Tag: Mike Huckabee

I'm sorry to see Mike Huckabee go. But, he just dropped out. McCain is the Republican nominee. He has at least 1191 delegates.

Huckabee will now be a uniter.

CNN projects Mike Huckabee as the winner in the Kansas caucuses today.

With 76 percent of precincts reporting, Huckabee had 62 percent of the vote, compared with 22 percent for Arizona Sen. John McCain and 11 percent for Texas. Rep. Ron Paul. Kansas has 36 delegates at stake Saturday.

Experts say Huckabee can't make the numbers nationally and McCain will be the Republican nominee. Huckabee responds:

Well, I didn't major in math, I majored in miracles. And I still believe in those, too."

Here's a short video of Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee sharing a pew and singing today at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Here's a live-stream of the service which is still going on. Clinton acknowledged Huckabee in his remarks:

He acknowledged a litany of people, before beginning his remarks on MLK, including his “fellow Arkansan, and a competitor for the presidential nomination. Governor Huckabee welcome.”

” We worked together for several years on something that concerns everybody in this church: trying to turn the tide on childhood obesity, and childhood diabetes,”Clinton said.”A good man.”But he also said that they didn’t agree much on anything.

This really doesn't bother me. Not nearly so much as thinking Rudy Giuliani could get the Republican nomination.

If Mr. Huckabee can continue to galvanize evangelicals around his novel message while attracting other Republicans and perhaps independents, he will do more than advance his own campaign. He will also challenge the establishment of the Christian conservative political movement.

Young evangelicals are not only flocking to Huckabee but using grass-roots and net-roots to fundraise for him.

In Michigan, the Huckabee campaign had spent no money, hired no staff and had no office until last Wednesday, six days before the primary. But Gary Glenn, a conservative Christian advocate based in Midland, Mich., has been leading an informal effort to turn out evangelical voters. Some pollsters expect them to make up as much as 40 percent of the state’s primary voters this year. [More...]

Tristero at Digby's Hullabaloo goes off on Mike Huckabee today for his Wayne Dumond pardon. It's in the news again because of an anti-Huckabee ad by a 527 group.

Wayne Dumond's attorney, John Wesley Hall, who writes as Last Night in Little Rock at TalkLeft and I have taken a different view of the case from a legal perspective. We have provided the legal grounds upon which Huckabee might have believed Dumond should have been released -- and the argument that Huckabee succombed to anti-Clinton forces.

• Mike Huckabee's Tangled Web
• Huckabee and Wayne Dumond: Interview With Dumond's Attorney
  
• Huckabee and Dumond: Succumbing to the Anti-Clinton Zealots

And then, there's Mike Huckabee's Other Pardons. As I wrote there,

[More...]

David Letterman shaved his beard on the air tonight. After guest Tom Hanks, Mike Huckabee came on.

He's very affable. He told a very funny story about when he was a radio host. Some quotes:

"As President, you're not making speeches, you're making decisions."

"If I win New Hamsphire, it's because I did this show. If I lose New Hampshire, it's because I did this show."

He did his "vertical leadership" schtick and said everyone gets it. (Note, I didn't.)

That's it...Wow, he flew to NY for that?

Postscript: I'm not a Republican, but if I were, which would mean I share their crazy views, I'd vote for Romney or Huckabee. The rest are pure duds.

Jane at Firedoglake asks whether Huckabee is fibbing about not having a gastric bypass.

I wondered the same thing months ago, but after reviewing all of his statements on his weight loss, concluded he didn't because he's been so vocal in his denials and it would be too easily uncovered if he were lying.

But, I do suspect he may have had a lapband wrapped around his stomach.

The Republican candidates are tripping over each other in their quest to become the toughest on immigration. Mitt Romney has released his first attack ad on immigration while Rudy Giuliani now says he wanted to deport New York City's 400,00 undocumented residents. the undocumented deported from New York City. And now, the Minutemen have endorsed Mike Huckabee.

The founder of the Minuteman Project, the anti-illegal immigrant group, endorsed Republican Mike Huckabee on Tuesday....At a news conference hastily arranged to cope with a crippling ice storm, Huckabee brought out Minuteman head Jim Gilchrist, whose private group patrols the Mexican border on its own to keep out illegal immigrants.

"For months now, I've been searching for a candidate to support for president of the United States," said Gilchrist. He said he settled on Huckabee as the candidate whose plans were most likely to halt "this illegal immigrant invasion problem."

Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker explains why this Republican anti-immigration strategy may backfire and cost them the election. It's a long article, but here are some snippets:

Mother Jones has a new article about Mike Huckabee, Huckabee Hides His Full Gospel?

The question is, if elected President, how much would Huckabee inject his faith into his policy?

Huckabee won't release his sermons, but there's plenty of other clues. This comment he made while Governor in 1997 is pretty telling:

[T]hat year, Huckabee refused to sign legislation to assist storm victims because the measure referred to tornadoes and floods as "acts of God." Putting his name on such legislation, Huckabee explained, "would be violating my own conscience" due to the bill equating "a destructive and deadly force" as "an act of God."

Newsweek has a feature article on Mike Huckabee's wife, Janet. If he gets the Republican nomination, she may add some spice to the race. Two snippets, the first is how she's remembered in Arkansas:

There, Janet Huckabee, 52, has long been known as a straight-talking, independent-minded good ole gal with a daredevil streak and a passion for the outdoors. Dubbed the "First Tomboy" when her husband was governor, she tracked bears, hunted rattlesnakes, fired a grenade launcher and jumped out of an airplane. To promote a conservation sales tax, she jet-skied down the length of the Arkansas River— a stunt that helped earn her a spot in the state's Outdoor Hall of Fame. She often charmed local residents with her exploits, though she could also alienate them when her plain-spoken style veered into irascibility and crassness. "Janet is going to tell you what she thinks," says longtime friend Anita McCauley Murrell. "She is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person."

The second is less favorable, concerning her 2002 failed run for Arkansas Secretary of State: [More...]

The AP has an exclusive report that Mike Huckabee's response to the AIDS epidemic in 1992 was to oppose federal funding for research and advocate isolating AIDS patients:

As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.

"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague," Huckabee wrote.

Huckabee also said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk.".

I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk."

On funding AIDS research he wrote: [More...]

Sam Stein at Huffington Post has a new article on Mike Huckabee and the parole of Arkansas rapist Wayne Dumond. Shorter version: He succumbed to the anti-Clinton zealots.

The individuals who served on Arkansas' parole board recounted a similar Huckabee mindset. And Butch Reeves, the governor's top aide, told the Huffington Post on Wednesday that, contrary to his now former boss's claims, Huckabee lobbied the parole board to reverse its previous rejection. Huckabee has said that in supporting Dumond's parole he was merely following the judgment of the board. But just one month earlier the board had voted 4-to-1 against Dumond's parole

By that point in time, those who have followed the case claim, Huckabee was convinced both of Dumond's rehabilitation in prison and of his victimhood at the hands of the Clinton machine. Throughout the case, they claim, Huckabee exhibited poor judgment and a lack of political skill.

Stein interviewed Dumond's lawyer, John Wesley Hall (who contributes to TalkLeft as Last Night in Little Rock) about whether he ever met with Huckabee. The answer is no.

More...

The battle between Huffington Post and Mike Huckabee is ongoing.

• Round 1: Murray Waas exposes Huckabee in Huffpo.

• Round 2: The Huckabee campaign posts a response by a former aide attacking HuffPo .

• Round 3: Arianna jumps in, defending Huffpo and Waas.

Our contributions (and slightly different take from all of them to date:)

• Huckabee and Wayne Dumond: Interview With Dumond's Attorney

• Mike Huckabee's Tangled Web

Stay tuned, I hear there's more to come.

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake, 12/06/07]

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive....

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is on the ropes after his repeated denials that he recommended parole for Arkansas rapist and murderer Wayne Dumond. For background on the Wayne Dumond case, check out Byron York's article today at the National Review.

It began in September 1984, when Dumond, a 35-year-old handyman, kidnapped and raped a 17-year-old high-school cheerleader in the small eastern-Arkansas town of Forrest City. Dumond was allowed to remain free on bond while awaiting trial, and in March 1985 two masked men entered his house, tied him up with fishing line, and castrated him. People were stunned; the case, already notorious, became much more so. And that was before the local sheriff, a rather colorful man named Coolidge Conlee, displayed Dumond’s severed testicles in a jar of formaldehyde on his desk in the St. Francis County building. Amid tons of publicity, Dumond was found guilty and sentenced to life plus 20 years.

The case took on a political coloring when it became known that the victim was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. After conviction, Dumond, who claimed he was innocent, asked Clinton for clemency. Clinton declined.

For details about what Huckabee knew about Dumond and when he knew it, see Murray Waas' article at the Huffington Post yesterday. Also, here's a detailed chronology (pdf) of events concerning the case.

York interviewed Huckabee last August about his role in Dumond's release. [More...]

During the Republican debate last night, after attacking Hillary, contender Mike Huckabee had this to say:

"We don't have a health care system. We have a health care maze. And we don't have a health care crisis. We have a health crisis. Eighty percent of the $2 trillion we spend on health care in this country is spent on chronic disease. If we don't change the health of this nation by focusing on prevention, we're never going to catch up with the costs no matter what plan we have. ... And we've got a situation with 10,000 baby boomers a day signing up for Social Security, going into the Medicare system. And I just want to remind everybody when all the old hippies find out that they get free drugs, just wait until what that's going to cost out there."

What drug is he on?