Huckabee on Christ Ad Brouhaha: 'Paul is Dead'

ABC News ^ | 12/18/07 | Kevin Chupka

[mylife]

Huckabee on Christ Ad Brouhaha: 'Paul is Dead'

December 18, 2007 3:07 PM

ABC News' Kevin Chupka Reports: Former Governor Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., had some fun Tuesday answering a question about a brewing controversy over his latest TV ad called "What Really Matters."

Huckabee is running a Christmas ad in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina where the former Baptist minister invokes Jesus Christ -- the first 2008 Republican candidate to do so in a campaign ad.

In the ad Huckabee says that that at this time of year, "what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ and being with our family and our friends."

Some have suggested there is an image of a cross behind Huckabee's shoulder as he talks to the camera in the ad, but Huckabee dismissed that Tuesday.

"That was a book shelf behind me, a book shelf," Huckabee told reporters while campaigning in Houston, Texas.

Huckabee was asked if his language crossed the line between faith and politics: "Absolutely not," he said.

Huckabee went on to joke, to the delight of the reporters in the room, "I will confess this; if you play the spot backwards it says 'Paul is dead, Paul is dead, Paul is dead.'"

The Republican candidate likened the dissection of his Christmas campaign ad to rumors that Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash at the height of the Beatles popularity and replaced by a doppelganger, and that subtle clues were placed inside the group's music for years to come.

[gridlock]

Now, alas, I must go. I’ll check in later.

[Travis McGee]

Thre is nothing “ad hominem.” YOu attempted to cut off debate on the Huckster’s cynical and lying use of the cross for political purposes, by saying we are attacking “the church.”

Did you mean to say that Huckabee is “the church?”

Here’s your chance to retract.

[mylife]

Cya later.

Merry Christmas!

[TexanToTheCore]

He’s toying with the press, tweaking their tails, making gentle fools of them. Very effectivley too. The ad was a Christmas message, not a political ad and the cross was an effective way of communicating the birth of Jesus.

I am still chuckling about the Paul is dead comment. That’s hilarious.

And I am really thrilled to see a candidate for the Presidency wear his heart on his sleeve for Jesus. I mean really thrilled.

[mylife]

I opened this thread to comment on the "paul is dead" comment. Nothing more.

You subverted it to the "lying about the cross" debate. My comment about squabbling in the Church was to the wider issue of our vitriol over this ad at Christmas. Does this debate help us as Christians or Republicans at this Christmas time?

I would submit that it does not.

It's like brawling in the temple. I'm not saying Huck is the church. I think you get my wider meaning.

I just thought Huckabee slapped Paul well and didnt back down. The Dems wont touch this, but we are all over it.

[SoulSearching]

http://www.answers.com/topic/subliminal?cat=health

Dictionary -— Subliminal:
1. Below the threshold of conscious perception. Used of stimuli.
2. Inadequate to produce conscious awareness but able to evoke a response: subliminal propaganda.

I was under the impression that if you’re conscious it’s NOT subliminal!!!

What I can see is 33 years that has produced 47 million plus murdered babies because we “Christians” are too blind and unwilling to elect righteous leaders. Believing liberal new sources like the Arkansas Times and Newsweek will produce more of the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Times

The Times typically advocates such causes as gay marriage, preservation or expansion of legal abortion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek

Newsweek is generally considered the most liberal of the three major newsweeklies.

How can doing the same thing produce different results?

[Fantasywriter]

You and Mike Huckabee are at odds about his commercial. You say it’s a cross, nicely used to good effect, and he says it’s a bookshelf...just a bookshelf.

[TexanToTheCore]

Ya’ll aren’t from the South, are you?

[Fantasywriter]

Redirect. You said the symbol in Huckabee’s add made good use of the cross. I.e.: you acknowledged that the symbol IS the cross, and that Huckabee used it well. Yet Huckabee says it is NOT the cross; he says it is a bookcase, and nothing more than a bookcase. Please don’t respond with guesses about where I was born and raised. And please don’t refer to me as ‘Y’all’. That is a plural term (a contraction of ‘you all’), and I am a single individual.

[mylife]

Is the “Holly and the Ivy” a subliminal message?

[TexanToTheCore]

Obviously you are from Connecticut or some area like that otherwise you’d know that the plural of Y’all is Y’all, Y’all.

He’s just having fun with the press and in the process of tweaking them violating every pc canon in the book. The NYT editorial board is probably spinning like whirling dervishes. FRand Rich has the vapours is about to explode. HAHAHAHAHA

I love it! Merry Chistmas! WooHoo!

[TexanToTheCore]

That would be Frank Rich.

[mylife]

The Dogwood?

[Proud2BeRight]

What a beautiful double meaning after the stupid Ron Paul quote today.

[Fantasywriter]

You are incoherent. You used ‘y’all’ as a singular reference, and I pointed out that it is plural. Then you said if I weren’t from the north I would know that it is plural. Do you have any idea how bizarre you sound? Btw, I was born and raised in the South, and I live there now. So stop with the slander, all right?

[joesbucks]

Catholic League president Bill Donahue said Huckabee went beyond wishing people a joyous holiday. Donahue said he was especially disturbed by the cross-like image created by a white bookcase in the background of the ad, saying he believed it was a subliminal message. “What he’s trying to say to the evangelicals in western Iowa (is): I’m the real thing,” Donahue said Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends. “You know what, sell yourself on your issues, not on what your religion is.”

I'm surprised Donahue didn't find some sort of anti-Catholic conspiracy in all that.

Donahue can get peeved by someone simply drinking a glass of water.

[mylife]

I will say this for Huckabee.
He is at ease with himself, and he has returned Christ to Christmas.

I disagree with him politically, but these things cant be denied.

[mylife]

I’m hearing a lot of people call into Hugh Hewitt that find Huckabee’s message refreshing on the matter of Christmas.

Hugh is trying to turn it into an argument about necrophilia and homosexuality. (apparently Huckabee once said they are both deviant behavior, therefore Huckabee says they are the same) Talk about ad hominem attacks.

[mylife]

I find the idea that Hewitt has drug up this argument over the Huckabee ad far more abhorrent than whether or not Huckabee intentionally “used” the bookcase

[river rat]

Yep -- the Huckster is clever by half too much...

for the Huckster to suggest the presence of the cross image was unintended and simply a bookcase perfectly but unintentionally positioned and manipulated to appear in perfect conjunction with his angelic face and Christian greeting for Christmas -- would be laughable, if it didn't reveal the contempt the lying *&^(*&*&(*& has for the truth and the voters...

I pray this nation wakes up, and sees this charlatan for the low life, opportunistic, lying, blasphemous, self serving snake oil peddler from Arkansas in the mold of the Clintons that he most assuredly is...

There! I said it without ONE cuss word, Jim....
See -- I deserved another chance...

BUT -- if this %$#%$$#^%$$% continues to treat me folks as fools, and attracts enough stupid ^%$&^%$*&^%&^&^ to vote him into office --- I'm going postal.....

WAKE UP FOLKS -- OU'RE WATCHING A REAL LIVE ELMER GANTRY