That Huckappeal

tribune-review ^ | salena zito

[LonesomeHawk]

That 'Huckappeal'

By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, October 28, 2007

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee may have elevated his candidacy to his party's upper tier but his choice of campaign accommodations and travel haven't improved much.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Huckabee? No thanks.

[WOSG]

Huckster alert!

[Hilltop]

Memo to the RNC;

Re: Chucklebee

Don’t even think about it.

[Neu Pragmatist]

The Huckster is being elevated (by the MSM) with the sole purpose of further dividing the Conservative vote in an attempt to allow Rudy to get the nomination .

Rudy wins the nomination and Hillary wins the general , it’s as simple as that .

People , we are being played like a fiddle. We better unite behind a Conservative that can beat Hillary .....it’s not the Huckster

[org.whodat]

may have elevated his candidacy to his party's upper tier

May have, that's like I may have won the lottery, until they held the drawing. LOL

[CheyennePress]

You’re exactly right, I’m afraid.

Huckabee is the template of compassionate conservatism: he’s socially conservative, all right. But he sent the tax burden in Arkansas soring and sure pitched a fit when the feds raided Arkansas businesses that hired illegals.

His willingness to raise taxes should completely blackball him from consideration, but there are an awful lot of social conservatives all too ready to jump ship.

[South40]

There is nothing appealing about a “conservative” who is pro-ILLEGAL aliens.

[Neu Pragmatist]

I supported Romney until I found out that he supprts AWB-2 , which is totally unacceptable to a large contingent of the party primary voters . If Romney had done his homework and came down right on gun rights , he wouldn’t be struggling like he is . This nomination would have been his months ago .

[freekitty]

It’s more like the spiel.

[steveab]

Huckabee is not for me. He is all for a CO2 tax and the CO2 cap and trade scam.

[A. Morgan]

Huckabee? NO SALE, here!

[WOSG]

Huckster was/is a theological liberal as well ...

http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/257943.aspx

“Many of Huckabee’s critics point to his fiscal philosophy typified by a willingness to raise taxes during his time as Arkansas governor. But what caught my eye was Huckabee’s decision to side with moderates when conservatives gained control of the Southern Baptist Convention during the 1980’s. Fund quotes former Texas judge, Paul Pressler, who sided with the conservatives in that bitter fight, “I know of no conservative (Huckabee) appointed while he headed the Arkansas Baptist Convention.”

That reminded me of a story I reported more than ten years ago on The 700 Club. It involved Huckabee’s refusal to sign a bill that described natural disasters like tornadoes and floods as “acts of God.” The New York Times quoted Governor Huckabee as saying that signing the legislation “would be violating my own conscience” inasmuch as it described “a destructive and deadly force as being ‘an act of God.’ “

In an attempt to explain his actions, Huckabee said, “I feel that I have indeed witnessed many ‘acts of God,’ but I see His actions in the miraculous sparing of life, the sacrifice and selfless spirit in which so many responded to the pain of others.” That sounds to me like the kind of sweet, shallow, feel-good theology that drove me away from the liberal denomination in which I was raised.”

[WOSG]

Its unfortunate he’s lined up for AWB. You may want to consider some MITTigating factors on the topic: every gun bill Gov Mitt Romney signed in Mass was NRA supported. He supported continuing an AWB that was already in place and which in Massachusetts was not going away anyway. NRA gave Romney a B grade in 2002, taking into account his positions overall.

Mitt Romney has said: “Americans should have the right to own and possess firearms as guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. I’m proud to be among the many decent, law-abiding men and women who safely use firearms.”

The firearms reform bill signed in 2004 prohibited the sale of the same weapons in Massachusetts banned in the 1998 legislation but loosened other restrictions imposed by the 1998 gun bill. Therefore, after Governor Romney signed the gun bill in 2004, gun owners in Massachusetts had fewer restrictions on gun ownership than at any time since 1998.

Craig Sandler, former Director of General Operations of the National Rifle Association and former Nashua Police Chief, endorsed Governor Mitt Romney for President. In endorsing Governor Romney, Craig Sandler said, “Throughout his career in both the public and private sectors, Mitt Romney has demonstrated exceptional leadership ability, integrity, and commitment to principle. As a New Hampshire resident, former law enforcement officer, and avid sportsman, I am supporting Governor Romney because he is the candidate who will protect our Constitutional rights and strengthen our nation.”

The NRA myth/fact on the bill:
http://www.nraila.org//Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=1149

“Myth: Some headlines claimed that the legislature voted to expand the ban on the sale of the same 19 guns that the federal government has banned.

Fact: The guns are already banned in Massachusetts . The legislature only voted to clarify the definition of so-called “assault weapons,” but made no changes to the number of guns included.

Myth: The gun ban was extended.

Fact: Our state`s gun ban was not due to disappear, nor will it become invalid if the federal ban sunsets in September.

Myth: The legislature somehow “won over” gun-rights supporters by including reforms.

Fact: NRA and Gun owners` Action League (GOAL) had made it very clear to the legislature that we would not give up any ground. NRA and GOAL supported this bill because it did not ban any guns, and because it made much-needed reforms.

* “By making this common-sense change to the law we will enable target pistol manufacturers to do business in our state and allow enthusiasts to practice the sport they love.” - Governor Mitt Romney, 07-01-2004 Press Release

[DallasMike]

Fund quotes former Texas judge, Paul Pressler, who sided with the conservatives in that bitter fight, “I know of no conservative (Huckabee) appointed while he headed the Arkansas Baptist Convention.”

Paul Pressler tore apart the Southern Baptists in the 1980s. He spread stories about my church and my pastor that were bald-faced lies. He then went about destroying the careers of many good, conservative seminary professors that I knew.

If Pressler dislikes Huckabee, then I like Huckabee. Pressler and his buddy Paige Patterrson are going to have to do a lot of explaining to God about their actions one day.

I'm not comdemning you for quoting Pressler. But if you knew him as I did and personally knew the good people whose lives he destroyed, you wouldn't think very highly of him either.

[dano1]

bttt

[dano1]

bttt

[Reaganesque]

“Huckapeal?” Well, I guess it’s better than “Joementum”.

[Sun]

I just heard a caller to Bill Cunningham’s show say that Huckabee raised taxes five times.

[WOSG]

If only tax hiking was the Huckster’s only problem.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12205

... If they only did a little homework, they would discover a guy with a thin skin, a nasty vindictive streak, and a long history of imbroglios about questionable ethics.

Once, Gov. Huckabee even had the gall to file suit against the state ethics commission. He lost.

Fourteen times, the ethics commission — a respected body, not a partisan witch-hunt group — investigated claims against Huckabee. Five of those times, it officially reprimanded him. And, as only MSNBC among the big national media has reported at any real length, there were lots of other mini-scandals and embarrassments along the way.

He used public money for family restaurant meals, boat expenses, and other personal uses. He tried to claim as his own some $70,000 of furniture donated to the governor’s mansion. He repeatedly, and obstinately, against the pleadings even from conservative columnists and editorials, refused to divulge the names of donors to a “charitable” organization he set up while lieutenant governor — an outfit whose main charitable purpose seemed to be to pay Huckabee to make speeches. Then, as a kicker, he misreported the income itself from the suspicious “charity.”

Huckabee has been criticized, reasonably so, for misusing the state airplane for personal reasons. And he and his wife, Janet, actually set up a “wedding gift registry” (they had already been married for years) to which people could donate as the Huckabees left the governorship, in order to furnish their new $525,000 home.

According to the Arkansas News Bureau (Feb. 1, 2003), “Huckabee’s personal lawyer, Kevin Crass of Little Rock, has said Huckabee believes there should be no limit on gifts short of a bribe.” After all, said Janet Huckabee, public officials like her husband should be automatically trusted: “Until you absolutely positively know that the man has outright lied to you, it should be enough that the man’s word is that everything was done appropriately, legally, to the best of his knowledge to the letter of the law.”

Of course, her reasoning refutes itself: If one is precluded from even questioning “the man’s word,” how can one possibly find out in the first place whether the official “has outright lied to you”?

It must be said that a fair-minded journalist ought to tread lightly in scrutinizing a candidate’s spouse; but in Janet Huckabee’s case, she is a politician in her own right, having run unsuccessfully for Arkansas Secretary of State. Voters overwhelmingly rejected her, perhaps because they remembered her propensity for other outrageous statements — such as the time when she defended secrecy about the donors to her husband’s “charity” by saying that a donor’s name “wouldn’t be enough. [Then] you’d want to know who he was married to, and then his wife would be German descent, and you’d have Mike, you’d have him responsible for 600,000 killings of Jews.”

Huh?

Of course, nobody accused Huckabee of genocide. But his skin is so thin that when various underlings in his administration, even for bureaus as small as the state film office, crossed ethical lines (some of them, admittedly, rather minor), the governor consistently and angrily attacked the media for reporting the transgressions rather than demanding that the transgressors make things right.

Finally, Gov. Huckabee had a propensity to be almost as prodigal with pardons as was his famous predecessor by the name of Clinton. Indeed, Hillary Clinton’s campaign team is probably licking their chops at the prospect of Huck as the nominee, because one of his pardons, in particular, was so outlandish as to make Willie Horton’s case in Massachusetts seem almost child’s play by comparison. After Huckabee helped secure the release of already-well-known rapist Wayne Dumond, the released convict sexually assaulted and murdered a woman in Missouri.

All of which leads one to ask two questions: First, how can voters whose primary concerns are moral look beyond so many of a candidate’s problems with ethics? And, second, if Republicans in general have concluded, as most of them have, that repeated scandals among Washington GOPers played a huge role in Republican defeats in 2006, how could they possibly nominate somebody who seems to have such big ethical blind spots?

Give this to Huckabee: The man gives a good speech. But so does Duncan Hunter, with the biggest difference being that Hunter’s speeches appeal more to the intellect than the heartstrings — and that Hunter can boast 25 years of leadership for conservative causes, including on taxing and spending issues where Huckabee is notoriously un-conservative.

For that matter, if the question is public ethics, all the other major Republican candidates have rather solid records. With so little scandalous material to look into, why hasn’t the usually scandal-ravenous national media delved into the record of the one GOP candidate whose ethics have been repeatedly questioned in his home state?

Has even the cynical big media been fooled by a Huckster?