Today's mass gun massacre in Connecticut

President Obama On School Shooting 12/14/2012:

President Obama, apparently thinking he was re-elected National Pastor in November, says in this short public statement on the Connecticut mass murder, "We've endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. And each time I learn the news, I react not as a President, but as anybody else would as a parent. And that was especially true today. I know there's not a parent in America who doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief that I do."

Yes, it was good theater that he seemed to tear up. I saw someone actually in tears after hearing it. But I'm to the point I really don't care what Barack Obama thinks as a person or as a parent about these things. He's right that when he has heard of these "tragedies," aka, mass gun murders, he's been reacting "not as a President," but instead he plays the sympathetic minister.

But it's long past time he starts acting "as a President" and take the lead not only on rolling back the domestic massive arms proliferation,. And also start shoring up public mental health facilities so some of these killings could be prevented instead of babbling endlessly about The Deficit that only he and David Brooks actually care about anyway.

Well, he did say he wanted to take "meaningful action," then proceeded immediately to talk about hugging his kids. But he'll get good press, and the Pod Pundits will all say how fine a statement it was.

The gun lobby will keep right on saying he's going to confiscate everybody's huntin' rifles any day now, so he might as well push some policies to actually do something to mitigate these mass gun murders.

I saw some fool on Facebook today who uses the name Bill Currie respond to someone's serious post about the Connecticut shooting with this:"We should get the first amendment while we are at it-the press has caused a lot pain and destructions of lives through accusations of innocent people. The founding fathers knew that the people need to be armed to protect themselves from teranical [sic] government." A few minutes later he followed it up with, "Lets not worry about the second amendment."

My response to him was no doubt "uncivil" by media standards (for libruls); I've corrected it for typos:

Yes, Bill, none of those elementary school kids murdered today in Connecticut will be tyrannizin' over anybody any more. Do any of you people who celebrate these mass gun murders actually read the 2nd Amendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Obviously it makes people like you feel FREEEEE to know that some people got gunned down in a mall in Portland or a bunch of children murdered in Connecticut. Just to mention the incidents of the last four days. But do you expect anyone but other fans of mass gun murders to pretend this has anything to do with "A well regulated Militia"?

But the sad state of affairs these days is that he's probably not even slightly embarrassed. On the contrary, he probably takes it as a sign that he's good about pissing off libruls.

But does this guy's family know that he thinks a mass murder of little children is something to make adolescent snark over? His wife/girlfriend/boyfriend? The people he works with? I mean, if I heard one of my officemates talking like this live and in person, I would wonder if it was safe to have him around.

Oh, wait, after I wrote that, I see he responded:

... Bruce Miller-I find it offensive that you say I "celebrate these mass shooting" **** you *** **** -the liberal left celebrates them because it gives them the opportunity to get what they want-gun control. You want the government to become more tyrinical than it is. So once again **** you and the horse you rode in on.

To which I responded contritely, "Gosh, Bill, I'm so sorry! I didn't realize that guys who think a mass gun murder of little children is something to make adolescent snark over were so sensitive about people responding to what they post for the whole world to see. Gee, please forgive me for being 'uncivil'!"

Meanwhile, the charming Bro. Mike Huckabee says that if we just had the little Jewish kiddies forced to pray Christian prayers, the bullets of mass murders would bounce off all of them. Or something. (Benjy Sarlin, Huckabee: Schools 'A Place Of Carnage' Because We 'Systematically Removed God TPM 12/14/2012)

Actually, the Huck's statement is particularly cruel. He's effectively telling the parents of the murdered kids and the traumatized survivors that if they had just sent their kids to a Christian school instead of the Satanic public ones they would be alive now.

You hardly need to look them up to know the kinds of responses people will be making. Another mass shooting incident in the US the same week as the one in Portland. Merry Christmas from the psycho-killers and the gun lobby!

I really don't find it to be a good sign that these things have become effectively normalized now. A mass shooting occurs, the politicians' assistants call up their boilerplate about how they "regret the terrible tragedy" and their "thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families," blah, blah. Then they don't have to bother to do anything in terms of actual policy. Except maybe to declare it's critical to the 2nd Amendment's requirement for a " well regulated Militia" to have weapons like the 223 Remington rifle the latest mass murderer reportedly used freely available (with lots of ammo, of course) to anyone and everyone who feels like shooting up a mall or an elementary school. Heck, it took me about five seconds on Yahoo! to find out where you can order one online if you have some mall shoppers or school children in mind you'd like to murder in large numbers.

You don't even have to wonder whether someone will be saying this particular kind of weapon is especially good for deer huntin'. You can be sure they're already saying it.

Tags: barack obama, gun massacres, mike huckabee

Christian Right values at the Republican Convention

I haven't posted much about this week's Conservative White People's Tribal Festival, aka, the Republican Convention. I haven't had much to add that I'm not seeing other people say better.

But I will mention a couple of things here. One is Mike Huckabee's speech on Wednesday 08/29/2012. From Politico's transcript:

Let me clear the air about whether guys like me would only support an evangelical. Of the four people on the two tickets, the only self-professed evangelical is Barack Obama, and he supports changing the definition of marriage, believes that human life is disposable and expendable at any time in the womb or even beyond the womb, and tells people of faith that they must bow their knees to the god of government and violate their faith and conscience in order to comply with what he calls health care. [my emphasis]

This is a good statement of the priorities of the Christian Right. Their position is a religious one. But their religion produces political priorities for them that override denominational or confessional affiliations in their voting and political donation behavior.

To most of the religious factions of the Republican Party, Mitt Romney is a member of a non-Christian cult, the Mormon Church, and is headed to Hail. But they will support him with enthusiasm against Obama, who Huckabee calls a "self-professed" evangelical. A large percentage of Huckabee's Party are "self-professed" believers in the idea that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim socialist atheist Muslim fundamentalist.

Huckabee has a more pleasant public face than many Christian Right activists and leading Republican politicians. But he used his ecumenical moment to promote the sleazy notion that Obama is persecuting Christianity in the United States: "The attack on my Catholic brothers and sisters is an attack on me. The Democrats have brought back the old dance the 'Limbo' to see how low they can go in attempting to limit our ability to practice our faith." (my emphasis)

From NPR's transcript of Ann Romney's Convention Speech 08/28/2012 (video here):

I want to talk to you about that love so deep only a mother can fathom it — the love we have for our children and our children's children. ...

They are here among us tonight in this hall; they are here in neighborhoods across Tampa and all across America. The parents who lie awake at night side by side, wondering how they'll be able to pay the mortgage or make the rent; the single dad who's working extra hours tonight, so that his kids can buy some new clothes to go back to school, can take a school trip or play a sport, so his kids can feel ... like the other kids.

And the working moms who love their jobs but would like to work just a little less to spend more time with the kids, but that's just out of the question with this economy. ...

And if you listen carefully, you'll hear the women sighing a little bit more than the men. It's how it is, isn't it?

It's the moms who always have to work a little harder, to make everything right.

It's the moms of this nation — single, married, widowed — who really hold this country together. We're the mothers, we're the wives, we're the grandmothers, we're the big sisters, we're the little sisters, we're the daughters.

This is the Christian Right's vision of the proper "traditional values": it's a woman's place to be a mother, a daughter, a wife, someone whose life is defined by her relationship to the men in her family. And maybe a tiny bit by a female sibling.

Her version of this Traditional Family doesn't say it's bad for a woman to work. But if you do, you will be one of those "working moms who love their jobs but would like to work just a little less to spend more time with the kids." In other words, you should feel guilty for being a deficient mother.

And single fathers? He has to worry about making sure "his kids can feel ... like the other kids." Because, you know, if a kid has no mother in the house - or worse, two mothers, or, worse yet - two dads, well, they just aren't going to "feel ... like the other kids." Because you're a bad parent.

Yes, I'm interpreting a bit. But I'm interpreting it based on what I know about the Christian Right's concept of the Traditional Family, and how important it is to restrict women's roles in it. And outside it.

Both male and female adherents of this view often speak defensively about phantom feminists out there who criticism women who work as full-time mothers and homemakers. If there are any actual feminists who do so, I haven't encountered them. In fact, I doubt that most self-described feminists would even recognize them are feminists, since the women's movement has emphasized improving the security and protecting the dignity of women who are full-time mothers and homemakers. At the same time they have worked to prevent opportunities available to women from being restricted from irrational prejudices and laws based on a rigid, ideology model of the Traditional Family.

One result of that has also been that it is becoming more common the US for men to take a period of time off from working to be full-time fathers and homemakers while their spouses work. Doing so is scarcely considered a resume "gap" any more as it once was for men taking on that role. Even though Lady Romney no doubt considers that a father performing such a role would deprive his kids of being able to "feel ... like the other kids."

Finally, this from the Boston Globe/AP Transcript of Rep. Paul Ryan's remarks 08/29/2012 (video here):

Mitt and I also go to different churches. But in any church, the best kind of preaching is done by example. And I've been watching that example. The man who will accept your nomination tomorrow is prayerful and faithful and honorable. Not only a defender of marriage, he offers an example of marriage at its best. Not only a fine businessman, he’s a fine man, worthy of leading this optimistic and good-hearted country.

Here again, politics trumps denominational affiliation. This has been true of the Christian Right since it became an organized force in its current form during the Carter Administration.

Our different faiths come together in the same moral creed. We believe that in every life there is goodness; for every person, there is hope. Each one of us was made for a reason, bearing the image and likeness of the Lord of Life.

Here's where it's important to pay attention to tribal-code usages of words and phrases. "Life" mentioned in the abstract in such a context signals opposition to abortion, even for those whose "method of conception" (Ryan's phrase elsewhere) was being raped. "Lord of Life" just strengthens the signal. But it also is discreet, because to those in the home audience not so familiar with the term, it would just sound like a conventional reference to God. They wanted to mute their anti-abortion priorities, especially after Todd Akin so inconveniently let slip on TV something of the general attitude toward women that the antiabortion movement promotes.

He continues directly:

We have responsibilities, one to another — we do not each face the world alone. And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak. The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.

This again would be heard by the convention audience and faithful Republicans as primarily antiabortion slogans. That's pretty much the only context these days in which you hear Republicans taking such a non-Ayn-Randish position as "the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak." That's strictly antiabortion talk for the Reps. It doesn't apply at all to anyone who is a post-birth person. Especially not women. Or African-Americans. Or Latinos. Or immigrants.

This immediately following piece of boilerplate also caught my attention:

Each of these great moral ideas is essential to democratic government — to the rule of law, to life in a humane and decent society. They are the moral creed of our country, as powerful in our time, as on the day of America’s founding. They are self-evident and unchanging, and sometimes, even presidents need reminding, that our rights come from nature and God, not from government.

First, I would be surprised if there are even two people, Ryan included, attending the Republican convention who could give any kind of decent description of what the philosophical concept of Natural Law alluded to by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Because outside of Catholic theology, the concept pretty much isn't used any more. Fundamentalist Protestant theology completely rejects it.

And, wait, our rights come from our Creator and the laws of Nature's God, like the Declaration says? What about Lee Greenwood:

I'm proud to be an American
Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me

According to Lee Greenwood in the unofficial national anthem of the Republican Party, it was American soldiers who gave us our rights! Soldiers who were, uh, paid by the gubment.

Ryan continues on immediately with a verbal tribute to The Troops. Although it was surprisingly brief and entirely conventional: "The founding generation secured those rights for us, and in every generation since, the best among us have defended our freedoms. They are protecting us right now. We honor them and all our veterans, and we thank them."

If I thought this signaled some kind of a restrained attitude toward foreign policy, I might see the light treatment of military themes as some kind of hopeful sign. But since the Christian-nationalist theme of American Exceptionalism is so prominent at the convention, and since Ryan was preceded by not-yet-convicted war criminal Condi-Condi Rice talking about the need to continue the Cheney-Bush foreign policy, I'm going to restraint any surges of hope on that score.

Here's Steve Earle performing his song about Condi-Condi in 2005:

Tags: ann romney, mike huckabee, paul ryan, steve earle

Philosophy and the Huck (aka, Mike Huckabee)

It's kind of painful to think of using the term "philosophy" in connection with Christian fundamentalism. George W. Bush unintentionally illustrated why in his famous response to a dorky question in a Republican Presidential debate on who his favorite philosopher is, "the Lord Jesus Christ." I'm not sure, but that may have made Shrub Bush the first person in history to consider Jesus a philosopher.

John Maynard Keynes once observed that businessmen often p[ride themselves on having derived all their ideas about economics from practical experience, when in reality they are the intellectual slaves of some long-dead economist. American Christian fundamentalists are not a very philosophically inclined bunch - not that any other significant group in the US is, either. But their religious thinking is actually influenced by a school of thought called Scottish Common Sense philosophy, of whom the most famous were George Campbell (1719-1796) and Thomas Reid (1710-1796). You can read a bit more about the general concept in this article by Alexander Broadie of the University of Glasgow.

Like Keynes' practical businessmen, today's Christianists are often running off some philosophy that looks much more like a brand of Social Darwinism than anything coming out of the Gospels. Even though they claim to what they call Darwinism, better know to most people as the science of biology.

Mike Huckabee's recent statement about Obama having been raised in Kenya sounds like a garbled version the claims of Dinesh D'Souza's frivolous book about Obama's alleged anti-colonial obsessions: Sarah Posner, Huckabee on Obama vs. "Average Americans" Religion Dispatches 03/02/2011. As Sarah Posner explains:

The reference to the Brits is by now a storyline that has reached fever pitch among conservatives: as part of the standard personalizing of the Oval Office by new presidents, Obama returned a bust of Winston Churchill -- which was on loan to former President Bush by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- and replaced it with a bust of his own choosing, of that notorious un-American figure... wait for it... Abraham Lincoln. [my emphasis]

The American President replaces the bust of a foreigner (Churchill) with one of the American all-but-universally regarded as the greatest President (Lincoln): and conservatives see this as sinister? The Huck's excuse for a clarifying statement included this: "The Governor would however like to know more about where President Obama's liberal policies come from and what else the President plans to do to this country -- as do most Americans."

Between free-market zealots, neoconservatives who believe in the Leo Straussian doctrine of governing by deception, and Christian fundis, more and more of what Republicans say sounds like one thing in American English and another in RepublicanSpeak. Blue Texan (Mike Huckabee a Victim of Epistemic Closure Firedoglake 03/02/2011) thinks the Huck has fallen victim to a philosophical disease. But it's one that is epidemic among his fellow Republicans: "this Obama/Mau Mau talk is perfectly mainstream in right-wing circles, and fruitloops everywhere else. Ditto death panels, the socialist conspiracy behind climate change, and the looming threat of Sharia law being imposed in the US."

Sarah Posner translates the Churchill business into American English for us:

But there's a lot more embedded in Huckabee's comment about Obama's "view of the Brits" and the supposed snub of returning the Churchill bust. First, in suggesting that Obama is anti-imperialist, Huckabee intimates that the president, in what conservatives frame as a civilizational war between the west and the rest, doesn't embrace the superiority of western civilization (which can also be read as Obama doesn't embrace "American exceptionalism.")

Second, and probably even more important, for an evangelical and Christian Zionist like Huckabee, Churchill is a figure of enormous symbolic power. In this scenario, Obama is an appeaser like Chamberlain -- whether it's on Iran's nuclear ambitions, or in failing to address the "Holocaust" of abortion -- Churchill is an Esther-like figure who finally intervened for the Jews (much as Christian Zionists see themselves as protecting Israel from Iran) in a Holocaust (much as ardent anti-choice crusaders see themselves protecting fetuses from what they attempt to portray as genocide). [my emphasis]

She goes on to frame this as "winking and nodding to his base." It looks to me more like an increasingly cult-like alternative political language among the Christian Republican White People's Party.

Tags: christian fundamentalism, christian right, christianism, mike huckabee, sarah posner

Cop-killer a Christian terrorist?

I've been following the story of the man who apparently killed four policemen in Lakewood WA, a Tacoma suburb. The suspect, Maurice Clemmons, has been killed by a Seattle police officer. At the end of this story by Gene Johnson of the A********* P**** appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle 12/01/09, Seattle police kill suspect, he reports:

Clemmons was charged in Washington state earlier this year with assaulting a police officer and raping a child, and investigators in the sex case said he was motivated by visions that he was Jesus Christ and that the world was on the verge of the apocalypse.

But he was released from jail after posting bail with the assistance of Jail Sucks Bail Bonds.

Documents related to those charges indicate a volatile personality. In one instance, he is accused of gathering his wife and young relatives and forcing them to undress.

"The whole time Clemmons kept saying things like trust him, the world is going to end soon, and that he was Jesus," a Pierce County sheriff's report said. [my emphasis]

In other words, his expressed motivation for his crimes was his Christian religious beliefs. The undressing scene described seems significant, because it's the kind of sexual control associated with cults. In other words, however pathological, that he had religious motivations for his crime.

This is important in light of Mike Huckabee's unusual clemency policies toward violent offenders during his Governorship of Arkansas. He relied heavily on the prisoners' expressed religious faith and the recommendations of other Baptist ministers - the Huck was a Southern Baptist minister himself - in his clemency decisions, as Joe Conason describes in Mike Huckabee's fatally bad judgment Salon 11/30/09. Joe quotes from Clemmons' own clemency petition to the Governor:

"I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak," he explained in his clemency application in 2000. "I'm still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought upon my family's name ... I have never done anything good for God, but I've prayed for him to grant me in his compassion the grace to make a start. Now, I'm humbly appealing to you for a brand new start."

This article, Suspect's sister said he was 'not in his right mind' by Levi Pulkkinen and Vanessa Ho Seattle Post-Intelligencer 12/01/09, has more detail on Clemmons' religious delusions, including his claimed that he had been studying to become a minister.

It's notable that no one in their right mind would blame the Christian religion in general for Clemmons' actions, even though he may have been entirely sincere in his Christian religious professions at the moments he made them.

But that's not the standard that a star pundit like Tom Friedman, who is actually one of the most influential opinion columnists in America, applies to Islam, as Friedman showed us in his column just this weekend.

But aside from highlighting the screaming hypocrisy of American anti-Muslim bigots holding all of Islam to a foolish standard they don't expect of the majority Christians in the US, there is a genuine concern that some Christian leaders are promoting or simply maintaining a heavy silence in the face of rhetoric that creates a climate in which crimes like those of Clemmons become more likely.

It's not directly addressing the Maurice Clemmons case, but it is relevant to the larger question of Christian-motivated violence. Ex-Christian-Rightist Frank Schaeffer asks Christian Cowards: Why Don't Evangelical Leaders Condemn the Hate Spouted by Right-Wingers? Alternet 12/01/09:

There will always be hate-filled nuts on the fringe of any movement; left, right, religious or secular. No one in leadership should be blamed for their fringe -- unless they don't speak up. Post "Tea Parties", "Obama isn't a real American", and all the rest it is strange and disturbing to witness the silence of the evangelical leadership in the light of so much venom directed against our President by a largely evangelical Republican base.

This is shocking to me, given that for much of my life I was not just the son of a famous evangelical leader (Francis Schaeffer -- "credited" by Max Blumenthal and others as a founder of the religious right) but for a time I was also his sidekick and a leader in the evangelical world in my own right. I quit over the slide of the religious right into extremism. That said I'm still a believing Christian (non-evangelical and progressive) and to see the name of Christ used to promote hate outrages me. To see the Bible used as a political bumper sticker source (for whatever "side") is an affront.

He points out in particular that Billy and Franklin Graham recently had a high-profile meeting with Sarah Palin and put out a friendly statement about her. But neither of them saw fit to condemn her dishonest and inflammatory rhetoric about the "death panels" she claimed that health care reform would bring.

The rhetoric from antiabortionists that has become as common as dirt about abortion being like the Holocaust is another example of the kind of talk coming from respectable leaders that help to unhinge desperate and troubled believers. Not only is it anti-Semitic, i.e., asserting that terminating the pregnancy of a fetus with no possibility of surviving without being part of the mother's body is worse than killing a real live Jew. It also creates an image of not only medical providers but advocates of women's right to choose as being murderers beyond the pale of human decency.

My wife is an operating room nurse who does not take part in abortion procedures. But any doctor or nurse may be in the position at some point of having to perform an operation that risks the life of a fetus in order to save the mother's life. So I'm particularly aware of sleaziness of people demonizing medical providers as murderers for performing legal abortion procedures.

The article by Rick Anderson linked below says that Clemmons was fatally shot while fleeing from a police officer, who apparently was patrolling alone.

More on the Clemmons case: Clemmons manhunt over by Max Brantley Arkansas Blog; Huckabee revealed by John Brummett Arkansas News 12/01/09; Huckabee's Christ Delusion by tristero Hullabaloo 12/01/09; Accused Lakewood Cop Killer Maurice Clemmons Shot Dead by Lone Officer in Rainier Valley; Cop Unhurt by Rick Anderson Seattle Daily Weekly; 'All I do is feel sad for it,' Clemmons' grandmother says by Eric Nalder Seattle Post-Intelligencer 12/01/09; 'Latest incident ranks among deadliest days in U.S. law enforcement history' by Scott Gutierrez Seattle Post-Intelligencer 12/01/09.

Tags: maurice clemmons, mike huckabee

Brother Huck in Washington State

People who have read my posts recently know I'm no fan of Brother Huck. But when you see what brazen nonsense the Washington Republican Party pulled on him Saturday, we do have to ask what the Huck is going on. Josh Marshall and the folks at TPM are on the story, e.g., WTF? 02/10/08; Huckabee: "Weird Things" Going On 02/10/08; Doin' The Best We Can! 02/11/08.

The basic story is, with 87% of the precincts counted, the bold Maverick had a small lead over Bro. Huck. So the state Republican Party chair, Luke Esser, just declared the Straight Talker to be the winner. Josh Marshall writes:

In terms of consequence, Bush v. Gore it ain't. This is a relatively small contest in a nomination campaign that appears to be over. But this is something you'd expect either from Soviet history or a farcical passage in a Faulkner novel. And let's not forget the context. Huckabee starts the day with a blowout win in Kansas. That evening he gets the largest number of votes in Louisiana. Then in the third contest he's neck and neck with John McCain and looks like he may win all three contests of the day - a shut-out for the all-but-declared nominee. Then as it's going down to the wire, the head of the state party decides he's seen enough and calls it for McCain.

I always appreciate a Faulkner reference but, hey, come on: Faulkner wouldn't have used plot device that dumb!

A TPM reader wrote them, "Nice to know the Repubs have progressed from 2000 where they refused to count Democratic votes, to 2008 where they are now refusing to count their own votes." It reminded me of the Republican debate two weeks ago, where the Maverick and Romney sat there like two Delta plantation owners smirking smugly at the Huck and Ron Paul when they were talking. They seemed to think they were just tolerating annoying eccentrics. (Which Paul is, but that's another story.)

Tags: mccain, mike huckabee, william faulkner

Super Tuesday

One of the strangest things about the Republican Presidential race is that the Maverick McCain, who wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years or maybe a thousand or even longer, has been getting votes from Republicans who are critical of the Iraq War: Curious and Curiouser: McCain Popular Among Anti-War Voters by Jason Linkins Huffington Post 02/05/08. I haven't yet seen any detailed breakdown of that factor. For instance, it wouldn't surprise me if some of the people who the polls pick up as "antiwar" are actually thinking the Iraq War should be escalated, i.e., they are unhappy with the war because it's not violent enough. In that case, voting for St. McCain, chief Congressional advocate of The Surge, makes good sense.

It could just be coincidence. McCain has one of the most conservative voting records in the Senate, voting with Cheney and Bush on just about every issue. But here's where warped media coverage can make a significant difference. The adoring "press corps" lavishes praise on McCain, to the point of endlessly repeating his claim to be a "straight talker" and, of course, constantly referring to him as a Maverick. There could be some significant numbers of Republicans who think McCain really is moderate on some issues like theocracy and vote for him in the primaries for that reason. It's hard to see how anyone can think there's anything moderate about today's authoritarian Republican Party. But to the extent that some Republican primary voters who see themselves as moderate also might tend to be more skeptical of the Iraq War, I can see that might produce the effect the voting results are showing of "antiwar" voters going for the legendary Maverick.

More generally about the Super Tuesday results, one of Digby's readers has an interesting analysis of why Obama may have done so well in the Democratic primaries in predominantly Republican states (Savvy Political Behavior 02/05/08):

While the networks focus on demographic explanations (white-black, man-woman), I think there is a case to made now that the regional draw of these two candidates is more deeply rooted in the recent political culture and history of each state. Obama's post-partisan, one America appeal resonates best in the states that have been dominated by Republicans and republican lite candidates (Iowa, SC, GA, AL, DE, CN). Obama is really cutting across the red states. On the other hand, Hillary is doing best among the blue states or trending blue states from the most recent elections (NH, NV, NY, NJ, MA). There are some slippery states for such a formula (TN, OK), but it might knock back the old political talk about identity politics and redirect the discourse to savvy political behavior and choices by the voters.

The post-partisan, bi-partisan argument favors the party out of power, so it is not really surprising that Obama resonates more with those states who see reconciliation as the path to local power. Clinton though seems more acceptable to partisans and state parties who control their local agendas.

That certainly sounds plausible. Now, "plausible" and "correct" aren't necessarily the same thing. But it's an intriguing observation.

And one of the things that needs explaining is Clinton's substantial win in California, 51%-42% over Obama at this writing, according to the San Francisco Chronicle Online with most votes counted. I'm not surprised she won. But while she didn't get as big a blow-out win as the early projections indicated she might, that's still an impressive spread.

A strong Latino vote going her way is surely part of the reason. But as Digby's commenter recognized, demographic explanations are only partial explanations. The Latino turnout was reported to be strong in California. Not all Latinos are especially sympathetic to undocumented immigrants. But few of them can miss the ugly racial and nativist undertones to the anti-immigrant hysteria which even the bold Maverick McCain is willing to indulge. And they know that politicians respond to votes, not raw demographics. Even though on the drivers license issue, Obama had a more immigrant-friendly position, I'm guessing that some substantial portion of Latino voters were judging that they could be more confident that Clinton could fight the Republicans effectively.

Once again, the polls showing Obama and Clinton running very close in California, including the recent results by the Field Poll, which supposedly has the best track record on California polling, didn't pick up anything like this margin for Clinton.

I suspect that some significant portion of Clinton's vote was based on the desire of the Democratic base for an experienced fighter to go up against Maverick McCain, the darling of the press corps. Obama sounds like he wants to bring everyone together. Clinton sounds like she's ready to fight the Republicans. First things first. Zachary Coile (How Clinton won California San Francisco Chronicle Online 02/06/08:

California has long been "Clinton country," but Hillary Rodham Clinton seized Super Tuesday's biggest prize by winning big among women, Latinos, Asian-Americans, gays and lesbians, older voters and working class Californians - which blunted Barack Obama's strong support from African Americans, white men and independents, according to exit polls.

While Obama was able to carry some of the state's progressive centers - including San Francisco, Marin and Santa Cruz counties - Clinton dominated in the voter-rich Democratic strongholds of Los Angeles, Alameda and Santa Clara counties. The New York senator also vacuumed up support in inland areas like Fresno, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Despite the Ted Kennedy endorsement, that voting pattern doesn't indicate any left/right - or more-liberal/less-liberal - split, though the national press corps seems to view Obama as the more liberal candidate. I was struck by this breakdown in Coile's report:

Clinton won with all age groups in California, but racked up her biggest margins among voters age 60 or older, winning 53 percent to 30 percent. She even won narrowly with voters ages 18-24 - 52 to 46 percent - a setback for the Obama campaign, which had counted on turning out young voters in droves.

Clinton also won among union voters, 54 to 37 percent, despite a last minute effort by some of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards' labor supporters to swing the vote to Obama. But Clinton had her own endorsements from important unions such as American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the American Federation of Teachers, and she was popular with the rank-and-file. ...

The vote in California also split along class lines. Voters from families making less than $100,000 tilted heavily toward Clinton - 54 percent to 37 percent - while Obama held a narrow edge with those making more than $100,000, 49 percent to 47 percent.

Clinton won overwhelmingly with voters who did not complete high school (82 percent to 15 percent) and had a 2-to-1 edge among those who had graduated from high school. She also won among college graduates, although Obama narrowly outpolled her among those who had pursued post-graduate work, 48 percent to 46 percent.

Gays and lesbians also broke sharply for Clinton, backing her 60 percent to 25 percent. (my emphasis)

Obama's foolish use of an anti-gay minister last year to pander to conservative Christian voters probably had a lot to do with the lop-sided Clinton vote among gays and lesbians. Given that California Democrats tend to be pro-tolerance on sexual choice questions, it probably hurt Obama among straight voters, as well. That was the kind of thing California Democrats would notice and be concerned about.

The breakdown of the California vote does show that Obama had more appeal among independents. But Clinton's across-the-board strength in California certainly raises a question about Obama's argument that he would have a broader appeal than Clinton. Or, as he has put it, that Clinton's voters would turn out for him but his voters wouldn't necessarily all turn out for her.

Brother Huck did better than the conventional wisdom of the punditocracy expected, even though the polls showed him with significant support, especially in the Deep South states, where of course he did well on Tuesday. Having watched the CNN talking heads last Wednesday during and after the Republican debate, I really think the pundits wanted to write the Huck out of the race because it's just too confusing for them to have to think about a three-way calculation. The pain of actually having to think can be quite distressing. It would be so much easier to just forget all this primary stuff and sing the praises of that living saint, the Maverick McCain, the press corps favorite.

Brother Huck probably increased his chances of being a McCain VP pick with his showing on Super Tuesday. The states he won would likely go to the Republicans in the general election, though Arkansas could conceivably be competitive. But putting the Huck on the ticket would bolster the Maverick's appeal to the Christianist base. Although the polls don't show the kind of hostility to McCain that prominent conservative figures have expressed, adding the Huck to the ticket could blunt some of the criticism from the OxyContin crowd and add some enthusiasm for the Maverick among Christianists who may have been disturbed by his occasional criticism of torture or the mild signs he has sometimes shown of being friendly to immigrants.

Tags: barack obama, hillary clinton, mccain, mike huckabee

Yes, here she is: the Huckabee girl!

Stop me before I Huck again!

Max Brantley in his The morning Huck post for 02/03/08 at the Arkansas Times blog prints a letter from Rick Moss, a reader in Boca Raton FL, wielding purple prose in the service of the Christianist cause and Brother Huck:

When we few, we courageous Band of Brothers and Sisters, rest in victory on the summit with Mike Huckabee as our President, we will have time to wipe the sweat from the impossible odds overcome, cleanse the blood from the slings and arrows of our own Party and realize that our empty pockets enabled us to make the final surge to where we now stand.

And then the throngs will come and scream how much they love Mike. But they will have crisp, dry clothes without sweat stains and no blood on their boots. They will be fresh and enthusiastic and when we ask them where they were during the onslaught when South Carolina and Florida were within reach, they will drop their eyes and mumble,"We didn't think you could really do it. We love you Mike, it's just that we felt you we re not electable."

I say cry Havoc and loose the Resurrection Power of Christ. Let every Believer start voting his conscience and heart and exercise some Faith instead of doubt. We are at WAR for the future of our nation and there is no time for hesitation, there is no time for halfhearted attempts. RALLY, RALLY, Fight the good fight! Strike while the iron is hot!! I would rather fail with the taste of my own blood in my mouth than live a comfortable life tasting the bile rise in my throat as I watch my Country slide into indolence and decay because those who had the power to do something failed to answer the CALL.

"Cry Havoc" used to be a popular comic book headline. And that line, "I would rather fail with the taste of my own blood in my mouth than live a comfortable life tasting the bile rise in my throat" pretty much defines purple prose. Although there are less disgusting varieties.

Tags: christianism, mike huckabee

The Republican outlier candidates (and some comments on the Maverick)

Still shaken from my intense exposure this past week to far more CNN TV than I usually absorb, I can't help but notice that most of the punditocracy is eager to write Brother Huck and Ron Paul out of the Republican Presidential contest.

It's easier to understand with Paul. I'm surprised he hasn't done better in the primaries. But then, I was expecting him to spend a lot of that impressive bundle he raised online to do ad buys in the media markets where primaries are being held. But, as the ever-diligent Dave Neiwert tells us in Ron Paul and that money Orcinus blog 01/30/08, he hasn't been doing that. Dave speculates that Paul is saving the money for a third-party run. But who knows? Maybe he plans to use it to do image-boosting advertising for Stormfront, the White Citizens Council and the John Birch Society.

Christian populism a century ago: William Jennings Bryan, the Great Commoner

Clearly, Brother Huck has little chance to win the nomination. But he could come on strong in some of the Southern primaries and remain a player in the nomination process. And his campaign has provided us an important glimpse at the state of Republican Party Christianism.

Michael Kazin looks at the difference between Brother Huck's brand of so-called populism and the original version in What Evangelical Populism Lost: Why Huckabee Is Not Another William Jennings Bryan Washington Independent 01/28/08:

However, the differences between the two men are significant—and reveal how radically the fault-lines of religion and politics changed over the last century. In Bryan’s heyday, most Americans were evangelical Protestants, and split their votes about evenly between the two major parties. But now they are about a quarter of the population, and have been the GOP’s most reliable constituency since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Huckabee, whatever his rhetoric of the moment, is a loyal member of that right-wing flock.

The former Baptist preacher, like Reagan, does have a knack for coining one-liners that Bryan, the most popular orator of his time, would have admired. "In many ways,” Huckabee mused recently, “I’m like a lot of people in the United States: I’m a guy over 50 looking for a job." But the policies he advocates have almost nothing in common with those of the Great Commoner.

Bryan helped initiate the progressive income tax; Huckabee wants to abolish it in favor of a national sales tax that would fall most heavily on the working and middle class. Bryan tried to expand federal power to aid working people; Huckabee opposes universal health care “mandated by federal edict.” Bryan was the first major-party nominee to receive the official backing of organized labor; most unions shun Huckabee, who governed a right-to-work state where Wal-Mart has its headquarters. Bryan hated war and resigned as secretary of state in 1915, when he thought President Woodrow Wilson was leading the U.S. into the hell of World War I; Huckabee strenuously supports the war in Iraq.

Christianist "populism", 2008: Brother Huck

Nicholas Kristof in his Sunday column defends the Huck by using a favorite Christian Right verbal trick (Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love New York Times 02/03/08):

At a New York or Los Angeles cocktail party, few would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama’s race or Hillary Clinton’s sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with deriding Mike Huckabee’s religious faith.

Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices of all kinds, but we have a blind spot about Christian evangelicals. They constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock.

Scorning people for their faith is intrinsically repugnant, and in this case it also betrays a profound misunderstanding of how far evangelicals have moved over the last decade. Today, conservative Christian churches do superb work on poverty, AIDS, sex trafficking, climate change, prison abuses, malaria and genocide in Darfur.

Good grief! Can New York Times columnists be this dumb? Well, I've followed David Brooks for years, so I know the answer to that question.

I wonder if Kristof even realizes that in Fundispeak, "New York liberals", as well as "Hollywood", are understood to mean "Jews". Especially in the context he uses the concepts (okay, he uses "Los Angeles" instead of "Hollywood"), which is of people "deriding Mike Huckabee’s religious faith". Since Brother Huck's religious faith is Christianity, presumably other Christians wouldn't want to make fun of his faith.

What Kristof repeats here is the whine of which Protestant fundamentalist white folks are so fond, of casting themselves as a persecuted minority. But when Kristof writes that "we [liberals] have a blind spot about Christian evangelicals", it makes me recall the old Lone Ranger/Tonto joke where the punch line is Tonto saying, "What do you mean 'we', Kemosabe?"

Look, the groups we know as the Christian Right have worked actively since 1979 to become a force in American politics. They've suceeded. But there's reason to be careful what you pray for. Because now it's become impossible to understand a great many Republican Party policies, not least our current Middle East policies, without understanding the Christian fundamentalist religious viewpoint from which they stem. As much as it might be convenient, the Christianists can't form a religious-based political bloc and still hope to discourage any criticism of their political positions by declaring that the criticism is offensive to their religious.

Kristof also uses a columnists' trick, which to me is getting very old, of basing his column on unnamed and unidentified parties, e.g., "liberals" at cocktail parties in New York and Los Angeles. He also blurs the distinction between "evangelical" and "fundamentalist" in making his comment about the unidentified groups who "do superb work on poverty, AIDS, sex trafficking, climate change, prison abuses, malaria and genocide in Darfur". In the American context, evangelicals are conservative, Protestant Christians who generally espouse a "born-again" theology. Fundamentalists are a subset of evangelicals. It's a distinction that fundamentalists and non-fundamentalist evangelicals have made going back at least to the 1950s.

Outside of the strange and mysterious cocktail parties Kristof frequents, it's a huge leap of faith - or a huge conceptual disconnect, take your pick - between evangelicals of the Jimmy Carter or Jim Wallis type who may do "do superb work on poverty, AIDS, sex trafficking," etc., and a theocrat like Mike Huckabee. Is Kristof really under the impression that Brother Huck and the Christian Right groups with which he has worked hard to align himself are interested in, to take one example, ending their advocacy of "abstinence-only" sex education programs which often leave their participants uninformed about basic safe sex considerations? Those programs are the very opposite of "superb work" in fighting AIDS. Did Brother Huck talk to the White Citizens Council about the need to end "prison abuses"?

Kristof's column gives a very misleading impression that the newly-prominent moderate/liberal evangelicals are somehow the same people that ten years ago were hardcore Christianist conservatives. I'm sure that's true in some individual cases. But his column fails to make the long-standing distinction between fundamentalists and non-fundamentalist "evangelicals". Maybe Kristof only recently discovered the latter. Or maybe he's just clueless about the distinction.

Among the "inlier" Republican candidates, there's little doubt about which one our "press corps" loves the most. Joe Conason discusses their love affair with the bold Maverick in Will the press get over its love for McCain? Salon 02/01/08. Patrick Ottenhoff at the Political Insider blog also looks at the adoring posture of the press generally toward that bold Maverick in McCain's Standing with His Base is as Strong as Ever 01/28/08.

Jim Lobe at his LobeLog blog reports that McCain is Now the Neo-Con Candidate 02/02/08:

With the elimination of both Rudy Giuliani last week and Fred Thompson the week before, neo-conservatives who were not already in his camp will be rushing to support Sen. John McCain. Of course, McCain was the early favorite of Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard back in 2000, and the latter’s most recent coverage, particularly by Dick Cheney favorite Stephen Hayes (he of the famous “Case Closed” leak that purported to prove beyond any doubt that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were long-standing friends and collaborators) has made clear that they are solidly in McCain’s camp.

Tags: christianism, christian fundamentalism, mccain, mike huckabee, ron paul, william jennings bryan

The Huck and his (godly?) standards

Brother Huck was on CNN a little while ago giving a speech promoting his Fair Tax scam. He said a couple of things I didn't recall hearing before. One was he referred to "boobirds" who opposed his plans. I don't think I've ever encountered that particular construction before.

The other thing he said was that he wanted to amend the Constitution to eliminate the ability of the federal government to impose income taxes. I knew he proposed to eliminate income tax as part of his crackpot Fair Tax scheme. But this business about eliminated the Constitutional Amendment that provides for federal income tax is an old favorite cause for the John Birch Society. The crackpotization of the Republican Party proceeds.

Max Brantley at the Arkansas Blog ("Spotted: an issue 01/27/08) updates us about the Huck's contribution to the overwhelming public demand (NOT) for phasing out Social Security:

The LA Times gives us a welcome break from personality politics with a survey of what candidates are saying about retirement savings - and their utter lack among the American electorate. I still think the most pluperfectly nuts idea offered so far is by, who else, Mike Huckabee. He'd give people a lump sum of their Social Security money to spend or invest rather than lifetime monthly payments. Bass Boats R Us. And a whole new burden for the government when the money is gone. Why in the world you'd want to tamper with the essence of the single most successful government program ever - a program that works because it's universal and which has demonstrably lifted millions out of poverty - is beyond me.

Tags: authoritarianism, john birch society, mike huckabee

Today in Huckery

Max Blumenthal has been taking a look at Mike Huckabee's White Supremacist Links Huffington Post 01/18/08.

Also at the Huffington Post, Cristina Page points out in What the Huck? 01/22/08 that Brother Huck doesn't just want to write his version of "God's standards" into the Constitution on abortion and gay marriage. He also wants to ban many popular forms of birth control. After all, women should be punished with pregnancy or disease if they have sex outside of "God's standards", shouldn't they? Or at least, that's how things would be in the Huck's ideal United Christian States of America.

Here's one to watch out for, from Huckabee the energizer talker by John Brummett, Arkansas News Bureau 01/20/08. Brummett basically argues, oh, the Huck's a good ole boy! You don't need to pay no 'tenchun to those weird thangs he says sometimes! Or, in other words, just ignore his overtly expressed theocratic ideas and the Christian dominionist types he's in tight with.

But even God's soldiers (Huck version) need some assistance from Mammon: Huckabee’s Money Woes Curtail Campaign by David Kirkpatrick New York Times 01/22/08

Tags: authoritarianism, christian dominionism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, christianism, mike huckabee

Is the Huck a long shot for the Republican nomination?

John Williams at the Arkansas Blog has been looking closely at the Huck's voting percentages. In Huckabee takes silver 01/19/08, he writes:

According to this exit poll [Exit Polls: South Carolina CNN.com 01/19/08], 60 percent of [South Carolina]’s voters identified as evangelicals, but Huckabee failed to get a majority of them yet again – 43 percent. He only polled 14 percent among those who were non-evangelical. My calculations show that around 85 percent of Huckabee voters were evangelical. Through five contests he’s proven incapable of expanding his base, which spells doom for him the way the race stands now.

For now the entire Republican field, with the exception of Duncan Hunter, is staying in. Even in the event that someone dropped out, though, I’m not sure that Huckabee would be able to siphon off that many supporters. There’s been some speculation that Thompson hurt Huckabee in SC, but it may not be as simple as that. Thompson polled evenly among evangelicals and non-evangelicals. Huckabee could expect some of the evangelical portion of that, but it’s not clear how much. From what I know of Thompson voters they’re for Reagan-conservative values – which is not exactly Huck’s brand of conservatism.

This tells me a couple of things. The Huck hasn't yet been able to sway many Republican voters with his theocratic message outside of the core Christianists. Of course, the Christianists are the most important part of the Party base. So that doesn't mean he's no longer a serious candidate, by any means.

It also tells me that of the current Republicans candidates, it's Huckabee's theocratic message delivered with cornpone posturing that resonates most strongly with the Christianist Republican base. Far and away. So the Huck's campaign is giving us a better public look than we've had in a while at where the Christian Right will take us if pro-democracy voters allow them to.

Tags: christian right, christianism, mike huckabee

Morning Huck

Neo-Confederate Huckabee supporter Ron Wilson, another fine Christian white man

Well, it's still morning on the West Coast!

Between the Huck's campaign and Ron Paul's, we're getting more much daylight than we normally have shining into some of the darker corners of the American radical right. The People for the American Way's blog Right Wing Watch gives a brief profile of the Neo-Confederate Behind Pro-Huckabee Flag Ads in South Carolina 01/18/08.

The Huck defended his position on the South Carolina Confederate state flag by resorting to the anal imagery of which he sees to be so fond, saying, "In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do". Technically, implied anal imagery.

Wilson has participated with a number of neo-Confederate groups, including the white supremacist League of the South and the Council of Conservative Citizens, the latter being the present-day name of the White Citizens Council, which was the most significant overtly white-supremacist group in Mississippi during the civil rights battle of the 1950s and 1960s. Wilson also participated in the white supremacist takeover of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in 2000, which had previously been a stodgy group of Confederate romantics rather than racist activists.

Brother Huck's Presidential campaign has been providing abundant reminders of what the late Steve Gilliard always said, which is that we seriously misunderstand the Christian Right if we don't remember that it is largely synonymous with white folks who don't much like black people. More than a little of Christian Right ideology is old-line segregationist thinking.

Tags: authoritarianism, christian dominionism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, council of conservative citizens, mike huckabee, neo-confederates, neosegregation, racism, sons of confederate veterans, white citizens council

And the Huckery jus' keeps on a' comin'

The Huck: Y'all are gonna live by God's law when I'm President - my version of it, anyway (and women will be required to stand two paces behind) - but, hey, I've got a great laxative joke for you

It seems to be Huck Friday at Salon today. Joe Conason weighs in with Holy Constitution! 01/18/08. He recounts the Huck's declaration that he wanted to change the Constitution to conform to "the word of the living God" as Huck hears those words when it comes to abortion and gay marriage. Conason continues:

He later denied that he meant to suggest that God wants him in the White House. But his deliberate reference this week to conforming the law to "God's standards" sounds uncomfortably like the ideology sometimes known as "Christian dominionism" or "Christian reconstructionism," which declares that America, indeed every nation on earth, is meant to be governed by biblical law.

The looniest dominionists publicly insist that a pious government would inflict Old Testament punishments, including death, on blasphemers, pornographers, homosexuals, adulterers and even disobedient children. They constantly talk about their duty to institute biblical rule in the United States.

As a Southern Baptist preacher, does Huckabee accept that bizarre interpretation of Christian ethics? The answer is that he probably doesn't (or is too shrewd to say so if he does). But the clues to Huckabee's affinity for religious extremism have been lying in plain sight for a long time.

He cites some examples from Kids Who Kill (1998), the Huck's book co-authored with the hardline Christian Reconstructionist George Grant. And also describes the Huck's affinity for Christian dominionist Bill Gothard:

As governor, he also promoted the faith-based programs of a reconstructionist minister named Bill Gothard -- and even boasted that he had gone through Gothard's "basic program" himself. More reputable evangelicals consider Gothard to be a cultish fringe character, but he has built an enormous empire, which depends on funding from local and state governments to bring his authoritarian version of the Gospel to prisoners, police officers and welfare recipients, among others. He experienced a moment of unwelcome notoriety recently, when the Denver Post revealed that Matthew Murray, the 24-year-old gunman who killed four people at two Christian centers in Colorado in December, had been subjected as a teenager to Gothard's superstrict "home-schooling" programs. (my emphasis)

And the Huck's supporter Dr. Steven Hotze may be even scarier!

Years before he became a Republican Party activist, Hotze played a role in the Coalition on Revival, one of the early organizations promoting reconstructionist thought among evangelicals. The coalition's 1986 "manifesto for the Christian church" urged believers to accept the Bible as "the final measurement and depository of certain fundamental facts of reality and basic principles that God wants all mankind to know in the sphere of law, government, economics, business, education, arts and communication, medicine, psychology, and science. All theories and practices of these spheres of life are only true, right, and realistic to the degree that they agree with the Bible."

He doesn't just confine himself to saving souls and eliminating freedom of religion. According to this report, he promotes fraudulent medicine, as well: Doctor Nice by Craig Malisow Houston Press 07/21/05. Another fine Christian white man who can help rid our country of the plague of science. If the Huck becomes President, maybe he could appoint Hotze to be the Surgeon General, or to head the National Institutes of Health.

Also at Salon, Alex Koppelman and Vincent Rossmeier also take a look at Huckabee's radical religious friends 01/18/08. The also discuss George Grant and Steven Hotze, as well as Huck associates Michael Farris, Janet Folger, James Kennedy (died 2007), James Robison, Rick Scarborough, and Don Wildmon. Boy, hidy, if you think the neocons are bad, wait until the Huck's theocrats start running foreign and domestic policy!

Folger organized the Values Voter Presidential Debate in 2007, which memorably featured (with her encouragement), a choir singing, "Why Should God Bless America?"



And there's Mike Huckabee hearts Israel by Mike Madden 01/18/08 on how the Huck aligns with the "Christian Zionists" who want the most belligerent policies by the US and Israel to hurry up the end of the world when they expect most of the Jews in the world will be slaughtered and the rest will convert to Christianity, i.e., stop being Jews. Madden writes, "Huckabee's posturing on foreign policy boils down to two things: Get tough on terrorists, and stand strong with Israel."

Then there's the Huck's nativism, ethical challenges and support for plutocracy (despite the "populist" rhetoric and Gomer Pyle style): The real Mike Huckabee stands up by Max Brantley, Arkansas Blog 01/17/08.

Tags: authoritarianism, bill gothard, christian dominionism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, christian zionism, christianism, george grant, joe conason, mike huckabee, steven hotze

Bonus Huck

From the Arkansas Times Online:



Tags: mike huckabee

Old times thar are not forgotten - at least not by the Huck

TPM provides us a listen to neo-Confederate radio ads supporting the Huck in South Carolina.



Greg Sargent reports that as of his post of 01/17/08, the Huck "has not distanced himself from the ads. Huckabee's position on the issue is that the Federal government should stay out of states' disputes over the flag."

The Huck: candidate for the Christian white man (neo-Confederate version)

Tags: authoritarianism, christian dominionism, christian fundamentalism, christian right, christianism, mike huckabee, neo-confederate

The Huck on God and the Consitution

This is one to remember. the Huck says, "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 so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."



The Huck wants to amend the Constitution to ban abortion and gay marriage.

Tags: authoritarianism, christian dominionism, christian fundamentalism, christianism, mike huckabee

Racist talk, 2008 version

Jay Cole, rightwing radio ranter and one of the Huck's good ole boy network

Jay Cole is kind of an Arkansas Rush Limbaugh, one of the many talking heads of Republican hate radio. (h/t Arkansas Times blog) Max Blumenthal describes Cole and his links with the Huck in The Real Mike Huckabee The Nation Online 01/11/08:

Of all the right-wing figures who have promoted Mike Huckabee's extraordinary political rise from a backwater church to the national pulpit of a presidential campaign - and there are many - perhaps none know the former Arkansas governor and current Republican presidential front-runner better than Jay Cole. A Baptist minister based in Fayetteville, Arkansas, with a right-wing radio talk show of his own, Cole has been instrumental in inspiring Huckabee's rise over more than two decades. Indeed, when Huckabee was the governor of Arkansas, it was Cole who persuaded him to arrange the release from prison of a convicted rapist, Wayne Dumond, who had become a born-again evangelical in prison - the most controversial act of Huckabee's career, which still dogs him on the campaign trail.

At his Web site Save Our Nation, Cole shares the following story under "Current Articles" as of 01/14/08, Conveniently Forgotten Facts. It's bylined only, "This came in an email". I learned a long time ago (though I occasionally forget) that you can burn up an enormous amount of time actually researching the crap that come in rightwing chain letters. It's generally easier and faster to make stuff up than to actually research what happened. So I don't attach any truth-value to anything based on what this little diatribe says.

But it's a good example of the racism on which a large part of today's Republican Party feeds itself. The real point of the story is not any factual account, but the punch line, "Today the Black Panther party is Moslem ... back then they were Communists ... but they have always hated all non-blacks." From which the reader is presumably to understand: "Blacks evil. Want to kill whites. Commies, Muslims, blacks, all evil and scary." Of course, the message that Hillary Clinton supports these commieislamofascistonegroscarypeople is almost as important for the fine Christian white folks for whom it is meant.

Here's the text as presented by Cole (or at least by his Web site; I guess he can use the Ron Paul excuse and say that he has no idea who wrote the stuff on his Web site or who decided to put it there):

Back in 1969, a group of Black Panthers decided that a fellow Black Panther named Alex Rackley needed to die. Rackley was suspected of disloyalty. Rackley was first tied to a chair. Once safely immobilized, his friends tortured him for hours by, among other things, pouring boiling water on him. When they got tired of torturing Rackley, Black Panther member, WARREN KIMBRO, took Rackley outside and put a bullet in his head. Rackley's body was later found floating in a river about 25 miles north of New Haven, Conn.

Perhaps at this point you're curious as to what happened to these Black Panthers. In 1977, that's only eight years later, only one of the killers was still in jail. The shooter, WARREN KIMBRO, managed to get a scholarship to Harvard, and became good friends with none other than Al Gore. He later became an assistant dean at an Eastern Connecticut State College.

Isn't that something? As a 1960's radical, you can pump a bullet into someone's head, and a few years later, in the same state, you can become an assistant college dean! Only in America! ERICA HUGGINS was the lady who served the Panthers by boiling the water for Mr. Rackley's torture. Some years later, Ms. Huggins was elected to a California School Board.

How in the world do you think these killers got off so easy? Maybe it was in some part due to the efforts of two people who came to the defense of the Panthers.

These two people actually went so far as to shut down Yale University with demonstrations in defense of the accused Black Panthers during their trial. One of these people was none other than Bill Lan Lee. Mr. Lee, or Mr. Lan Lee, as the case may be, isn't a college dean. He isn't a member of a California School Board. He is now head of the US Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, appointed by none other than Bill Clinton.

OK, so who was the other Panther defender? Is this other notable Panther defender now a school board member? Is this other Panther apologist now an assistant college dean? No, neither! The other Panther defender was, like Lee, a radical law student at Yale University at the time. She is now known as The "smartest woman in the world." She is none other than the Democratic senator from the State of New York, our former First Lady, the incredible Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And now, as Paul Harvey would say, you know "the rest of the story".

Today the Black Panther party is Moslem...back then they were Communists...but they have always hated all non-blacks.

Okay, old habits die hard, so I checked at TruthorFiction.com for the rumor. This one goes back to Clinton's 2000 Senate race, though the last paragraph about the commieislamofascistonegroscarypeople seems to be a later accretion. Clinton did actively participate in protests over the trial of Panther leader Bobby Seales in connection with this case. As the TruthorFiction.com entry shows, like much of what passes for fact on the right, pieces of factual material are mixed with horsepoop to create a more sinister effect.

The TruthorFiction.com entry doesn't include that last sentence. But the present-day New Black Panther Party is a small hate group that actually is racist and is not a direct successor organization to the Black Panthers of the 1960s and 1970s. See Snarling at the White Man, in the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report Fall 2000, which reports, "Eschewing the health clinics and free breakfast programs of the original Panthers, the new group's leaders have seemed to focus almost exclusively on hate rhetoric about Jews and whites."

Tags: jay cole, mike huckabee, new black panther party, racism

The Huck and clemency

This anti-Huck YouTube video is one I'm posting here even though there is a part of it I really don't like. It comes from a conservative blog, ArkJournal.com in a post of 01/12/08, Clemency. And it engages in the kind of criminals-are-coming-to-get-you fear-mongering that has become a standard part of Republican campaigns for the last four decades. There's even a line that seems to encourage vigilantism, though by today's degraded standards it's pretty mild.

But it also does something that Democrats need to learn how to do, which is to strip the Huck's kind of Christian dominionism of its sentimental public face. The makers of this video may be dominionists who think Huck isn't severe enough a Christianist for all I know. They apparently support Fred Thompson, if you can imagine that. But the Huck's genuinely poor judgment in his clemency programs was part of his theocratic bent, basing many of his clemency decisions on the recommendations of a good-ole-boy network of Baptist preachers.

And the most notorious case, that of Wayne Dumond (who was paroled under pressure from the Huck), also occurred because the nutso anti-Clinton rightwingers in Arkansas was convinced Dumond was the victim of some dark Clinton plot. The Christian Right isn't just a bunch of fuddie-duddies who disapprove of sex, though that's clearly part of their schtick. As the late Steve Gilliard often reminded us, they are best understood as a bunch of neosegregationists, today's version of what Strom Thurmond and his Dixiecrats were in 1948.



Tags: authoritarianism, christian dominionism, christian right, christianism, mike huckabee, neosegregation

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