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Mike Huckabee's End Times
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Commuting the sentence of a cop-killer may be the least of Huckabee’s problems. John Batchelor on the former Arkansas governor's mindless evangelism—and why the GOP should just skip the 2012 election.
After the tragedy of the sadistic cop-killer Maurice Clemmons, whom Mike Huckabee pardoned while he served as Arkansas governor, the self-effacing Huckabee is back on the keynote circuit, telling boastful jokes on himself—"It's great to be in Tennessee. It's one of the states I carried"—and slipping around questions about running for president again. Huckabee is also voluble these days as a TV, radio, and publishing personality, dispensing folksy clichés that are forgotten before he chortles at himself and offending no one at all, not even the Democrats. Mike Huckabee has completed his conversion from Republican dark horse in the 2008 presidential campaign to what appears to be a harmless, aimless novelty who will perk up like a favorite son of Mayberry to confess, “The Fox gig I’ve got right now is really, really wonderful.”
The lone partisan significance of the cop-killer episode is that Huckabee’s largest donors in Israel now regard him as extremely unlikely as a candidate who can be trusted to make choices between the Devil and common sense.
Then again, there is no reason to believe much of Huckabee’s palaver when he claims he is “less likely to run” because “I would have to see the Republicans unite behind me.” Mike Huckabee is an ambitious and craven Republican politician who will do exactly what he must to exploit his effectiveness in the weakest parts of the GOP—the bullying evangelicals, the cloying faux-Confederate vote, and the cynical elitists like Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, and Rush Limbaugh, whom I think of as Republican zombies. Mike Huckabee, 54, is no one’s idea of a well-educated citizen. As a youth, Huckabee was a Baptist pastor in Arkansas—mostly as a platform to exhibit his hambone one-liners on cable channels—and he wears this fleeting experience like a Harry Potter invisibility cloak to cover up his incuriosity of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. That he performed notably at all in 2008 is not a credit to Huckabee but rather a verdict on the mortification of a party that was left without more than John McCain’s worn stubbornness and Mitt Romney’s deaf arrogance, and that today enjoys no stronger field, staring at the exuberant glamour of Sarah Palin and the leaden Sam’s Club marketing of Tim Pawlenty to add to Romney warmed over like cold liver.
Huckabee will loiter in Republican circles until the party confronts its addiction to the cunningly insufferable over the last 40 years, such as Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, Gary Bauer, and the new winking scold, Palin. Huckabee’s ambition includes two hand-holds that he believes will keep him viable as a presidential candidate. First, Huckabee believes that creationism provides a sturdy constituency. He is a not just a grinning creationist, he is also willing to disdain Darwinism with a sinister pugnacity. In a 2007 New Hampshire Republican debate, Huckabee pontificated when asked if he believed the world was created by God in six days' time and is now 6,000 years old, “I don’t know, I wasn’t there, whether God did it in six days or whether he did it in six days that represent periods of time…”
It is challenging to say what is worse for the GOP in the 21st century: that Huckabee is sincere and doesn’t know that our planet is a product of 4 billion years of collisions and blessed chance and that our flora and fauna (including us) are the product of half a billion years of evolution since the Cambrian explosion, or that Huckabee does know that the creationism is spam by a tiny cult that he counts on in beauty-contest polling to attract the superstitious and the unloved.
What makes Huckabee’s useful idiocy most damaging to the GOP was contained in a remark to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in the New Hampshire debate. “If anybody wants to believe he is descendant of a primate, they are certainly welcome to it—I don’t know how far they will march that back….” This is naked Scopes Trial exploitation and a clumsy rejection of Darwin’s genius Origin of the Species. It is reckless of Huckabee to throw out on national TV a remark that is entirely mendacious; however that is his character as an itinerant hustler. The partisan problem is that Huckabee was standing on a stage with the other GOP candidates when he spoke, and nothing the party has done since has addressed Huckabee’s stupidity nor made clear to the public that a candidate who rejects 150 years of exploration, scholarship, disputation and education has no sense of decency. What does the Republican Party represent if not support for passionate scientific inquiry in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, anthropology, and genetics? The Confederates mocked Abraham Lincoln as an “ape” in order to combine their rejection of Darwin’s then-contemporary theory and the Union. Calling a brave man who believed slavery was wrong was an amusement to slave masters. Today, what health can there be for a national political party that welcomes a jackanape who repeats hooey about the origin of Homo sapiens?
Huckabee travelled to Jerusalem this past summer to secure another base for his political future; he was the guest of the Jewish Reclamation Project, which seeks to move Jews into the historical Arab quarter of the Old City. Dubbed “Huckabee the Macabee” by his hosts, Huckabee spent two days snacking on a local favorite, shawarma (turkey and honey) and offering vaguely incoherent anachronisms, “…if you’ve studied the Bible you certainly understand this conflict didn’t start in the 1940s. It started with Isaac and Ishmael.” Huckabee was introduced to the significant players and generally treated as a VIP despite the discomfort of his hosts that he lacks curiosity about the conflict with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Al-Aqsa Brigades. “He doesn’t know anything,” was one close observer’s summary. What Huckabee does know is how to cash in on his pleasing vacuity; and he accepted what are reported to have been substantial checks. The lone partisan significance of the cop-killer episode is that Huckabee’s largest donors in Israel now regard him as extremely unlikely as a candidate who can be trusted to make choices between the Devil and common sense.
Despite his bad luck recently, Huckabee’s future in the GOP is as rosy as the rouge on a corpse. Choosing among Huckabee, Romney, Pawlenty, Palin, and even the resident Swami Gingrich, the party could save itself some humiliation and a lot of money and skip the primaries and convention in order to offer a write-in line on the November 2012 ballot. This could start to make amends for Huckabee’s intolerance and inertness and may even permit some of what is left of the decent GOP to write in a ticket of “Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.”
John Batchelor is radio host of the John Batchelor Show in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
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patrickrlewis
He did not pardon or commute the sentence. The governor of Arkansas only has the power to review and give recommendations. The power to pardon or commute is only held by the parole board.
This is just another nothing story the press is twisting to take the pressure off the Great One and all his allies for forcing a bill down the throats of the public no one wants.
nortonclybourn
"a bill down the throats of the public no one wants." You're so incoherent, it's hard to tell who you're mad at. Who is the great one? What the Hell are you talking about?
GVidal
Ol' Huckabee is a huckster for sure - A mental midget with a sharp tounge - The GOP is hopeless...with the dumbest crop of candidates in decades - but then what would you expect of a Republican? Simple-minded-ness!!
Downriver
Constitution Of The State Of Arkansas Of 1874.
Article 6. Executive Department.
§ 18. Pardoning power.
In all criminal and penal cases, except in those of treason and impeachment, the Governor shall have power to grant reprieves, commutations of sentence, and pardons, after conviction; and to remit fines and forfeitures, under such rules and regulations as shall be prescribed by law. In cases of treason, he shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to grant reprieves and pardons; and he may, in the recess of the Senate, respite the sentence until the adjournment of the next regular session of the General Assembly. He shall communicate to the General Assembly at every regular session each case of reprieve, commutation or pardon, with his reasons therefor; stating the name and crime of the convict, the sentence, its date, and the date of the commutation, pardon or reprieve.
nortonclybourn
Oh, you think NUANCE is going to save him in the election? Good luck with that.
gandolf
Good point. Morever, it was an appropriate decision given Clemmons' then crimes, sentence, and dramatic change in behavior while serving a 12 year prison sentence (more than many people even receive as a sentence for aggravated robbery).
sjcarl
Any Republican who wants to be President should be spending their time with people other than old, angry white guys.
gandolf
Yah, cause we've never elected old white guys to the presidency.
trevor3090
I think he's talking about Jackie Gleason aka The Great One. It was kinda his tagline. A Honeymooners sketch perhaps?
mburgh
The Republicans have embraced the unpalatable at least since the 1930's - Father Coughlin? McCarthy? When was the last Republican candidate with any vision or ideas? William Howard Taft, maybe? Teddy Roosevelt?
nortonclybourn
There's a place for Conservatives, but the shrieking Reactionaries we could all do without.
crypto
What brought all you stupid liberals to this post. If Huckabee is of no interest to you why bother?? Seems to me you folks just shop around on here until you can find one lone victim and try to trash them instead of having anything to contribute to an otherwise intelligent conversation elsewhere. If you were'nt so contemptable you would be pathetic.
mburgh
Huckabee was my governor, and I had to live under his useless jurisdiction, and now I have to listen to my father-in-law talk about him, hence my interest, crypto.
GVidal
crypto - as in crypto Nazi?? You sound as stupid as most dopes who watch Fox News - you get your facts from a comedy show FNC!!!
SteveStephens
crypto, you are just another idiot Republican with plenty of vitriole and contempt for democrats, yet no examples of what you are talking about.
onecitizenzchoice
Yeah, crypto it's a real shame to see "stupid liberals" pickin' on yet another say anything to get elected republicant. Boo freakin' hoo, you're breakin my heart! Maybe, instead of posting here, you should look into the character and the backgrounds of your politicians before parading them around to begin with. Seem's to me that folks like you should understand that when you associate with hypocrits like Huckabee, Palin etc. etc. you're bound to come under public scrutiny. Now, run along and try not to be so damn pathetic next time.
Sajwert
crypto, instead of ranting against everyone who has posted a comment about Huckabee that YOU don't approve of, why don't you give us a long, detailed explanation of how suitable Huckabee would be as president of the USA.
You spent an entire comment ranting and not one word that could even begins to contribute "an otherwise intelligent conversation" which you apparently believe is lacking.
BuckHuit
As governor of Arkansas, christer nut-job Mike Huckabee set in motion the steps that led to the release of Maurice Clemmons.
Not just once (before parole), but twice (after parole violation).
The parole board serves the governor, and the governor directs the parole board.
For christer nut-job Mike Huckabee, the chief executive of Arkansas at that time, to pass the buck to others to minimize his role in this tragedy is just more evidence that christers cannot assume personal responsibility in any form.
"The devil made me do it" is christer nut-job Mike Huckabee's excuse.
It was Maurice Clemmons himself that wrote christer nut-job Mike Huckabee declaring (not his innocence) but his christer beliefs.
That's all it took. christer nut-job Mike Huckabee has a soft spot in his black christer heart for fellow christers, murderers or otherwise.
And this is a stunning example of why fruit-cake christer beliefs and US government should never mix.
crypto
And you're saying that this crapola we have now is any better??? Good gracious man. Your soul has been sold to the devil( just a play on words) but the interest you're gonna pay is beyond belief. If you're a property owner you're dead. Now after all the spending, this congress is playing with an idea of a "debt tax" to have us pay for the mess they've created..faster. And nothing we pay in is going for anything other than more spending.
Downriver
One needs to look a little further back than the last year to assign any culpability to our current economic disaster.
Downriver
Constitution Of The State Of Arkansas Of 1874.
Article 6. Executive Department.
§ 18. Pardoning power.
In all criminal and penal cases, except in those of treason and impeachment, the Governor shall have power to grant reprieves, commutations of sentence, and pardons, after conviction; and to remit fines and forfeitures, under such rules and regulations as shall be prescribed by law. In cases of treason, he shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to grant reprieves and pardons; and he may, in the recess of the Senate, respite the sentence until the adjournment of the next regular session of the General Assembly. He shall communicate to the General Assembly at every regular session each case of reprieve, commutation or pardon, with his reasons therefor; stating the name and crime of the convict, the sentence, its date, and the date of the commutation, pardon or reprieve.
nortonclybourn
Not the first con he's pardoned who went on to rape again, either. Oh right, we should read the Constitution of the State of Arkansas to get the facts straight. Sorry, don't think it will fit on a bumper sticker.
gameon
LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS ?
So now you've done a hit piece on Huckabee,Dobbs and about a dozen on Palin.There's no liberal bias,it must be all in my head.For some reason though ,i'm still waiting for a story on Al Gore and Climategate.Surely you can do one article exposing the link between Gore and the criminal conspiracy to alter and effect scientific data for the purpose of enriching Gore and his cronies.
You'll bend over backwards to find dirt on any conservative but when it comes to criminal acts that are taking place in plain sight in the Dem. party ,you for some odd reason have nothing to say.
GVidal
gameon - you lost the election!!
now....take your time back at school and learn some facts. Start by being taught how to read intelligent writers, smart authors, and the real facts - you obviously are a Fox wing-nut and can't sort facts from delusional thinking like your post above!!
crypto
That's almost exactly what Nancy Pelosi said. But the republicans didn't "lose" the election. You idiots just elected the wrong democrat.
gameon
Hey Gvidal,I just finished "The Missing Peace",nine-hundred pages on the Clinton era Middle East peace negotiations.It was excrutiating,but that's the kind of thing I read.What do you read?Dr.Seuss?I'll debate any conservative value you like,take your pick.
I was just telling another Liberal numbnut on this site that I have only watched about two to three hours of Fox News in my entire life.So you can take your "Fox wing-nut" crap and cram it in your gaping ,Liberal ,blowhole.
bcrago77
I don't like Huckabee. I'm a Republican, and I'd sooner vote for a moderate Democrat (assuming, counter-factually, that one could survive the nomination process) than Huckabee. However, Bachelor's editorial is worthless. It is a rant, designed to vent Bachelor feelings, and to bring forth similar feelings among those who already agree with him. There's about 20 adjectives and insults to every fact, or alleged fact.
It can only be an insufferable self-righteousness that would cause Bachelor to feel that he need only handle his assignment by vomiting invective, and not by attempting persuasion.
GVidal
Christian nut job Huckabee is a joke!
crypto
Let's look at that comment. Huckabee is a joke, Palin is stupid and too country,Romney is Mormon and nobody trusts that, Hillary couldn't be trusted, Ron Paul is a nut, Bill Clinton wasn't true enough to "the party", Bush is a communist, John McCain is too old and senile, and it continues. SOoooo the only thing left is to elect somebody that "we" can trust, like Obamasan and his gang of underworld thieves. For congress we need an honest speaker like Nancy Pelosi, and her cronies, Chris Dodd, Charley Rangle, Al Sharpton and of course in the senate we must have that trustworthy Leader of the Senate Harry Reid. If I missed anybody you dimwits please feel free to ad on to the list.
Spartan79
Gameon, I'm surprised you haven't decoded the reason why so many so-called conservative pundits like Bachelor diss Huckabee and Palin. Let me spell it out for you: Frum (Yale), Mirengoff (Dartmouth), Bachelor (Princeton), Brooks (U of Chicago), as opposed to Palin (Idaho), Huckabee (Ouachita Baptist College), Reagan (Eureka College). Only grads of elite schools can presume to aspire to the presidency. No state schools or podunk private colleges need apply. While Bachelor is not enthusiastic about any of the current GOP lineup, in 2012 you can expect him to reluctantly get behind Romney (Harvard),
Senrex
I've listened to this guy Batchelor on WABC radio in New York. He's nothing but an elitist snob. He actually thinks that someone from the old Rockefeller wing of the GOP could win anything. He is NOT a conservative -- in any way except foreign policy (he's an old Democratic liberal interventionist).
I think the Republican Party can do without the advice from this jackass.
jjsim1965
LOL Gvidal.... REPUBLICAN candidates simplemindedness??? And you guys elected Barrack Obama for heaven's sake...
gobydoc
The country elected Barack Obama.
crypto
Horse feathers gobydoc. Nobody on this side of the fense is convinced he is even qualified legally to be president yet. We may get to the truth before he's gone but I doubt it. But your statement is wrong. Only two segments of this country voted for him, blacks or idiots. Some were both. But those who saw through him have doubled their efforts now, both black and white. Hope, transparency, redristribution of wealth and anything else he thinks of. Acorn, Chicago thugs, hell I can keep this up all night. This man will prove himself to be a nontrustworthy high classed hoodlum before he's gone.
meglon978
Should be "no idiot on this side of the fence..."
And another corrections on "Only two segments of this country voted for him, blacks or idiots..."
What segments did Obama win:
1 - the black vote (overall) - 95%
2 - the hispanic vote (overall) - 66%
3 - the women vote (overall) - 56%
4* - the male vote (overall) - 49% - tied
5 - the under 30 vote - 66%
6 - the under 30 white vote - 54%
7 - first time voters - 71%
8 - the catholic vote - 54%
9 the asian vote - 63%
10 - the jewish vote - 78%
11* - the suburban vote - 50% - tied
12 - the single voter - 66%
13 - the income over $200k a year vote - 53%
14 - the Hillary Clinton supporter vote - 84%
What segments did McCain win:
1 - the white vote (overall) - 55%
2* - the male vote (overall) - 49% - tied
3* - the suburban vote - 50% - tied
4 - the rural vote - 51%
5 - the married voter - 51%
6 - the senior citizens vote - 51%
7 - the white evangelical vote - 73%
get a clue, you need one.
jjsim1965
Mburgh, what kind of vision are you looking for? We got vision with Barrack Obama, too bad it is 20/200.
gobydoc
Actually, we got the vision we voted for. I would say Obama has worked very hard to follow through on his campaign promises. In fact, the right wing seems to be most virulently critical of his efforts on health care, which was a campaign promise. The election was about change and Obama is trying, notwithstanding continuous Republican opposition, to accomplish this change.
nortonclybourn
It's fun to watch crypto sputter at the outrage at this Black President and twist slowly in the wind, as Richard Nixon used to say. Some people are threatened because they have little talent or ability and have nothing but White Privilege to fall back on. Let's have a moment of silence for history's unlovely losers, followed by a chorus of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.
crypto
OH you're badly mistaken cleghorn. The fact that the man is African American has nothing to do with my outrage. It's the fact that so many people, both black and white. voted for him because of it. And now as he methodically goes about pulling the country deeper and deeper into a hole jerks like you find it funny that our country is being destroyed day by day and in your ignorance think anyone who opposes it is racist. No if I have any animosity toward anyone it's Pelosi. This bit*h has used the influence of the office to sell us out to the highest bidder. And Obamasan has just fallen in line.
misha1000
" And now as he methodically goes about pulling the country deeper and deeper into a hole"
Like Bush? Don't leave me an opening like that.
RawhideRex
"Crypto" (krip-TOE)
Crypto is a germ that causes diarrhea. Crypto, short for Cryptosporidium, is found in infected people's stool and cannot be seen by the naked eye. This germ is protected by an outer shell that allows it to survive for long periods of time and makes it resistant to chlorine disinfection found in pools."
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/healthySwimming/cryptofacts.htm
Dolmance
If I'd been responsible for commuting that degenerate's sentence and four people had gotten killed as a result, I'd probably have to spend a couple of weeks in a nut house getting shot up with anti depressants and maybe even shock therapy.
But how's Huckabee handling it? He's going on Fox News to do some serious spin, in the hope of helping his future job prospects.
No conscience and no soul.
BuckHuit
Yup. That's the strange part.
christer nut-job Mike Huckabee should be assuming personal responsibility and taking ownership for his actions.
As it is, christer nut-job Mike Huckabee is whining and whining about how he was just a pawn in the big scheme of things. And that had he known Maurice Clemmons was capable of violence he would never have done what he claims he never did in the first place (and if that makes your head spin, join the club).
But Maurice Clemmons was a violent felon. He carried a handgun to high school when he was 16. He robbed and beat a woman.
And then, after christer nut-job Mike Huckabee had Maurice Clemmons released (yes, the governor can direct the board of pardons), Maurice Clemmons violates the terms of his parole and is incarcerated again.
And again, christer nut-job Mike Huckabee intervened to have a violent felon released because (and this is the only reason) Maurice Clemmons wrote christer nut-job Mike Huckabee that he was "born again."
It's astonishing that an adult man like christer nut-job Mike Huckabee would try to revise his own history and go so far to evade responsibility for his own actions.
christer nut-job Mike Huckabee was the GOVERNOR! Maurice Clemmons wrote to Huckabee about his christer beliefs. Huckabee set in motion the series of events that led to Maurice Clemmons' release, NOT ONCE, BUT TWICE!
This is why we have the separation of nut-job christer churchs and the federal and state government.
christer nut-jobs and their fruit-cake christer beliefs are an extremely reckless way to run a country.
Voter777
BuckHuit, it probably won't do any good to try and confuse you with facts. It sounds like you are one of those bitter folks who just love to hate, and to spew venom.
But your post has several lies in it, which bear refuting.
The first is:>>>And again, christer nut-job Mike Huckabee intervened to have a violent felon released because (and this is the only reason) Maurice Clemmons wrote christer nut-job Mike Huckabee that he was "born again."It's astonishing that an adult man like christer nut-job Mike Huckabee would try to revise his own history and go so far to evade responsibility for his own actions.>>christer nut-job Mike Huckabee was the GOVERNOR! Maurice Clemmons wrote to Huckabee about his christer beliefs. Huckabee set in motion the series of events that led to Maurice Clemmons' release, NOT ONCE, BUT TWICE!"
Slamlander
"No conscience and no soul."
Eh?!? He's a politician, they're ALL like that.
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