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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Everyone doesn't (heart) Huckabee
Posted by Jill | 5:46 AM
As Grandpa Fred sinks slowly into the oblivion of the vanity candidacy, the Washington press corps needs a new face with which to fall in love. They thought it would be Thompson, but with his obsession with the Soviet Union, his public declarations that he really doesn't so much want to BE president as to DO things you can only do if you're president (forgetting that in theory at least, there still are two other branches of government), and his general attitude of "I don't give a shit but vote for me anyway", he's made it impossible to prop up his candidacy.

Before that they thought it would be Rudy Giuliani, but the more we know about the extent of Bernie Kerik's crimes, and the nuttier Rudy sounds, the more difficult it is for so-called "serious people" to take him seriously. And before that it was Mitt Romney, who was "perfect" or "well-sculpted", and "looks like a president" -- until he opened his mouth.

Now it's Mike Huckabee, the unflashy Baptist Preacher who's the Republican "Man from Hope", Arkansas. It's easy, as even I did, to regard Huckabee as the least loathsome option -- until you look at his record. I've already linked to Tristero's terrific coverage of his granting of clemency to Wayne Dumond, who had raped a woman who turned out to be a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. The wingnuts decided that this meant by definition that Dumond had been framed, and so Huckabee let the guy out -- whereupon he proceeded to rape and kill two more women. But it's more than just the Dumond case. In Salon today, Arkansas journalist Mike Brantley debunks the rest of the "Huckabee's Fundamental Decency" myth:

Huckabee seems to love loot and has a dismissive attitude toward ethics, campaign finance rules and propriety in general. Since that first, failed campaign, the ethical questions have multiplied.

In the 1992 contest with Bumpers, Huckabee used campaign funds to pay himself as his own media consultant. Other payments went to the family babysitter.

In his successful 1994 run for lieutenant governor, he set up a nonprofit curtain known as Action America so he could give speeches for money without having to disclose the names of his benefactors. He failed to report that campaign travel payments were for the use of his own personal plane.

After he became governor in 1996, he raked in tens of thousands of dollars in gifts, including gifts from people he later appointed to prestigious state commissions.

In the governor's office, his grasp never exceeded his reach. Furniture he'd received to doll up his office was carted out with him when he left, after he'd crushed computer hard drives so nobody could ever get a peek behind the curtain of the Huckabee administration.

Until my paper, the Arkansas Times, blew the whistle, he converted a governor's mansion operating account into a personal expense account, claiming public money for a doghouse, dry-cleaning bills, panty hose and meals at Taco Bell. He tried to claim $70,000 in furnishings provided by a wealthy cotton grower for the private part of the residence as his own, until he learned ethics rules prevented it. When a disgruntled former employee disclosed memos revealing all this, the Huckabee camp shut her up by repeatedly suggesting she might be vulnerable to prosecution for theft because she'd shared documents generated by the state's highest official.

He ran the State Police airplane into the ground, many of the miles in pursuit of political ends. Inauguration funds were used to buy clothing for his wife. He once took control of the state Republican Party's campaign account -- then swore the account had been somebody else's responsibility when it ran afoul of federal election laws. He repeated the pattern when he claimed in a newspaper story that his staff controlled the account to stage his second inauguration. When I filed a formal ethics complaint over what appeared to be an improper appropriation of donated money, he told a different story, disavowing responsibility for the money. He thus avoided another punishment from an Ethics Commission, which had sanctioned him on five other occasions. He dodged nine other complaints (though none, despite his counter-complaints, was held to be frivolous). In one case, he was saved by the swing vote of a woman who left the chairmanship of the Ethics Commission days later to take a state job. She listed the governor as a reference on the job application. Finally, unbelievably, Huckabee once sued to overturn the ban on gifts to him.

[snip]

Huckabee insists he's not one of those harsh, punitive, "angry" conservatives, but again, there are witnesses who might say otherwise if anyone's interested.

Ask the retarded Fort Smith teenager, raped by her stepfather, who sought Medicaid funding for an abortion as federal law required. Huckabee stood in the hospital door, at least figuratively, to prevent state funding. Ask the gay people belittled by his cracks about "Adam and Steve." Ask the scientists who've seen evolution virtually disappear from the textbooks and classrooms of Arkansas with his administration's acquiescence.

Social issues alone should give moderates pause. He championed a law in Arkansas making it harder to get a divorce, the so-called covenant marriage law that has been widely ignored except when he and his wife recommitted in a Valentine's Day publicity stunt held in a 17,000-seat arena.

[snip]

But then, you don't have to believe me about any of this. After all, I live in Little Rock and, as Huckabee has often said, I'm just the editor of a trashy, throwaway liberal tabloid. Why not look instead to a conservative voice from the national media? At the American Spectator, once home to the anti-Clinton Arkansas Project, senior editor Quin Hillyer, a former Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial writer, wrote recently, "National media folks like David Brooks [of the New York Times], dealing in surface appearances only, rave about what a nice guy Huckabee is, and a moral exemplar to boot. 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."


Republicans are desperate for the perfect candidate, a candidate who can somehow keep the 28-percenters who still regard George W. Bush as the second coming of Christ in the fold without being seen as Just More of George. The media are also desperate for a Republican candidate who can somehow overcome Americans' disgust with Republican doctrine. This is a desperation that is probably not necessary, given the Democrats' ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the party's determination to nominate the most divisive and corporatist candidate possible, and the Democratic Congress' demonstrated willingness to crumple into a fetal position in the corner at the mere thought of the words "weak on terrorism".

But if there was ever a case of "Not to know him is to love him", it's Mike Huckabee.

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