Huckabee Making Strong Bid to Lose “Likeable Conservative” Credentials
I met Mike Huckabee once, briefly, and he was extremely charming. He offered up more of what I’d seen in the best of Mike Huckabee on television—a charismatic, friendly guy who laced his conservatism with real Christian values like generosity and humility. And then there’s this guy:
“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics may be dead,” said Huckabee, “but a Union of American Socialist Republics is being born.” Democrats, according to Huckabee, were packing 40 years of pet projects like “health care rationing” into spending bills. “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff.”
Steve Benen says “I suspect that if a prominent Democratic office holder, in 2005, delivered a speech referring to George W. Bush’s agenda as “fascism,” comparing his administration to totalitarian regimes, and casually throwing in a reference to Hitler, that Democrat would have a very difficult time being taken seriously by the political establishment moving forward.” Indeed, recall that when Dick Durbin compared American mistreatment of detainees to maltreatment of prisons in the Gulag, we was pressured into offering a groveling apology. In Durbin’s case, though, one could see the point of the comparison.
Why Huckabee thinks that federally funded research into determining which medical treatments are effective is similar to being a totalitarian mass-murderer is a bit beyond me. But it’s par for the course in the uglier corners of conservatism, they’re just not corners Huckabee’s been known for dwelling in.
47 Responses to “Huckabee Making Strong Bid to Lose “Likeable Conservative” Credentials”
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February 28th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Repugs and right-wingers are completely RETARDED when it comes to healthcare policy… these folks and their rigid, backward ideology is simply clouding their judgment, on this issue as in so much else….
none of these jerks realize that we ALREADY HAVE a national health insurance system in this country, FOR OLD PEOPLE ONLY.. so what’s their problem with national health insurance for folks of any age who can’t get health insurance in the private sector, that hallowed “free” market — either because their employer won’t give it to them or because it’s unaffordable for them in the private sector, or they just lost their jobs and along with it their health insurance…
Repugs don’t want to make it compulsory for employers to give employees health insurance AND at the same time they don’t want uninsured folks to have access to a national health insurance plan (unless you’re old..) they simply have no solution except: 1) pray so you don’t get sick, and 2) just say no to meaningful healthcare reform which will grant access to affordable health insurance to millions of people in this country who don’t have it now.
They’re always crying to high heaven, that a reformed system would mean the “government” would make health care decisions for you. But they have ZERO problem with insurance companies making “medical” decisions now like, we won’t pay for such-and-such a treatment, even though a doctor prescribed it. Period. If you don’t like it you’re out of luck. People have DIED in this country because of these “medical” decisions make by greedy insurance companies.
in NO OTHER MODERN DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD do folks lose their health insurance when they lose their job; that happens only in our retarded healthcare system. It’s about time for Republicans to step into the real world and to stop their fierce ideological and moronic opposition to real healthcare reform.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:40 am
My favorite Huckabee story: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE0DB173BF932A15750C0A961958260&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/H/Huckabee,%20Mike
February 28th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Yeah, but he still plays a decent bass guitar. He’s no Barry Oakley, but he gets credit for trying.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:48 am
“He’s no Barry Oakley”
Oops, that should be ‘Berry.’ Thirty years of listening to the Allman Brothers, and I never noticed that? How’s that happen?
February 28th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Meh. He’s no Berry Gordy or Annie Oakley, either…
February 28th, 2009 at 11:57 am
I really, really worry for Obama’s safety; these people are crazy and seem to be getting more bizarre by the day. I believe if these types of remarks and behavior continue they will incite violence against the president.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:59 am
“Meh. He’s no Berry Gordy or Annie Oakley, either…”
Well, Dick Cheney certainly isn’t any Annie Oakley, either. Even if he was trying to kill his friend, a head shot doesn’t work too well with a small gage shotgun and birdshot. It’s best to shoot for the heart in that case.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Huckabee is a clown and a huxter. It’s extraordinarily frustrating how likable and charming he can be at times. His folksy affability has true appeal. I imagine this is how conservatives felt about Bill Clinton to some degree. The guy is a snake-oil salesman who thrives on ignorance. His type can be a real danger to our republic.
“Repugs and right-wingers are completely RETARDED when it comes to healthcare policy… these folks and their rigid, backward ideology is simply clouding their judgment, on this issue as in so much else….”
Meh, I disagree. I’m liberal. I lean towards universal single-payer health care. But I realize there is a respectable opposition to this policy. There are real empirical doubts about the link between people’s health and health care. Britons get less care–fewer procedures, fewer drugs, etc–than Americans, but by most measures are much healthier. Undoubtedly, some forms of health care are indisputably effective (such as penicillin), but it seems that national health is better served by health life styles than awesome coverage. I still support some kind of universal care, but I believe you are oversimplifying the benefits of this system some.
“Yeah, but he still plays a decent bass guitar. He’s no Barry Oakley, but he gets credit for trying.”
As a bassist myself, I can honestly say he’s nothing special, especially for someone who has been playing for as long as he has. Not that I would expect him to be Jaco or anything, but still… I’d take Bill Clinton’s sax over his bass any day (and I’d much rather jam with Clinton too).
February 28th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
I guess you have to be Southern to recognize that Huckabee’s charm offensives thinly mask an extreme-right-wing social conservatism. You have to be Southern to know what the folksy drawl conceals. Indeed, Huck is savvy enough to know that he can pull the wool over a lot of Northeastern liberal eyes. He’s shtick works on the Matts of the world simply because they’ve really never been around Southern evangelical Protestants, know zero about how adept these folks can be at throwing Yankee urbanites off their beams. On a recent episode of “The View,” Joy Behar put her arm around Huck and pronounced him her favorite Republican.
Bill Clinton did something similar in the ’90s — thank heaven he was on the right side of the policy issues.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
“I’d take Bill Clinton’s sax over his bass any day (and I’d much rather jam with Clinton too).”
Agreed, and you might get to smoke a doobie backstage with Bill. But I still give credit to anyone willing to get up on stage in front of a crowd. That’s a lot harder than it looks. There are a lot of great musicians who never get over stage fright. I never did. But I suck, so I always had good reason to be nervous. There’s a reason I stuck to stage crew. You can fuck up the lights, and hardly anyone will notice.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I’m surprised that you were at all taken in by Huck’s folksy, gee-whiz persona, which he settled on for his national roll-out. This kind of passive-aggressive, double-talking demagoguery is exactly what we Arkansans got to know and, well,not love, but at least it’s what we got used to.
Seriously, he really is a petty, vindictive, self-aggrandizing, venal man, who can seem thoughtful and charming in front of a political crowd, but beneath the surface lurks the same insecurities which warp the thinking of the rest of the conservative movement.
Don’t believe me? Ask the folks at the Arkansas Times. After a few editorials that were highly critical of Huck’s use of state property and funds to promote his upcoming presidential bid, Huck spent the last two years of his governorship systematically shutting-out the second most widely-read newspaper in the state. No inclusion in press-releases, no conference calls, and sure as hell no interviews. And we’ve never found out what happened to the hard drives of over 100 computers (all public property) which he destroyed immediately before launching his presidential bid.
He’s slime, and worst of all, he’s the kind of slime that sticks to your hand when he obsessively shakes it.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Re: Democrats, according to Huckabee, were packing 40 years of pet projects like “health care rationing” into spending bills.
Oh, no, rationing! That’s something only evil Stalinists do. Stalinists like the despicable Franklin Roosevelt and the vile Clement Attlee.
Really, this is one of the many things that keeps me from voting Republican. The Republicans say so many things that make sense to me, about building a culture of life and about the importance of faith and religious tradition. And then they say things that are at best monumentally ignorant, and at worse monumentally malicious- whether it be about health care ‘rationing’, volcano monitoring, beaver management, or the dire threat of Venezuelan Socialism.
I mean, seriously, what is it about Republican politicians that makes them feel they need to appear stupider and more malicious than they actually are?
February 28th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Britons get less care–fewer procedures, fewer drugs, etc–than Americans, but by most measures are much healthier.
This may be reversing cause and effect. One explanation may be that Britons require fewer procedures and drugs Pprecisely because they are much healthier, and that increased health is due in part to a national healthcare system which does not discourage the sick from seeking care until it’s an emergency.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
“I’d take Bill Clinton’s sax”
On this note, I’ll say that the best world leader/musician is the King of Thailand. And he jammed with Elvis. When he was younger and traveling to other countries, he used to sneak out and go to jazz clubs. He’d play with the band on the condition that they wouldn’t say who he was. He’s a good sax payer. I have several of his recordings. He’s no Charlie Parker, but he’s way better than Clinton.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I have to believe that the right wing mammonites are cringing at the thought of successful national insurance. If Obama can pull it off, there will never be another Republican president or anything else outside of the repugnant land of Dixie. I guess all the retireed repug politicos can join the traveling Michael Steele Minstrel/Rap show. Will they paint their faces white?
February 28th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
This is worrisome. Yesterday I tried to stomach the Glen Beck show and he was going on on how GE (NBC) and Obama are fascists in bed together! Really watching that stuff is like watching something from another planet. If that’s all you watch all day, you’ll think the end is surely coming!
February 28th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Is it true, btw, that Britons are healthier due to a healthier lifestyle? I know that _Southern_ Europeans generally live healthier lifestyles, but my impression was that Britons and Scandinavians were pretty notorious for doing a lot of drinking, smoking, and eating fatty diets, much like Americans.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Exactly right, Stefan. It saves beaucoup money to nip things in the bud.
Also, unhappily, in the USA expensive procedures are sometimes done at the very end of life, not so much for the benefit of the patient as for the hospital bank balance. I am thinking of my 94-yr-old grandmother’s last days. Her grandson, who was himself a physician, pleaded and argued with the hospital not to take extraordinary measures (she had been ill with Alzheimer disease for 8 years), such as force feeding and they did anyway.
It was also found in certain cities in California that the same very few people with severe social disorders (substance abuse, mental illness, homelessness), and the like, were costing the county a hugely disproportionate amount in emergency medical services. It was found to be far cheaper, in the end, to house these people at state expense and give them continuity of care.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
The British have a crap diet and the same crap lifestyle we lead. We don’t need most of the medical treatment we get, and we have a hugely wasteful system of rationing the care we do get. Our care is making things worse.
Iatrogenic disease is no joke. Contagious hospital, indeed.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
“I mean, seriously, what is it about Republican politicians that makes them feel they need to appear stupider and more malicious than they actually are?”
What makes you think they are less malicious and stupid than they say? They appear to want to create a Christian Theocracy, which historically has been really stupid and malicious. Oh, but you want that, don’t you? So let’s bring back the Spanish Inquisition, or maybe just the Portuguese one. Hell, we’re already using the torture techniques.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
I wonder if the apparent saliency this “efficacy testing is rationing” concept has for wingnuts is related to a belief in useless alternative “therapies” like crystals, colloidal silver, homeopathy, and so on. It’s all part of being anti-science — the government will insist, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that homeopathy is very silly, and you’ll be forced to accept actual medical treatment! And they’ll force you to vaccinate your kids! And then we’ll all be autistic… and then what??????
February 28th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
BrklynLibrul says: I guess you have to be Southern to recognize that Huckabee’s charm offensives thinly mask an extreme-right-wing social conservatism. Indeed, Huck is savvy enough to know that he can pull the wool over a lot of Northeastern liberal eyes.
Sahu says: I’m surprised that you were at all taken in by Huck’s folksy, gee-whiz persona, which he settled on for his national roll-out.
Speaking the truth about the Huckster. This guy was a televangelist and head of the Southern Baptist Convention in Arkansas. Sure, he comes off all nice and friendly – but he’s just a righwing theocrat at heart. Don’t underestimate him, the GOP leadership may someday realize the PalinPlumber train is going to nowhere and get behind Huckabee for 2012.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
So let’s bring back the Spanish Inquisition, or maybe just the Portuguese one. Hell, we’re already using the torture techniques.
As bad as the Spanish Inquisition was, the British Inquisition was worse.
Nobody expects *BLAM*
February 28th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Mark: there’s a quasi-Calvinistic belief in certain parts of the US that health, and then the capacity to pay for treatment, is an index of virtue. To people with that mindset, if you’re sick and can’t afford treatment, then you brought it upon yourself. So it’s not really crystals, but a kind of attenuated faith-healing, in which you ‘earn’ your right to whatever treatment you want.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
“As bad as the Spanish Inquisition was, the British Inquisition was worse.”
Maybe so, but nothing was ever worse than Year Zero. The Khmer Rouge torture techniques were relatively humane. Waterboarding and simulated crucifixion was as far as they’d go. That stuff falls within the Military Commissions Act for sure. But the sheer volume of it is truly astounding. And as disturbing as it gets. People gave up their family members, who were innocent like them. Anything to make it stop. Obviously, they gave up their enemies first, strangers second, and friends third. But then you have to give up your family. They’d obviously rather die, but torturers don’t let their victims die. That’s the point. But the KR did have a wrinkle: they just killed people when they were done, they didn’t let them go or keep them in jail. They just did the solution that costs the least, as long as you aren’t concerned about any moral implications. But if you were concerned about that, you wouldn’t torture people, would you?
February 28th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Huckabee doesn’t believe that swill, which is why it’s a bad move. If it were a coherent part of a pitch aimed at socially conservative working class families, that would be one thing. But it doesn’t really make a lot of sense, given his previous positioning, except as an out-and-out pander. And that will work for Huckabee exactly as well as it did for Mitt Romney: true believers’ suspicions won’t be allayed, and everyone else will be disgusted both by the content of the stance and the insincerity with which it is assumed.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Re: Why Huckabee thinks that federally funded research into determining which medical treatments are effective is similar to being a totalitarian mass-murderer is a bit beyond me.
The funny thing is that insurance companies do exactly this when they determine what procedures and treatments to cover, and they will refuse to cover anything that doesn’t show solid evidence of being useful. (Rightfully, IMO) Why is this A-OK when an insurer does it, but totalitarian should the federal government do so?
Re: Mr. Huckabee said that signing the legislation ”would be violating my own conscience” inasmuch as it described ”a destructive and deadly force as being ‘an act of God.’
Well, that’s different! Your standard Bible-thumping evangelical generally considers such events acts of God, usually with commentary on just which sins du jour the Lord is wrathing over when disaster strikes.
February 28th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Yes. We do recall that tiff with Durbin. Others might recall this comment, defending analogies to tyrants, made in the comments at Brendan Nyhan’s blog:
“It’s irresponsible, of course, to suggest that the Bush administration (or any other actor in contemporary American politics) is just like Hitler but I think it’s often fair to raise more limited comparisons in order to make a point.”
http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2005/09/liberal_jargon_.html
The comment, by the way, came from a fellow named Matthew Yglesias. Who was defending this comment he had made regarding a 9/11 commemeration event:
“… it seems fair to say that the Defense Department has decided to use your tax dollars to finance a Nuremberg-style rally…”
In the same Nyhan comment, MY also approvingly pointed to this article by Jon Chait defending the use of Nazi comparisons:
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/may/27/opinion/oe-chait27
In it, Chait wrote: “In fact, maybe there should be a term for control freaks who insist on dictating other people’s use of this term: Nazi Nazis.”
Huh. Weird.
Does this mean MY is making a bid to lose his “likable progressive” label?
February 28th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
That’s funny. To me, he’s always come off as a transparent psychopath, never more so than when he went on “The Daily Show.” Of course, that wasn’t exactly Jon Stewart’s finest hour, either.
February 28th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
The Republicans have returned to the standard playbook for their Lysenkoist approach and ridicule of science.
Not shocking in the least…
February 28th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
“So, let’s see, left-wingers from Matthew Yglesias himself to Representaive Keith Elison to Senator Dick Durbin think it’s fine and dandy to compare Bush to Hitler. But likening Obama to Lenin is somehow beyond the pale. Got it!”
There’s nothing “beyond the pale” about it. One comparison just makes a lot less sense and sounds a lot more silly than the other one. Particularly coming from a politician whose primary quality is his charming, folksy style.
February 28th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Name calling on either side is not productive especially when things are tough for so many. Real solutions are needed and over the history of our nation, if the individual is faced with a problem, more often than not they rise to occasion to solve it. However a more intrusive government does little to encourage this independence of it’s citizens. Our founding fathers devised a government to be responsive to it’s citizens and preserve their liberty through laws that keep unbridled greed in check by the haves over the have nots. The problem lies within the nature of anything that grows so big that they no longer believe the rules apply to them. It doesn’t matter if it’s Big Business, Big Labor or Big Government.
The very nature of our political system that allows our legislature to remain in office without any limits is where the very people we elect to office run afoul.
Human nature demands self preservation and it takes considerable diligence to remain vigilant so that self preservation doesn’t become corrupt. Laws and regulations can help protect it’s citizens from injustices but who regulates the lawmakers? If you work for a big company that pays and treats you well, it’s often easy to turn a blind eye to their excesses. It is no different for big labor or big government. However when government’s elected officials turn a blind eye and enact legislation that so often is designed to pander to those that can keep them in office, government ceases to be responsive to all it’s citizens.
I strongly doubt our founding fathers envisioned that elected office was to be a full-time job but more like performing your civic duty. To have a government that truly represents all of it’s citizens, a good first step would be to limit our legislature’s term limits. This would go a long way to curbing the lobbyists influence over our government.
February 28th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
For some context, here was Ellison’s response at the time.
February 28th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
What Al omits, of course, is that Red Baiting is such a standard issue tactic of the GOP that it has become invisible. There would be no recognizable GOP without it.
February 28th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Bush is arguably more like Hirohito than Hitler.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Didn’t know Stalin was big on health care issues.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:43 am
I’m so tired of this “rationing” argument from the right. We already have rationing of health care in this country. We just choose to ration based on wealth. Why this is an acceptable basis to ration care, but effectiveness of and need for care are not, is simply beyond me.
March 1st, 2009 at 5:23 am
“Didn’t know Stalin was big on health care issues.”
Actually, he was, but not in the way you might want. Killing twenty million people would certainly rank pretty high as a health care issue. He was big on this issue, for sure. Death is real, and health care professionals deal with it all the time. The killing of all those people must have created some business for the medical industry.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:38 am
Re: Didn’t know Stalin was big on health care issues.
He wasn’t, really. Even leaving the mass butchery of the Yezhovshchina and other atrocities, out of the picture. Stalin was big on economic growth, but not on social provision. The picture many of us have of the Soviet economy- economically sclerotic but with a good basic standard of housing, health care, nutrition and education provided for everyone- is much more a thing of the Khrushchev years.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:41 am
Incidentally, I think it was stupid, irresponsible and pernicious of people to compare Bush to Hitler. Other than the fact that they both lied to get their country into wars, there isn’t that much similarlity between the two. I think it’s equally foolish and damaging to the public discourse to compare universal health care to Stalinism.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:42 am
Last Call,
Re: I’m so tired of this “rationing” argument from the right. We already have rationing of health care in this country. We just choose to ration based on wealth. Why this is an acceptable basis to ration care, but effectiveness of and need for care are not, is simply beyond me.
Exactly. I couldn’t have put it better.
March 2nd, 2009 at 2:20 pm
There’s a reason I stuck to stage crew. You can fuck up the lights, and hardly anyone will notice.
Hold on, I noticed. So that was you??
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:35 pm
“But it’s par for the course in the uglier corners of conservatism, they’re just not corners Huckabee’s been known for dwelling in.”
Then I guess you haven’t been paying attention, considering this is a guy who advocates that women be submissive to their husbands and pardoned a rapist because one of the victims was Bill Clinton’s cousin. (So obviously he must been convicted for political reasons and not because he actually hurt women – the rapist then went on to rape and murder two more women once free.) Every time I see Huckabee’s “Do the Right Thing” book I want to vomit. Ever see his youtube campaign videos? Sitting next to Chuck Norris (another one firmly entrenched in the ugly corner) in a cowboy motif room exhorting how we need a “real man” in office. Yeah, you really haven’t been paying attention.