Huckabee presidency is a far greater threat to the separation of church and state than Bush's."

My favorite theory about these folks is that God really is speaking to them. But he's speaking in ancient Hebrew and they're coming up with some really bad translations.

Tags: authoritarianism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, christianism, max brantley, racism, sarah posner

What kind of "populist" is the Huck?

The Arkansas Times has an article on the Huck's Smarmy populism by Ernest Dumas (dated 01/10/08; accessed 01/09/08). The same issue features A populist charges across the Iowa prairie by John Williams as the cover story.

I've been reading in the liberal blogs about how down on the Huck the Republican Establishment supposedly is because of his "populist" streak. "Populist" is a much watered-down concept from the original in the late 19th century. But it still has somewhat of a vaguely democratic ring in America, whereas in Europe it tends to be applied to rightwing demagogues.

What kind of populist is the Huck, who Williams calls Brother Mike? (Baptist preachers are generally referred to as "Brother", not "Reverend".) Here's Williams' take. After quoting a description by Hunter Thompson of George Wallace in the 1972 campaign, he writes:

Huckabee is not substantially alien from the Alabama demagogue Thompson describes. The difference between Mike Huckabee and George Wallace is one of style. Huckabee does not yell and whip people into a frenzy — he cajoles and makes them forget themselves with laughter. Huckabee does not race-bait — no fish nibbling in that pond anymore — but he does tell them what they want to hear, regardless of how practical his proposal actually is. Like Wallace, his motive is personal advancement and his vehicle is expedient policy.

I don't mean to say that Mike Huckabee is an irredeemable phony. That would be a severe discredit to someone who has positions that clearly stem from his faith, inscrutable as they may be to me. Elimination of abortion and the sanctity of family is not a ploy to this man, but a deadly serious aspect of his worldview.

But in other matters — those distinct from meat-and-potatoes Christian conservative issues — Huckabee has made up policies on the fly in order to appeal to his target constituency. (my emphasis)

Dumas gives this example of the Huck's concern for working families:

While he has at times seemed to criticize his party and the Bush administration for favoring the rich and corporations with tax cuts instead of working people, he supported all the Bush tax cuts and says he would extend them when they run out. And while he maintains that his own crazy tax overhaul, a 30 percent national sales tax to replace most other individual and corporate taxes, would help the poor and middle class, it would instead be a massive shift of the fiscal burden from the very wealthy and corporations to working families.

On the Leno show last week, Huckabee explained why the sales tax would work so well: “First of all, you eliminate the underground economy. Everyone is paying [the tax]: drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, gamblers ...” His choice of examples is a perfect illustration of the plan's goofiness.

To keep the tax rate as low as 30 percent, the so-called Fair Tax does indeed depend on every last part of the retail economy collecting the tax for services rendered, including Huckabee's drug dealers, prostitutes and pimps. Exactly how many drug dealers do you think will remit a check to the U. S. Treasury every month? The appeal of the plan, as Huckabee always points out, is that there would be no IRS — no enforcement.

Non-compliance would be so massive, experts say, that the tax rate would have to be 50 percent on every transaction, maybe more. Take that, Joe Lunchbucket. (my emphasis)

That gives an expanded meaning to "sin taxes", doesn't it? Williams describes that gonzo tax proposal as perhaps the Huck's "greatest act of fakery". But he also reports that Brother Mike has high expectations for the Fair Tax, saying of it, "When the FairTax becomes law, it will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness." Aren't Baptist preachers supposed to be opposed to magic?

Dumas discusses other issues in the Huck's "populism":

But the least convincing label is the latest one pinned on him by all the media: populist. How refreshing they find it that a Republican bleeds for the poor working stiff and rages against Wall Street and callous business. Huckabee has been quite amazing as the champion of the sunburned sons of toil and underdogs everywhere. Upon his victory in Iowa he revealed that he left preaching for politics when he realized that the nation's political leaders sided not with the workers who struggled to pay the family's light and doctor's bills but with the guy who handed them their pink slips. No successful Arkansas politician since Jeff Davis, the tribune of the haybinders, has sounded a more virulent populism even if it has a smarmy rather than a hard edge.

That would be Jeff Davis the Arkansas politician, not to be confused with Jefferson Davis, antebellum Mississippi Senator and President of the Confederate States of America.

It is unconvincing because nothing in his political past showed any particular sympathy for labor. His office interfered with the state Workers Compensation Commission, his administration's one point of contact with workers, to stack the commission against injured workers and their families and to oust hearing officers who tended to favor workers' claims. One unfair dismissal engineered by Huckabee cost the state $125,000. A Huckabee appointee to the commission said the governor's office ordered him to fire the hearing officer, and attorneys for Wal-Mart also pressured him because the woman had ruled against the company in a job-injury case.

His one claim for helping workers was the state minimum wage law in 2006, but business interests pleaded with him and the legislature to pass a minimum wage bill to block a much tougher version in a constitutional amendment that would have been on the ballot that fall.

The comparison with George Wallace may be unfair to Wallace, who arguably was more serious about programs to benefit working people.

See also the Arkansas Times blog post by Max Brantley on Mike Huckabee: Faux populist 01/09/08, who thinks that the Huck "gives populism a bad name".

Can liberal media critics please incorporate this stuff into your usage of the Huck as an example of how the Establishment press tries to shut out advocates for working people? Yes, Glenn Greenwald, this means you, e.g., Media hostility toward anti-establishment candidates 12/19/07:

Edwards, Paul and Huckabee are obviously disparate in significant ways - ideologically, temperamentally, and otherwise. But there is a vital attribute common to those three campaigns that explains the media's scorn: they are all, in their own ways, anti-establishment candidates, meaning they are outside and critical of the system of which national journalists are a critical part, the system which employs and rewards our journalists and forms the base of their identity and outlook. Any candidate who criticizes and opposes that system - not in piecemeal ways but fundamentally - will be, first, ignored and, then, treated as losers by the press. ...

Worse, whenever these candidates are discussed, it almost never entails any discussion of the critiques they are making. Is Edwards right that corporations and lobbyists dictate legislation in Washington and that this state of affairs is profoundly anti-democratic and corrupt? Are Paul's criticisms of our bipartisan imperial policies and his warnings of resulting financial unsustainability (and increasing anti-Americanism) accurate? Is Huckabee's claim true that the GOP has obliterated the economic prospects of its own middle- and lower-middle-class followers? Who knows. Who cares. One searches any media discussions in vain for mention of such matters. (my emphasis)

Greenwald is talking in that post about three candidates: John Edwards, who is campaigning as a New Deal Democrat with a pragmatic, liberal-internationalist foreign policy; Ron Paul, the Liebling (darling) of the white supremacist right, whose foreign policy consists of paranoid xenophobia and whose economic policies could be largely culled from John Birch Society pamphlets; and, Mike Huckabee, Republican Governor and theocrat who's in tight with the Christian dominionist crowd and who wants to move prisoners out of the Guantanamo Gulag because he thinks they have it way too easy there.

Lumping those three as "anti-establishment" doesn't really make much sense. It also contributes to this "populist" scam the Huck and Ron Paul are trying to run.

Tags: ernest dumas, john edwards, john williams, max brantley, mike huckabee, ron paul