Huckabee's not just wooing social conservatives in Iowa. He's a vile creature.

[flpoljunkie]

(I did see this Fox video clip on Hardball yesterday, and it was truly disgusting.)

Lurid and Corrupt
Josh Marshall | November 24, 2010, 12:04AM

I did a brief segment on Hardball this afternoon. And as I was waiting to go on, I listened through my earpiece to the preceding segment on the on-going TSA/pat-down controversy saga. The key is that I was mic'ed up so could only hear the audio. I wasn't able to see who Matthews was interviewing. But it was a rank introduction to the level of lurid and vulgar demagoguery a lot of conservatives are resorting to to milk this story for political gain. The guy Matthews was talking to kept referring to people's right not to be forced to have "nudie" pictures taken of them or their daughters and wives. Always with the menfolk unwilling to let their daughters and wives be 'scanned' -- but that's another story.

In any case, it's worth remembering that the idea that your daughter or whoever strikes you as your most inviolable kin is having a 'nude' picture taken of them is just nonsense. Whatever else you can say about the backscatter scans, they usually reveal about as much as you do walking around the pool in a tight bathing suit. (Note: A number of the more revealing 'backscatter' pics you find on Google are actually fakes.) Of all the issues I've seen raised in this story, the invasiveness of the backscatter imaging strikes me as by far the weakest. And a poll out today shows that the public overwhelming approves of the use of the scanners as a tool to combat airliner terrorism. The pat-downs are another matter. And I've heard enough to make me wonder about the longterm risks of repeated exposure to these scans.

Next up was a clip from Mike Huckabee in a really gutter-minded, scurrilous voice daring President Obama to take his wife and two daughters to National Airport and have them get an aggressive pat-down in full view of the public if he wants 'our' wives and daughters to submit to the same. The mix of race and sex and populist demagoguery packed into Huckabee's verbal slash was enough to bring you back to one of a hundred or a thousand rants below the Mason-Dixon line fifty or sixty or seventy years ago.

Now, let's stipulate to the obvious fact that having you or I get a pat-down in a crowded airport while most people are more concerned about getting to their planes on time or aggravated about standing in line or whatever is a rather different matter than even imagining the sort of nutso media circus that would ensue with the president having to drag his 9 and 12 year old daughters down to DCA for a pat-down that would amount to a ritual humiliation in front of the international press corps. The comment itself, the visual created, is simply disgusting, as is the whole personalizing of the situation with regards to the president.

He's president. He's ultimately responsible. But President Obama didn't come up with this idea. And bringing the air of looming sexual threat to his daughters or even his wife in cheap political hustler comments is just shameful.

There's no other way to put it.

Late Update: I found video of the segment here. Huckabee's vile comments begin about 6:20 from the Fox News clip.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#40343687

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/11/lurid_and_corrupt.php?ref=fpblg

[flpoljunkie]

1. In case you missed it, Huckabee in Iowa...

I’m not here to announce any plans — or deny any plans,” Huckabee said, and the crowd cheered and laughed.

Next, Huckabee spent a few moments talking about the judicial retention elections in Iowa this year, saying he wanted to congratulate the people of Iowa for a “remarkable election that resonated all across America.” Huckabee called it an historic election. Huckabee said if the judges had been retained the message would have been that “they can do anything they want and there will never be a penalty for ignoring the will of the people.”

If the judicial retention had gone the other way: “It would have been a devastating blow to conservatives…It would have had disastrous consequences…I’m here to say, ‘Thank you on behalf of a grateful nation.’ You did great, great work for America.”

Of the judicial retention election, Huckabee boiled it down to this: “It wasn’t personal, it was just business. It was the business of protecting marriage.”

Some in the crowd started punctuating Huckabee’s comments with the word “Amen” coming from men and women in the room.

According to Huckabee, faith-based voters are “sometimes sneered at, laughed at.” Huckabee talked about the 2008 campaign debates, when he’d “get thrown a religious question.”

Huckabee said faithful people are denigrated, dismissed as ”shallow” and “just a little bit intellectually interior.” “…I believe that it takes a great deal more depth to believe that issues are not merely what they appear to be on the surface, but go all the way to the heart, soul and depth of a human being,” Huckabee said.

Huckabee said even if the tax code is “righted” it won’t fix what’s gone wrong with the American family.

“Is there not something morally repugnant that we will tell them…somebody else will cleanup their mess?” Huckabee said. “…We’re going to have a nation full of spoiled brats.”

There were amens from several parts of the sanctuary.

“The best government is a mother and a father raising children in the context of understanding that some things are always right and some things are always wrong…and when we do things that are wrong, we will suffer the consequences of them,” Huckabee said.

Next, Huckabee talks about abortion. “It is basically an issue of the most fundamental issue of our government…The heart and the soul of who we are as a people is found in the notion that there is no such thing in this country that there is one person who is worth more than another person.”

“That’s right,” a man sitting in the crowd replied.

Huckabee talked the hypothetical of going into a classroom and exterminating the kids who have the two lowest test scores, then amplified such extermination was a “repugnant” concept. “Isn’t it the same thing that we’re doing, we’re just doing it a little earlier — in the womb?” Huckabee said.

There were more Amens during this passage of the speech.

“Life and its value comes because it’s a creation of God almighty…and it is a sin against him and against life to interrupt that natural flow,” Huckabee said of abortion, and the crowd applauded.

“I salute what you do and ask you not to depart from the battle,” Huckabee said, adding that this is what the crowd should say to those who argue the nation’s focus should be on taxes and the economy: “Push back and remind them that there will be no strong economy if there is not a strong commitment to what’s right.”

Huckabee talked about Iowa native Sal Guita, the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, noting Guita risked his own life to save another. ”It was not lost on me that in that message was the message that we’re here today to affirm,” Huckabee said.

“The future of America is not in its tax policy,” Huckabee said to conclude, adding it was in the country’s willingness to embrace Godly principles.

Huckabee concluded at about 4:09 p.m. The next speaker: Iowa Family Policy Center president Chuck Hurley. A press aide just handed reporters a crowd estimate; 1500.

http://okhenderson.com/2010/11/21/huckabee-im-on-no-time-table-on-12-decision/

[Botany]

2. “Is there not something morally repugnant ..."

.... In letting people out of jail who fake a love for Jesus so they
can rape and murder again?

[flpoljunkie]

6. Let's hope the media doesn't ignore Huckabee's pardon record in Arkansas if he decides to run in '12

Morally repugnant does not begin to describe it.

[nannah]

7. maurice clemmons springs to mind

he killed 4 wa police officers; was pardoned by huckabee for his repentance and acceptance of christianity.

[emulatorloo]

3. Thank you for posting - I'm finding a lot of the rightwing "outrage" rather disingenous

They seem much more interested in "scoring points" than anything else.

[Phx_Dem]

4. And he's no Christian, except maybe a phony one.

[COLGATE4]

5. And the difference is....?????

[backscatter712]

8. IMHO, Huckabee is the most dangerous of the candidates running against Obama.

Palin's too incoherent and polarizing - she'll never get elected because the liberals and moderates think she's crazy and will turn out to keep her away from the Oval Office.

Romney doesn't have enough charisma, and his Mormon religion's a non-starter with the Southern Baptists and other fundies.

Jeb Bush won't get elected because of his name.

Haley Barbour's too redneck - he'll get painted as Southern Fried Asshole.

Pawlenty's like Romney - not enough charisma.

Newt's got too much baggage from his scandals from his Speaker of the House days. Not to mention his marital issues (delivering divorce papers to his first wife while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer...)

But Huckabee - he's got charisma enough that he carried quite a few states back in the '08 GOP primaries, he has this Mr. Rogers persona he adopts that enables him to pull a Reagan and deliver the impression that he's your friendly father figure/guy you'd like to have a beer with, while getting people to ignore his batshit fundie hard-right positions. And he's a minister, like I said, he has charisma, but if he just refined his speech delivery juuuuuust a bit, he could give Obama a run for his money.

Huckabee's the most dangerous of the bunch.

[Ikonoklast]

9. Good luck trying to get the Catholic vote.

The Huckster will be a tough sell, in spite of the anti-abortion rhetoric...you know Baptists see Catholicism as a 'cult', and that they aren't 'true' Christians.


Don't think there are too many Catholics that really care for Southern Baptists much, even the conservative Catholics.

[backscatter712]

13. Never underestimate the propensity of related flavors of religion to suddenly collaborate.

Let me revise my earlier statement. Romney did indeed get a lot of shit for being Mormon, especially from the Southern Baptists, but if he wins the primaries, the Southern Baptists will suddenly suffer a fit of ulterior-motive-induced-tolerance, say "Well, he believes in Jesus too!", and get out and vote for him.

Same thing with the Catholics and Huckabee, except there's not as much of a gulf between the Catholics and the Protestant fundies - and it'll be the Catholics who'll be getting in line to vote for the Huckster, especially if the Pope and various bishops start dropping hints...

[janet118]

10. I thought that he was dangerous the first time around . . .

Huckabee has all the ingredients - the smarmy Christianity, the countrified speech patterns, the phony populism - of a top notch demagogue. He has a tv show now, but doesn't seem to have caught fire . . . In 2012, I think he will help split the Republican primary vote between the Romney/Bush backers and those with Palin/tea bagger tendencies.

I can't imagine those on the east and west coast voting for that snake.

[backscatter712]

12. The thing that people haven't seen so far is Huckabee's appeal to the teabaggers.

He bowed out of the GOP primaries in '08, before the Tea Party was formed in response to the health care bill and Wall Street Reform, and has been publicizing himself juuuuust enough with his FOX News TV show to keep him on the radar screens.

We haven't really seen what happens if Huckabee really threw some red meat at the teabaggers - there's the potential they'll go together like chocolate and peanut butter... :scared:

The Tea Party, for all its populist power and rage, is mostly leaderless, completely incoherent, and driven by emotion. If Huckabee tries playing leader for them, he might have enough appeal to have them slobbering at his feet...

[RZM]

11. Good points

In the primaries, I see Palin, the Huckster, and Romney as the top three contenders. Pawlenty, Barbour, and Pence aren't known enough and Jeb won't run. Newt could maybe hang, but I suspect the field might unite to knock him out early, painting him as a has been too associated with 'the old way of doing things.' After all, the Repubs have to run on change too :)

Each of the top three has a path to Tea Party votes as well, though I suspect the movement's disunity might show badly in the primaries. Sarah is their queen, the Huckster can sell snake oil, and Romney will be the most credible talking about their favorite subjects of debts and deficits (though look for his Mass. health care plan to be an issue).

I say it's a tossup between Palin and the Huckster, with Romney as dark horse.

In the general, all of them would have a pretty tough time. The Repubs need to take back the southern states they lost in 2008 just to be in the game at all. Huckabee could do that and Sarah possibly could too, though Romney would have a tougher time. Further north though, Romney would probably run a bit better in some places than Palin or the Huckster.

I agree though that the Huckster's personality would help him out. My hardcore Dem barber likes him a lot. He probably wouldn't vote for him, but it's a telling sign.