Huck's Sins (and the list is long)

[babylonsister]

I usually don't post about rethugs, but thought this deserved a look. Use it for anyone who claims he's a stellar candidate, because he is not.

Huck's Sins
by Eve Fairbanks
The Huckabee-as-really - good-guy meme? It doesn't wash.
Post Date Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Time's Mark Halperin had a sharp take Monday on why the unflattering things that have come out about Mike Huckabee haven't hurt him so far:

"Voters seem attracted to the man--not his issue positions, his record, or the quality (or lack thereof) of his campaign apparatus. Taking down Huckabee the Candidate means taking down Huckabee the Man, and that requires the kind of nuclear blast no one is yet inclined to launch."

I'll admit it: Watching Republican debates in the spring and summer, I developed a soft spot for the guy. I thought that, even if his ideas were a little nutty, he was obviously a really good dude. He jawed with reporters, he played the guitar, he even did shtick on "The Colbert Report." But looking at it closely, the Huckabee dirt does reflect--strongly, and badly--on Huckabee the Man. There's a lot of negative buzz out there, and it hasn't stuck in part because it's tough to square the image of the hambone, TV Huckabee with the more morally dubious character that's emerging. To rectify this problem, I tried to organize the Huckabee dirt according to what it says about his character:

HUCKABEE'S SHADY ETHICS

* THE TOBACCO DOLLARS. This saga, laid out in detail by Newsweek, has all the seedy elements of a Thank You For Smoking knock-off: Around the time he was elected lieutenant governor, in 1993, Huckabee tells some buddies he's broke. A mysterious non-profit, incorporated in Texas because the buddies "didn't want anybody to find out about it," subsequently supplements Huckabee's income with cash from donors Huckabee refuses to reveal. One of the biggest donors, as it turns out, was R.J. Reynolds--and those erstwhile Huckabee buddies now allege the tobacco company wanted Huckabee to shill against Hillary's health-care proposal among fellow evangelicals, a scheme Huckabee was game for. Huckabee's Clintonian response to Newsweek: "I don't recall those meetings . I'm not saying they never happened. ... If they can show me pictures of me there, that might help."

* THE FILE PURGE. Before stepping down as governor, Huckabee wiped almost 100 computers in his offices using $13,000 in state emergency funds. The purge left incoming Governor Mike Beebe with no emergency funds for the second half of the following year.

* THE ETHICS COMPLAINTS. The Arkansas ethics commission found that Huckabee had committed five violations for actions such as accepting inappropriate gifts during his tenure as governor.

HUCKABEE'S SLAPDASH DECISION-MAKING

* THE DISDAIN FOR FOREIGN POLICY. Over a day after it was blared all over the front page of every paper, Huckabee hadn't bothered to find out about the new game-changing National Intelligence Estimate. When asked how he could've missed such an important news event, he shrugged, "It's going to happen again." I hope not, if he becomes president. Then there's this: "I'm not an expert," he told Don Imus about his interest in foreign policy, "but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night." Huh? If you can believe it, he found this joke good enough to use it more than once.

* THE AIDS FLAP. In 1992, he advocated quarantining AIDS patients, well after it was commonly known that AIDS could not be spread through casual contact. He refuses to retract the idea today.


more...

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e78992e9-9f90-45c9-871f-3bc5c290d0b4

[TwilightGardener]

1. How is he any better than Rudy? Just as corrupt--but Rudy doesn't

claim to be a family-values "Christian Leader".

[babylonsister]

2. He's not imo, which is why this info needs to be widely dispersed.

Because he's religious, people seem to swarm to him. And their candidate field is pitiful, so I think conservatives think they're picking the lesser of two evils.

[TwilightGardener]

3. I guess if you do everything under the banner of Christ, all is forgiven.

How can a minister possibly be a crooked, morally-challenged man? :eyes:

[skipos]

4. He sounds like the perfect candidate for Repubs.

Fiscally irresponsible, pro big government in our personal lives, anti-woman, corrupt, pro-rapist, claims Jesus endorses him, etc. And don't forget, you want to have a beer with him!