stone cold crazy

by Shane Nicholson

Published: January 16, 2008

How Republicans couldn’t see this one coming is beyond me.

With the party’s leadership in tatters (or handcuffs or airport restrooms), the GOP turned to a not-so-conventional method of identifying its candidates for president: throw whatever’s handy at the wall and see what sticks. Three votes so far, three different winners. The plan’s working like a charm!

The early leader was Giuliani, the career liberal, pro-abortion, pro-gun control, twice divorced, occasional cross dresser and mayor of 9/11. These qualifications made him the odds-on favorite at the onset of the election cycle. Now his candidacy is riding solely on Super Tuesday, at least if you ask the man himself. His now unpaid staff might have some differing opinions.

Fred Thompson announced on the eve of the Iowa caucuses that he just didn’t really have it in him to be president. Republican caucus goers responded with a fifteen-percent show of support for the part-time politician from Tennessee.

Mitt Romney: the “flip-flopping” rich boy, version 2.0, now with more Mormon! According to him, what this country needs is to stop big business from dragging our economy down the drain. This from someone who made millions of dollars consulting big business. Sounds about right.

John McCain had his youthful vigor restored by his faithful companion Joe Lieberman in 2007. According to exit polling, the man who just two weeks ago gleefully claimed that Americans wouldn’t mind if we stayed in Iraq for “a hundred” or “a million” years is winning the Republican anti-war vote.

And then there’s the new golden boy of the religious right, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Where do we begin?

A mere six months or so ago this man was just another name on the list, and for a while he appeared mostly harmless. Then he crept into the spotlight and took Iowa. Too bad for him that the bright lights of the big stage have a way of bringing out the blemishes.

The Huckster has spent the better part of two decades building up an anti-gay agenda that could make Pat Robertson blush. In a questionnaire response for the AP in 1992, Huckabee dropped this bomb: “… we know now that [homosexuality] can pose a dangerous public health risk.” This came on the heels of comments indicating that the senatorial candidate still believed AIDS could be spread through casual contact, and it was only just the beginning.

Governor Huckabee proposed an amendment to a 1997 bill to outlaw sodomy in order to, “protect the traditional family structure.” He also spoke out against survivor’s benefits and adoption rights for same-sex couples, and recently, when asked if he felt people, “were born gay or chose to be gay,” Huckabee had this response: “I don’t know whether people are born that way; people who are gay say that they’re born that way. But one thing I know, that the behavior one practices is a choice.”

In fact, that may be the one thing Governor Huckabee does know. Asked about the Iran NIE the day after its release the Huck had no response as he had not heard of the report. A couple days later he defended himself, saying, “It is a situation where a report was released at 10:00 in the morning, the president hadn’t seen it in four years and I’m supposed to see it four hours later.”

Actually, Mike, hate to break it to you, but the report came out the day before, and by the time you said this it had already been reported that the president had seen a draft copy of the report in August at the latest and perhaps even earlier.

Here is the punch line though: Huckabee was on Don Imus’s show the morning after the report came out, defending his lack of foreign policy experience, saying he’s “not an expert… but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.” If only he had just picked up a free USA Today in the lobby…

After the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Huckabee claimed that a portion of the problems facing Pakistan were because of the Musharraf’s government inability to take “control of those eastern borders near Afghanistan to be able go after the terrorists.” Obviously those updated world maps in which India borders Pakistan to the east had also only come out at ten that morning.

Then came the appearance on Leno on January 2. Huckabee, earlier in the day, had expressed support for the writer’s strike, and claimed that he thought all late night writers had reached an agreement with the union. WGA representatives informed the media that they had been in contact with Huckabee’s staff prior to taping on the day of the show, as well as being in communication the day prior. Reporters traveling with the candidate also informed him of his mistake, to which Huckabee had the very well thought out response of, “Hmm. Oh…”

The moral here is that if you’re a bumbling homophobe who is seemingly clueless about what’s going on in the world around you, then you had better be willing to run a smear campaign of unparalleled proportions (meaning you better hire Karl Rove to be your right hand man) or else it’s going to come back at you eventually. That, “Aww shucks,” thing wears thin pretty quickly.

(Ron Paul was not invited to appear in this story.)

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