Posted on 12/02/2007 5:36:39 AM PST by libstripper
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has been holding private conversations with Dick Morris, according to aides, a longstanding relationship that is raising new questions as Huckabee’s campaign begins to take off.
Morris’ most prominent calling card has been with Bill Clinton — for two decades, starting in 1977, as his most influential (if sometimes erratic) political adviser and for the past decade as one of his most persistent (if sometimes erratic) public critics.
But the Arkansas connection the controversial consultant and commentator established through Clinton also brought Huckabee onto his client roster, beginning in 1993 when he advised the Republican’s winning campaign for lieutenant governor.
Morris lately has been lavishing praise in newspaper columns and television appearances on Huckabee, whose polished debate performances and recent gains in the polls in Iowa have given him a chance to penetrate the top tier among the GOP candidates.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
I am not pleased that Dick Morris’ major credit is - “He brought us Bill Clinton”!
Morris changes his opinions based on what’s Hot at the current moment - Make enough predictions on both sides of issues - eventually you will be able to Quote -”I was right”!
I like FRed.
A Dick Morris “endorsement” is all the more reason to avoid the Huck.
Not in my eyes, he didn't. He never answered one question that was asked of him, he went off on a slick, pre-canned folksy preacher response that had people saying, "Now that was a clever response!"
If you do some research on Huckabee's past history as Governor of Arkansas, you will see that what he is portrayed as on the media is not what he really is. He really is a "compassionate conservative", which we have learned the hard, painful way - is really a liberal.
Not just his acumen, but his integrity. He was a key advisor and defender of the Clintons until they fired the toe-sucker -- at which point he flipped, becoming a Clinton critic faster than a call girl can run a credit card.
Huckster will lose to Hillary . He would be branded an Evangelical Zealot and it would lead to his defeat .
"Likely" is a stronger word than I would use. I don't rule out the possibility that he could pull off an upset, but he's coming off at 18 to 1. Possible, but I wouldn't call it likely.
The FR community is living a vacuum
I'd call it an echo chamber. FR is really good at reinforcing what folks want to believe, even if, as the song goes, it ain't necessarily so.
For example, everyone knows that no one pays any attention to the MSM any more. Fox News and the blogs are kicking the MSM's butt around the block. But wait -- Bill O'Reilly, who has the highest-rated show on FNC or on any cable/satellite news network, draws about half a million viewers on an average evening. The New York Times has a paid daily circulation of 1.1 million. Perky Katie Couric, by far the weakest of the big-3 news anchors, gets 7.9 million.
A lot of FReepers have a tendency to disregard news they don't like, to dismiss polls they don't like as biased or stacked, and then to be shocked when an election doesn't go the way they'd hoped. It's reminiscent of Pauline Kael, then a movie critic for the New York Times, in 1968; she simply could not believe that Nixon had won the election, because "everyone I know voted for McGovern."
Thompson is not getting the traction and Hunter is off the radar.
I really don't get what Fred is doing. At a time when he needs some momentum, when he ought to be out on the hustings (no, I don't know what that means, but it has something to do with campaigning) giving stump speeches in IA and NH twice a day and three times on Sunday, he seems pretty lackadaisical about the whole thing. Now, in an abstract sense, that could be a plus -- the best man to hold the office of President is often the man who doesn't want it too much. But Fred is running for president like a kid who's put on the spot at thanksgiving dinner, asked to perform the song he sang at the school recital -- he's looking down, shuffling his feet and looking a lot like he wishes he were somewhere else.
As far as Hunter goes, of course every candidate has to say he thinks he can win. But in his heart of hearts, I don't think he ever really believed it. In any contested primary, there are always "get the message out" candidates - folks who have no realistic chance of winning the nomination, but can gain a lectern at the debates, and some media attention, for their pet issues. And because they're not likely to win, those folks can be blunt, and are much more entertaining than the packaged and rehearsed "top-tier" candidates.
Examples of the kind of candidate I'm talking about: Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer, Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, Mike Gravel, and -- face it, kids -- Ron Paul.
this about [...] stopping Clinton. Huckabee's beat them twice on their home turf; he'll do it again.
Huh? Huckabee has never run against a Clinton. He won his first elected office, lieutenant governor, in the same year Clinton was elected president. Jim Guy Tucker, arguably Clinton's hand-picked successor, resigned after a felony conviction, and Huck, as Lt. Gov., moved into the big office. He never rain a campaign against Tucker.
But hey. You gotta believe. In particular, you gotta believe in ...
wait for it ...
a place called Hope.
Their legs are almost identical.... shudder.
Of course, Huckabee comes will a lot of baggage for many libertarian-oriented and 'never-tax-me' conservatives, and they continue to feel he is far too centrist for their liking. His AR tax increases were similar to what many governors faced, one was repealed when the need was met, and his biggest issue, the pardoning of the castrated rapist who went on to kill again, was something he admits was the error of his life. On the other hand, he has solidified the so-con base nationally, most who figured they would be stuck with Giuliani or Romney. This is what makes Thompson's slow bid so unbelievably foolhardy; most of those votes could have been his. A lot of people just don;t see him on fire.
So, here on FR, we will continue to see a lot of people pushing Huckabee away for a lot of reasons, some of them valid, some of them not so. My feeling is the overall electorate is not going to want another slick candidate, a lobbyist-focused DC insider, and are fed up with the big-money issues that the GOP is being blamed for. Huckabee, for all of his faults, is personable enough to pull the swing his way and speak to the common man, and he supports a lot of what we all stand for in terms of personal rights and constitutional clarity. His big challenge is the white-hot immigration issue, but America will have no choice but to deal with that one way or another. If he can survive his stand on that, he could well be the nominee this year. Time will tell.
We see lots of Bush-bashing on the site these days, too, but there is probably not ONE person here who did not vote for him when election time happened. Say what you want now, but he rally the nation and got us fighting a dangerous and mercurial enemy that we had let hurt us for a decade and put two excellent jurists on the Supreme Court. We will rally behind the nominee, but whoever it is will need excite people far beyond the reaches of this website. From that standpoint, we could do a whole lot worse than Mike Huckabee.
As for your question about the Clintons in Huckabee's elections, my understanding is that there was active involvement by them through the state Democratic machine in two of the elections when Mike ran for governor, helping his opponent in a very Democratic state. I have not fully researched this, however, and should probably not use it when making points about him; you are correct that he never faced either Bill nor Hillary in an actual runoff.
Say what you want now, but he rally the nation = s/b rallied.
Huckster seems...well, so personal. Are you a friend of the former governor's?
What have I said that would give you the impression that i’m a friend of the Huckster ?
The only reason I want Huckster to win Iowa is to stop Romney from building momentum from an Iowa win . If Romney wins Iowa and N.H. , it will be very hard to stop the domino effect .
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