Pro-Israel Ambassador for Israel

Controversy has broken out with the realization that

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday was his pick to serve as US ambassador to Israel, previously argued that there was “no such thing as a Palestinian.”

Huckabee, who has been a strong defender of Israel throughout his career, made the statement during his 2008 presidential campaign, asserting that Palestinian identity was “a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”

Well, of course it is. The land of Palestine is as it has been since much of it was occupied by the Philistines in the 12 century B.C. Beyond, "Jews, Muslims and Christians have all claimed special connections to the region" and the Old Testament "contains narratives of ancient Israelites' presence in the land."

Skip to 1918, when in the wake of World War I the League of Nations isued a British mandate for Palestine, to go into effect in 1923. That lasted until 1947, when the United Nations" proposed a plan to partition Palestine into two sections: an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab state."

Great Britain withdrew from the region- Palestine- and in 1948, the State of Israel was declared. This did not amuse Muslims, and five countries attacked Israel. This proved unwise as "by the war's end in July 1949, Israel controlled more than two-thirds of the former British Mandate, while Jordan took control of the West Bank and Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip."

Yet over the past few decades, Jews of the region have been transformed- for political purposes, as Huckabee recognizes- into non-Palestinians while other Muslims in the ancient land of Palestine and beyond have been granted psychic status as "Palestinian." So

In a video obtained by CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski during Huckabee’s 2015 run for president, Huckabee suggested that if a Palestinian state were to be created, it should be in neighboring countries like Egypt, Syria or Jordan, rather than within Israel’s borders.

“Basically, there really is no such thing as — I need to be careful about saying this, because people will really get upset — there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” Huckabee said at a 2008 campaign stop in Massachusetts while speaking to two Orthodox Jewish men. “There’s not.”

In response to a question from one of the men about the possibility of a Palestinian state existing outside of Israel, Huckabee said he believed this was the preferable option.

“You have Arabs and Persians,” Huckabee continued at the 2008 appearance. “And there’s such complexity in that. But there’s really no such thing. That’s been a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”

Political tool, indeed.  In questioning Israel's policies, journalists, pundits, politicians, and even academics refer to "Palestinians" indiscriminately and unquestioningly, without clarifying who these Palestinians are. While Israel is said to be conducting a war against "Palestinians," Palestinians reside throughout the Middle East, including in the countries (Egypt, Syria, and Jordan) cited by Huckabee. In all, these three countries encompass 492,893 square miles while Israel's land mass is only 1.7% as large. 

Yet, we are to believe a Palestinian state must come from land controlled by Israel. Thus

In the video, which was previously published by BuzzFeed, Huckabee added that he thought a Palestinian state could be made out of land in Egypt, Syria or Jordan.

“My point is, if that’s the issue, if it’s real estate, if you look at a map, and say here is how much Israel has and here is how much the Arab states hold, there is plenty of land,” he said.

Huckabee reiterated that point during a 2015 interview on Israeli TV, in which he argued that a two-state solution was “irrational and unworkable” and said “there’s plenty of land” outside of Israel in the “rest of the world” for a Palestinian state.

CNN reached out to Huckabee and the Trump transition team for comment on whether Huckabee stands by his comments.

Unless the situation in the Middle East changes radically, no Palestinian state will come from real estate in Egypt, Sytia or Jordan, especially because no nation wantts any more Palestinians even adjacent to theirs. Jordan deserves to catch a break because Palestinians already comprise half the population of the country, packed into only 34,296 square miles.

That leaves Syria and Egypt. A Palestinian state may be all the more necessary because neither these two nations, nor any in the region (given the ruling coalition in Israel), wants to be part of the solution.

Arguably, there is such a thing as a "Palestinian." Inarguably, the term has become popularized for strategic advantage. It's a good thing that President-elect Donald Trump won't be nominating Mike Huckabee for ambassador to any majority-Muslim nation in the Middle East. However, his appointment will be to Jerusalem and unless somebody comes up with something other than a video in which he is making sense, Mike Huckabee is being sent where he belongs.

Share |

Recollection Deficiency

Are out memories really that bad?

In a Politico article entitled "Has the Left Lost Its Cool," Marc Caputo and Daniel Lippman begin

Two senior Trump administration officials were heckled at restaurants. A third was denied service. Florida GOP Attorney General Pam Bondi required a police escort away from a movie about Mister Rogers after activists yelled at her in Tampa — where two other Republican lawmakers say they were also politically harassed last week, one of them with her kids in tow.

The Sarah Huckabee Sanders incident at Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia on Friday night has received the most attention. However, also on Friday night, Florida attorney general Pam Bondi was approached at a movie theater and

According to Bondi, she and a friend were confronted at least four times — while buying tickets, entering the theater, standing in line at the concession stand and then on their way out — and that activists were aggressive in each instance, with one yelling so loudly at her that he spit in her hair, either intentionally or because he meant to expectorate on her. She said they also taunted her friend as “blue eyes” and asked him in a threatening manner if he was going to protect her as if they wanted to fight.

The activists tell a different story.

“Pam Bondi’s version of events is inaccurate and don’t reflect what happened,” said Tim Heberlein, Tampa Bay’s regional director for the progressive group Organize Florida. He said he and a handful of fellow activists coincidentally ran into Bondi at the movie.

Heberlein said the videos the group released don’t comport with Bondi’s version of events. Bondi says the reason for that is that the activists only released the videos that showed what happened as they were leaving the movie, when Tampa Police were there and everyone was on their best behavior.

Maybe there is something in the water or air in Pennsylvania, which voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and where former Representative Paul Kanjorski- a Democrat- told the Politico authors

the increasingly confrontational politics is counterproductive. In 2010, before he lost his seat to Republican Lou Barletta, Kanjorski cut back on holding town halls, which he used to enjoy, because it just became “cannon fodder” for opponents.

Nowadays, he said, he worries about the signal sent when the president’s spokeswoman is denied service at a restaurant or when the Florida attorney general is chased away from a movie.

“I don’t know why they picked on the attorney general from Florida. I don’t like her or her political positions but she has a right to travel and be around without being harassed,” he said. “We’re limiting real conversation and discussion in this country and it’s a problem.”

"I don't know why they picked on the attorney general from Florida," he says. You might- unlike either Kanjorski or Caputo/Lippman- recall from Trump's "look how corrupt I am, everybody" files:

 * Late August 2013: Bondi reached out to Trump, seeking financial support for her 2014 re-election campaign in Florida.

* Sept. 13, 2013: Bondi’s AG office acknowledged that it was investigating fraud allegations against “Trump University.”

* Sept. 17, 2013: Trump’s charitable foundation, which is legally prohibited from donating to political campaigns, cut a $25,000 check for a group supporting Bondi’s campaign. (The foundation later paid a fine to the IRS for the illegal donation.)

* Oct. 15, 2013: Bondi’s office reversed course and said it wasn’t pursuing allegations made against “Trump University.”

* March 2014: Trump offered Bondi’s re-election campaign a generous deal while renting out his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

 Now the president has extended a new benefit to Bondi: a role on a high-profile federal commission, which happens to be nearly finished with its work.

Were the shoe on the other foot, Donald Trump would remark "some have called that pay-for-play," and it's a reasonable explanation for picking Bondi out of the lineup of Trump co-conspirators. 

Maxine Waters probably did more for the Trumpists than the Resistance when she recommended "If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere..." 

Still, the call from the right (if not from the mainstream media) is a little rich, not only because it elected a President who has chosen incivility and hatred as standard operating procedure but also because the preponderance of his Party has fallen in right behind him.  We may not remember Pam Bondi being bought off by Donald Trump. But it was only last week- albeit prior to the Bondi and Sanders events- that an evangelical preacher, former GOP presidential aspirant, and father of Mrs. Sanders brought to the public his increasingly popular interpretation of Christian values:

Nancy Pelosi introduces her campaign committee for the take back of the House. pic.twitter.com/yKDhkVubck

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) June 23, 2018

Share |

Their Opposition A Good Sign

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee doesn't like the Omnibus Spending Bill passed by Congress and on Friday signed by President Trump. He tweeted "I join with others in disappointment and disgust with the Omni-BS bill" and posted

If  Mike Huckabee and most "evangelical leaders" oppose the deal, Democrats must have preserved some programs critical tothe  bottom 90% of society. Rewire.News notes

The omnibus omits the Conscience Protection Act, which would have allowed a broadened swath of health-care providers to sue if they’re supposedly coerced into providing abortion care, or if they face discrimination for refusing to provide such care.... A top Senate aide expected the Conscience Protection Act to be in the omnibus, according to Christian Broadcasting Network’s Abigail Robertson. But it wasn’t. Neither was a repeal of the Johnson Amendment, which could politicize churches.

But the news is not entirely positive, as Rewire explains that Congress decided

to hand over the $286.5 million designated in the omnibus for the program to Trump’s abstinence-only Title X chief, Valerie Huber. For the first time in three decades, Huber’s position will have sole decision-making power to award federal family planning grants, based on Trump-era HHS grant criteria that omitted any mention of “contraception” or “contraceptives.”

In approving the statement above, the father of presidential press secretary Sarah Sanders lauds the increase in military spending, which according to CNBC's Phil LeBeau (below) is 10.3%, or $654 billion.   That may not be good for the poor, the sick, the elderly, or workers, but it's heartening to learn that defense contractors are uppermost in the mind of Mike Huckabee and many other evangelicals.

Share |

Mike Huckabee Checks In From Another Planet

Jim Carrey is a better pundit than comedic actor, but that's setting the bar fairly low. On St. Patrick's Day,  Carrey tweeted the exceedingly unflattering portrait he drew of Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders with the caption "This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous!"

This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous! pic.twitter.com/MeYLTy1pqb

— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) March 17, 2018

If conservatives were honest- if, say, cows could fly- they would have slammed Carrey by noting that Mrs. Sanders is more attractive than he gave her credit for. Instead, we got such thoughts as

Jim Carrey is the poster boy for the modern liberal man.
Failed, broken, and mentally unstable.
His movie career has disintegrated! Carrey now spends his days insulting conservative women like .@PressSec
Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Mental illness is a common trait among leftists!

— Jake Highwell (@JakeHighwell) March 19, 2018

Meanwhile, it's taboo to ask whether the man bragging he has "a bigger and better button" than "rocket man" might not have all his snaps fastened.  With less generalization but more sensitivity, one woman tweeted "In the last week Jim Carrey and Hillary Clinton have both attacked women.Hate and intolerance has taken over the left. I’m so disgusted daily by the constant hypocrisy. Call these people out!"

They are so easily offended. Jim Carrey criticizes an individual who is proud of her Christian faith while lying effortlesssly- and he has "attacked women." And it will be a long wait until a Republican argues that Hillary Clinton, who maintained some women are overly influenced in their vote by a husband ora  male boss, is wrong.  They probably figure that's the way it should be.

The most substantive criticism came from Sanders' father, former Arkansas governor, Fox News host, GOP presidential candidate, and pastor Mike Huckabee, who tweeted

Pathetic BULLY, sexist, hater, bigot & "Christaphobe" @jimcarrey attacks @PressSec for her faith; what would be hypocritical Hollywood reaction if he called someone a "so-called Muslim" or "so-called Jew?" #classlessCarrey https://t.co/HCqHoER0Ru

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) March 19, 2018

Pathetic BULLY, sexist, hater, bigot & "Christaphobe" @jimcarrey attacks @PressSec for her faith; what would be hypocritical Hollywood reaction if he called someone a "so-called Muslim" or "so-called Jew?" #classlessCarrey https://twitter.com/foxandfriends/status/975698398069243904 …

8:07 AM - Mar 19, 2018

He probably didn't notice that we didn't notice that it is precisely, probably solely, the Christian right demanding the privilege to ignore societal norms and the law in opposing same-sex marriage, gay rights, and reproductive freedom on the basis of its interpretation of God's will.  Evidence that Christianity,the Bible, or God is opposed to equal rights for women, gay individuals,or whatever group is today's target of discrimination is unnecessary; one merely has to claim that a higher power demands favor of one group over another.

Except in exceedingly rare instances, this right to discriminate is not being claimed by Jews, atheists, or Muslims, but by self-identified Christians. However, the extraordinary discretion claimed need not be limited to these groups because as Ian Millhiser wrote in 2014

while LGBT Americans are the current target of this effort to repackage prejudice as “religious liberty,” they are hardly the first. To the contrary, as Wake Forest law Professor Michael Kent Curtis explained in a 2012 law review article, many segregationists justified racial bigotry on the very same grounds that religious conservatives now hope to justify anti-gay animus. In the words of one professor at a prominent Mississippi Baptist institution, “our Southern segregation way is the Christian way . . . . [God] was the original segregationist.”

Mike Huckabee can defend his daughter and even, against all logic and reality, imply a parallel between calling someone a "so-called Christian" and calling her a "so-called Muslim" or "so-called Jew." Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State has explained

Ironically, the single greatest threat to religious freedom comes from a radical redefinition of the idea itself...I think the Framers of the Constitution would be appalled at the radical revisionism of the First Amendment being advocated by some. More importantly, I think the America of the future will look askance at efforts to elevate majority faiths or subject not so traditional believers to the status of an orphan class to be denied genuinely equal treatment in this diverse country.”It might. I was never convinced Trump would (successfully) lean on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Assistant Attorney General Andrew McCabe, but I've never been slick enough to be elected President of the United States of America. Donald Trump has.

Jim Carrey could apologize, something along the lines of "I apologize if anything I am construed as having implied might have hurt your delicate feelings. I will learn to be more politically correct."

Or maybe he can lean on irony, as did comedian John Fugelsang, who remarked succinctly "Jim Carrey under fire from Trump loyalists who really don't like it when famous people say rude things about others."




Share |

A Comparatively Petty Argument

In their November 14, 2015 debate, Martin O'Malley, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton all emphatically refused to use the term "radical Islam" when asked about the term by moderator John Dickerson.   O'Malley contended "radical Jihadis" is "calling it what it is" while Sanders insisted "I don't think the term is what's important." Clinton would concede only "We are at war with violent extremism. We are at war with people who use their religion for purposes of power and oppression. And, yes, we are at war with those people. But I don't want us to be painting with too broad a brush."

Rick Santorum was not amused and tweeted "Yes @Hillary Clinton we are at war with radical Islam! You are not qualified to serve if you cannot even define our enemy!"  Similarly, John Ellis Bush, imagining a declaration of war, tweeted "Yes, we are at war with radical Islamic terrorism."
Appropriately amused, however, Mike Huckabee tweeted "You're all grown up now. You can do it. Three words. Ten syllables. Say it with me: "Radical Islamic terrorism.'"

Carefully avoiding the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism" or "Islamic terrorism" is, as Huckabee infers, more humorous than dangerous.   Hillary Clinton, for her part, at least noted that Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Jordan are among the countries which "are going to have to take on ISIS."

More appalling than failing to acknowledge the obvious- that Islamic terrorism is destabilizing the Middle East and  poses a grave threat to world peace- is the utter hypocrisy of many GOP presidential contenders.  Observing the last Republican debate, David Masciotra  explains that several candidates

openly used the phrase “World War Three,” while others discussed the group of evil barbarians as if they had invaded New York and were marching toward D.C. as they spoke. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are not exactly the equivalent of Winston Churchill, and the American people, who panic on command, are not particularly resilient. Ernest Hemingway defined courage as “grace under pressure.” American politicians, and the Americans who empower them, are currently failing to act with grace while under no pressure. One could only imagine the nightmare of chaos and hysterics that awaits should ISIS actually attack.

Senator Ted Cruz left no room for interpretation when he pounded the podium to announce that the “biggest threat we face is radical Islamic terrorism.” Fear of terrorism dominates the discourse.

Any time a conversation about terrorism begins in a political debate or on cable news, there is not an elephant, but an unacknowledged gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle in the room that exposes the utter hypocrisy and insincerity of America’s declaration of war on “radical Islam.”

One of America’s closest allies is Saudi Arabia. The alliance is mostly a one-way relationship in which the United States is subservient and obsequious – essentially a harem to the Saudi royal family, who collect all the benefits and rewards.

Saudi Arabia is the country most responsible for the rise of radical Islam, and the largest benefactor to Islamic terrorist organizations. According to multiple sources of American intelligence and Indian intelligence, the Saudis have spent billions to build mosques, madrasas and cultural centers dedicated to the promotion of Wahhabism – the small but growing sect of Islam insistent on literal interpretation of the Quran, and violent jihad.

The Kingdom also may have been the "principal financier," as former Senator Bob Graham (D-Fl) puts it, behind the attacks of 9/11/01. Graham and Representative Walter Jones (R-NC) are among the current and former members of Congress who have read the 28 pages redacted from the report issued by a joint Senate and House report on "intelligence community activities" before and after 9/11/01.  The section, entitled "potential sources of foreign support for the September 11 hijackers," was classified by the Bush Administration and efforts to have its 28 pages released have been stonewalled by the Obama Administration (CNN report from 9/14, below).

"The information contained in the redacted pages is critical to our foreign policy moving forward and should thus be available to the American public," Jones maintains. It also is crucial to the understanding that the debate over the use of the term "Islamic terrorism" pales in comparison to the importance of assessing the role of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism.

Share |

"Republican" Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry

There have been weaker and worse responses to the apparent terrorist act of last Friday in Colorado Springs than that of Mike Huckabee. Appearing on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, he conceded "there's no excuse for killing other people." Of course, he then went on to compare Robert Lewis Dear and Planned Parenthood, even suggesting the latter is worse: "whether it's happening inside the Planned Parent headquarters, inside their clinics, where many millions of babies die,or whether it's people attacking Planned Parenthood."

See what the Slick Man of Hope did there? "Many millions of babies die" at Planned Parenthood compared to various unnamed people who are merely attacking Planned Parenthood.

More significantly, however, the former governor went on to maintain "I know of nobody who has ever suggested that Planned Parenthood be the target of some type of violent attack."

That technically is true, in the same way another slick guy from Hope once was asked by Jim Lehrer "You had no sexual relationship with this young woman?" (i.e., Monica Lewinsky) and the President responded "There is not a sexual relationship- that is accurate."

The sexual relationship had occurred- it was not occurring, in much the same way that nobody has said "go out and start shooting people at a Planned Parenthood clinic." A critic could argue that one or more Republicans has suggested such an action, given that Merriam-Webster gives as one definition of suggest as "to mention or imply as a possibility." Yet, that is not the main definition, so we give Huckabee the benefit of the doubt.

Nevertheless, one GOP candidate, at least, came awfully close to advocating a murderous attack upon Planned Parenthood.  At the September 16, 2015 debate hosted by CNN, Carly Fiorina declared (video below)

As regards to Planned parenthood, anyone who has watched this vdeo tape,I dare Hillary Clnton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. To watch a fully formed fetus on the table. Its heart beating. Its legs kicking while someone says "We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain."








We're still waiting to see that video tape Fiorina swore exists, but seems not to.  We're waiting, also, to hear anyone say "we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain"  and are anxious to see the fetus with its heart beating and leg kicking (questioned by Chris Wallace, below). But never mind.  A presidential candidate and former CEO accuses Planned Parenthood of putting a fully formed fetus, with its heart beating and legs kicking, on a table to "keep it alive to harvest its brain,"   Then in a remarkable suspension of thought, she labels any linkage of incendiary remarks and violent behavior "typical left-wing politics."










And have I mentioned how loathsome Carly Fiorina is?







Share |

Bible Aside, Still Not Right

Sometimes controversy brings out the best in talk shows and even a bad show can present an interesting and edifying interview.

And so  it went when Joe Scarborough and almost assistant co-host Mika Brzezinski interviewed Mike Huckabee (video here), Kim Davis' most visible supporter, on "Morning Joe" Wednesday.  Joe Scarborough tried to go toe-to-toe with Huckabee on Scripture. "Obviously," the Joe in "Morning Joe" stated, "we disagree on, uh, constitutional grounds here. I want to ask you, though, biblically, um, what are the biblical grounds of somebody that works for Caesar not rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's?"

After Huckabee responded, Brzezinski tried at least three times to get the former governor to answer "What if Kim Davis wanted to get a third or fourth marriage license from somebody who truly believes that you should only get married once?” Brzezinki asked. “What would you say to that?”

Huckabee avoided answering each time, though he helpfully pointed out that Davis already has been married four times, which would qualify her for a fifth marriage license, were she to divorce her current husband.  As Salon's Scott Eric Kauffman explains

Joe Scarborough jumped in at this point, noting that “Jesus focused a lot more on divorce, focused a lot more on lust, focused a lot more on the poor, focused a lot more on clothing the naked, visiting people in jail, taking care of the hopeless than he did on homosexuality. In fact, he never mentioned homosexuality.”

“You can read the text of the gospel and what Jesus Christ said,” he continued, “and there’s a lot more condemnation for people like myself who have been divorced than there is condemnation for people that participate in the gay lifestyle.”

Huckabee replied, “homosexual marriage was not an issue in the First Century,” to which Scarborough countered that that’s not the point. ” Jesus was much more explicit about divorce and you can much more easily make an argument that a judge would refuse to grant divorces because Jesus was far more explicit about divorce equaling adultery.

Scarborough's argument falls short on two bases. The apostle Paul famously (or infamously, depending upon your viewpoint) slammed homosexuality, in 1 Corinthians maintaining" Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men."   And in Romans:"the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error."

Skeptics question whether Paul actually made these statements. But it is precisely the same book which includes these words, and by the same authority that they are uttered, which quotes Jesus as saying what he did about divorce, adultery, and a myriad of other things. Question both Paul and Jesus, if you will; but questioning one and not the other is intellectually dubious.

And as it turns out, Scarborough is disingenuous, albeit not dishonest, about Jesus' view of same-sex relations.  Jesus condemned "sexual immorality," which this Christian apologist believes derives from the Greek word "porneia," which refers to "prostitution, unchastity, fornication of every kind of unlawful sexual intercourse." That appears to be anything which deviates from accepted social and religious norms.

Jesus, as Scarborough observes, did not speak specifically of homosexuality. But when he condemned divorce, he made quite clear (as in Matthew 19:3-6) that he assumed marriage as being between one man and one woman.

Though Huckabee noted "homosexual marriage was not an issue in the first century," his failure to eviscerate Scarborough and Brzezinski on Scripture demonstrates that he has lost something off his fastball. Moreover, he is wrong when he suggests, contrary to Marbury v. Madison, that the US Supreme Court's determination of the constitutionality of a statute is not always legally binding.  He is not a lawyer (or a doctor), and should not play one on TV (genesis of that, here; video below). Kim Davis has no legal right to violate her oath of office and not carry out her duties, even if consistent with her religious faith.








The books of the Bible were composed nearly 2,000 years ago with instructions practical and moral for individuals of that time and for some time thereafter. Circumstances have changed, though, and we have the benefit of hindsight and dramatically altered conditions.

We have also a Constitution, against which Justices can judge a law, and which provides the basis for the reasoning of eight Justices on same-sex marriage. (Anthony Kennedy is more concerned with social policy and Confucius.)  The same God whom Mike Huckabee believes is appalled at same-sex marriage gave us the ability to think and reason, and to obey legitimately-established authority.






Share |

Not A Moron

The extremism from the candidates for the Repub presidential nomination is mounting. From Sunday's "State of the Union" interview (video below) by Dana Bash of Mike Huckabee:

BASH: Governor, I want to bring it back home and to an issue that's really been percolating in the Republican race, the issue of abortion. 

Now, you oppose abortion even in cases of rape and incest. I want to ask about a story, because it's really getting a lot of attention from our readers on CNN.com. A 10-year-old girl was raped by her stepfather in Paraguay, and the government wouldn't allow her to have an abortion, because that's the policy there. The girl, who is now just 11, had the baby. 

If you're president, and you have your druthers, that would be the policy here. Some of your Republican opponents say it's too extreme. What do you say? 

HUCKABEE: I think what we have to do, Dana, is remember that creating one problem that is horrible -- horrible -- I mean, let nobody be misled. A 10-year-old girl being raped is horrible.

But does it solve a problem by taking the life of an innocent child? And that's really the issue. I know people. I worked for a man for several years, James Robison, who was the result of a rape. His mother went to three doctors in Houston, Texas, in 1943, begged doctors to abort the baby. None of them would do it. 

They all refused. Today, his organization feeds, cares for, and brings living capacity for water to hundreds of thousands of people across the world. That would never have happened, Dana.

[09:10:10] 

So, when I think about one horror, I also think about the possibilities that exist. And I just don't want to think that somehow we discount a human life. 

BASH: And that's understandable, but the flip side is, looking in the eyes of a 10-year-old girl, saying, you know, you had this horrible thing happen to you, and you're going to have to carry it out for the next nine months. That's also not easy. 

HUCKABEE: No, it isn't easy. And I wouldn't even pretend that it's anything other than a terrible tragedy.

But let's not compound the tragedy by taking yet another life. And I always think we sometimes miss the fact that, when an abortion happens, there are two victims. One is the child. The other is that birth mother, who often will go through extraordinary guilt years later, when she begins to think through the -- what happened with the baby, with her. 

And, again, there are no easy answers here. And I realize there are some people that will be very different in their view of this than me, and I respect that. I don't want to get into a shouting match with people who think I'm wrong. I respect that. 

But I just come down on the side that life is precious, every life has worth and value. I don't think we discount the intrinsic worth of any human being. And I don't know where else to go with it, but just to be consistent and say, if life matters and then that's a person, then every life matters.

Figjam on the Jezebel website commented "As a Republican voter myself, I am endlessly frustrated at the morons taking up valuable airtime from candidates I would rather hear from."

If only it were so. Unfortunately, Mike Huckabee has said nothing much different than what other Repub presidential candidates have said and, intentionally, has promoted two false memes.

Huckabee is not commenting only about a 10-year-old Paraguayan girl, but of American women of whatever age.  "When an abortion happens," he says, "there are two victims."  Labeling as a "victim" an individual who has made a thoughtful, gut-wrenching decision is glaringly paternalistic, and suggests the decision is made lightly.

The former Arkansas governor also repeats arguably the most commonly claimed myth of the entire abortion debate. He maintains the "birth mother" (actually, a woman rather than a birth mother, given that she did not give birth) "often will go through extraordinary guilt years later."

Not unless "often" means 1 in 5.  Inconveniently

According to a new study that tracked hundreds of women who had abortions, more than 95 percent of participants reported that ending a pregnancy was the right decision for them. Feelings of relief outweighed any negative emotions, even three years after the procedure.

Researchers examined both women who had first-trimester abortions and women who had procedures after that point (which are often characterized as “late-term abortions”). When it came to women’s emotions following the abortion, or their opinions about whether or not it was the right choice, they didn’t find any meaningful difference between the two groups.

These findings contradict the notion that women experience negative mental health effects after ending a pregnancy, as well as the idea that later abortions are more psychologically traumatic. 

That's right.   Conservatives tell women- uh, er, "birth mothers"- that they're committing murder, and most of them, by a wide margin, nonetheless conclude they did the right thing. But it's repeated ad nauseam while little counter-narrative is offered for fear that people will mistakenly think that abortion is being minimized. "Safe, legal, and rare" is a more cautious approach.

There is another advantage to the claim "there are two victims" in the procedure.  It enables anti-choice activists and politicians to prohibit as many abortions as possible while absolving women of any responsibility for the act they have enshrined in the law as murder.Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress is justifiably angry at the lack of compassion shown women who have been" charged with murder for allegedly seeking to harm their fetuses by attempting suicide, using illegal drugs, or even falling down the stairs." But these are very rare cases, in which women typically have been accused of committing acts illegal apart from abortion.

Aside from these outliers, women in the USA are not considered criminally culpable for seeking an illegal abortion because the political viability of the anti-choice movement otherwise would evaporate. Paternalistically labeling the woman a "victim" is a vital component in maintaining this rhetorical and legal jiu-jitsu.

The paternalism embedded in the myths of the woman sure to have regret after being coerced into an abortion is not peculiar to Huckabee.  He is not the first to imply that the woman is an ignorant being we must save from herself. The sentiment was encapsulated chillingly by Justice Kennedy when, in delivering the deciding vote (and majority opinion) in Gonzalez v. Carhart, he wrote 

It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound, when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form.

As one individual who responded to the criticism of the candidate as a "moron" put it, Mike Huckabee "is a former governor and Fox television host. He's not making some crazy rant on the internet. He is the Republican Party. He is not a moron. He is a cruel, calculating man" rather than "some fringe person not worth taking seriously."













Share |

Not An Isolated Remark

In May, the Washington Post's Ishaan Tharoor identified seven things which have been inaccurately equated by one or more individuals or groups with the Holocaust.  They are: avoidance by European governments of the migrant refugee crisis in the Mediterranean; Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent program; the annual Canadian commercial sea hunt; the "progessive war on the American one percent, namely the rich"; slaughtering animals; Hamas, ISIL, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

And of course, abortion.  Aside from President Obama, abortion/Holocaust is the GOP's favorite false equivalence, one which will not go away once Barack Obama does and there is a new Democratic president.

Huckabee is not exception.When in 2007 he was running for president, he maintained  "It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973."  (And of course we could use more people looking for jobs because there really arent enough of them now.)  

After sitting out one presidential election cycle, Huckabee in February, 2013- probably contemplating yet another run for the Oval Office- remarked "And now we are called into this incredible Holocaust of our own in America. Fifty-five million babies. Fifty-five million babies since 1973 have died in what ought to be the safest place in the world, their mother’s womb. It has become one of the most dangerous places for a baby to be."

But wait! He wasn't done.  In an interview with Breitbart on Saturday, Huckabee contended

This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven. This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal. It should be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the American people. I read the whole deal. We gave away the whole store. It’s got to be stopped.

And for good measure, the next day- Sunday- Reverend Huckabee tweeted "the Iran nuclear deal is marching the Israelis to the door of the oven."   Every letter appeared in caps, presumably to make sure Repub primary and caucus voters didn't miss the implication. Evidently, Sunday isn't just for worship anymore.

On Monday's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski  was "horrified" at the "crass"statement and accurately noted it was "way worse" than Trump's immigrant remarks.  She was moved to respond “Oh God. I had not read it until this moment and I am horrified" and later in the program commented (video below)

Here’s the response that I have to Huckabee’s comments. If you’ve been to Auschwitz, if you’ve been to Birkenau, if you’ve been to any of these places where people were killed and you see the piles of glasses, the piles of hair, the piles of shoes and the piles of clothes. And every bit of their humanity that had to be stripped away, handed over as they went and burned to their deaths among other things, it’s really not a good comment to say.

It’s a deal breaker! It should be over for him. You don’t say that. And by the way, if you said it by mistake, that’s a sign of who you really are.







Brzezinski believes Huckabee now has gone over the line.  But on at least two occasions the former governor has strongly implied that abortion is no better than the Holocaust.  That's obviously inaccurate and demagogic, and is justifiably offensive to Jews, who wonder why Huckabee believes someone requesting a procedure he thinks is murder is morally equivalent to a European Jew of the 1940s.

Why not, however, continue the analogies?  Aside from Brzezinski's righteous outrage, there has been relatively little reaction to the nuclear deal/Holocaust analogy, and the candidate's motive in trying to draw attention to himself is no excuse for lack of condemnation.   Neither should the excitement of mainstream media figures over a USA women's soccer team or a female NBA or NFL coach obscure silence toward an invalid, offensive, and obscene analogy.   We know what Mike Huckabee thinks about women enduring hardship, and it isn't pretty. But in the corporate offices which control mainstream journalism, the regard may be no greater.





Share |

Sincerely Past Tense

"Based on nothing at all except my personal opinion," Kevin Drum handicaps the upcoming GOP presidential race into three categories. Thy are, in his words, "vanity candidates: 0 percent chance of winning;" "not quite 0 percent, could maybe catch on if something really lucky happens;" "legitimate candidates with a real shot at the nomination."

I hate to disagree with a guy who understands more about one issue- crime- than virtually anyone, but placing only two individuals in the last category shorts the group by one.

That one would be the younger fellow from Florida, a conservative not as easily typecast as Scott Walker (the anti-worker guy) nor disliked by as many Repubs as is John Ellis Bush.  The GOP would like to have what it considers an inoffensive minority, especially one whose story as the son of refugees from (Batista's) Cuba can be pumped up as inspiring. The adjective modifying "minority" does not apply to either Ben Carson or to Ted Cruz.

Drum places former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal in the second category, which gives him way too much credibility.  In the first, "0 percent," group sits Mike Huckabee, which may not give him too little credibility but gives him too little credit.  He concludes

So why are so many running? When guys like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul ran, I understood why. They just wanted a chance to present their views to a national audience. But that can't be what's motivating everyone on this list. So what is it? What is it that's somehow convinced so many obvious losers that they actually have a shot at becoming the next president of the United States?

But what is true about Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich may apply also to Mike Huckabee. The other man from Hope was one of the two main challengers to John McCain in 2008. However, he avoided the 2012 race- one he may well have won- either because he figured despaired of defeating an incumbent President or the opportunity to continue making gobs of money as a Fox News host was simply too appealing.

Or at least he probably would have won had  he maintained a more mainstream image than he's currently fashioning for himself.   CNN reports

If he "could have felt like a woman," the Republican former Arkansas governor joked earlier this year, then he could have seen his female classmates without their clothes on.

"Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE," Huckabee said.

"I'm pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, 'Coach, I think I'd rather shower with the girls today.' You're laughing because it sounds so ridiculous doesn't it?"

Huckabee's comments came in February at the 2015 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. They were uploaded to YouTube over the weekend by World Net Daily and picked up more prominently by BuzzFeed on Tuesday.









Huckabee was commenting months before the Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner controversy.  Now after having made those awkward comments- and in part because he made them- Huckabee has replied "not going there" in response to a question about Jenner.

The Southern Baptist minister knew enough not (as they would have said circa 2013)  to have doubled down.

The damage, though, has been done.  However it might have gone over at a National Religious Broadcasters convention, the GOP of Sheldon Adelson, Charles and David Koch, Richard DeVos, Norman Braman, and the like will not nominate someone who quips "Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE." It doesn't sound right to their friends and family, and is just too darned distracting, when concentrating wealth further into the hands of their friends and family is what they're after.

But it's not what Mike Huckabee is after. He's not focused on it, and as with everyone else of the Repub hopefuls, generally favors policies which will have the same impact. Nevertheless, the motivating cause of Reverend Huckabee the man and Reverend Huckabee the politician is opposingr the cultural revolution.  God, guns, grits, and gravy are not mere examples of alliteration to a guy for whom abortion, same-sex marriage, and gender identity are more than red meat to to throw to Repub voters.

He's wrong in most of his opinions, of course, and to his Party's kingmakers, it makes him sound like a Neanderthal, an embarrassing one to fellows who should be (but aren't) embarrassed by a whole lot of other things.   But like the elder Paul, Huckabee has his priorities, and if he can best promote them on the primary circuit, that's where he'll be.







Share |

Those Extreme Democrats

Peter Wehner claims

AMONG liberals, it’s almost universally assumed that of the two major parties, it’s the Republicans who have become more extreme over the years. That’s a self-flattering but false narrative.

This is not to say the Republican Party hasn’t become a more conservative party. It has. But in the last two decades the Democratic Party has moved substantially further to the left than the Republican Party has shifted to the right. On most major issues the Republican Party hasn’t moved very much from where it was during the Gingrich era in the mid-1990s.

Responding to the first paragraph, Tristero observes

Not a single elected Democrat has called for secession, as Rick Perry did. Not a single elected Democrat defied the Supreme Court to the extent of sending in the National Guard and provoking an insane confrontation with the local police, as Jeb Bush did during Schiavo. Not a single elected Democrat is so anti-reality and anti-science that they believe that if women are "legitimately raped," they will be protected from pregnancy as Todd Akin did.

Oh, sure there are leftwing extremists. Somewhere. But in the Democratic Party? Holding office or positions of power? Puhleeeze.

Additionally, as Bob Cesca points out in a slightly different context, though abortion still is legal

Republican legislatures across red-state America have passed laws that make it almost impossible to actually undergo the (again, totally legal) procedure. Fetal personhood laws, fetal heartbeat laws, waiting-period laws, trans-vaginal ultrasound laws — not to mention one law that made it illegal to operate a women’s health clinic outside of a 60-mile radius of a hospital — have all functioned as de facto abortion bans.

Then there is outspoken different-sex marriage advocate Mike Huckabee, anticipating a Supreme Court decision favorable to same-sex marriage, recently arguing

Judicial review is exactly what we have lived under; we have not lived under judicial supremacy. The Supreme Court can’t make a law; the legislature has to make it, the executive has to sign it and enforce it. The notion that the Supreme Court comes up with a ruling and that automatically subjects the two other branches to following it defies everything there is to equal branches of government.

So much for Marbury v. Madison, checks and balances, and judicial review for Huckabee and GOP presidential hopeful Ben Carson, who as a statesman is an excellent surgeon. We await other Repub politicians, some of whom have decried President Obama as a tyrant, calling out Huckabee and Carlson for suggesting Congress can ignore the Court.

We don't, however, have to wait to determine the GOP position on income taxes, wherein cutting taxes for the wealthy is akin to godliness, or at least to sex  within traditional marriage for the purpose of procreation.  The GOP always has been rhetorically opposed to "tax and spend," unless it's Repub Presidents doing the spending- as they do more prolifically than Democratic Presidents (chart of public employment from Calculated Risk via Steven Greenhouse).

About the progressive income tax, they are clear, as we learned during the August, 2011 Repub presidential debate (video below) when co-moderator Brett Baier

phrased it this way: “I’m going to ask a question to everyone here on the stage. Say you had a deal, a real spending cuts deal, 10-to-1, as Byron said, spending cuts to tax increases…. Who on this stage would walk away from that deal? Can you raise your hand if you feel so strongly about not raising taxes, you’d walk away on the 10-to-1 deal?”

All eight candidates raised their hand. Literally all of them, if offered a debt-reduction deal that’s 10-to-1 in their favor, would simply refuse.

Now, that's bipartisanship.











Share |

Not Offending May Not Be Enough

Steve M. makes a interesting and thought-provoking argument  when he blogs

Mike Huckabee's PAC just put out a pugnacious ad for his presidential campaign. It blames Bill and Hillary Clinton for the poor treatment of Huckabee by then-majority Arkansas Democrats when he was elected lieutenant governor in 1993 (the ad implies that the Clintons were personally responsible for the mistreatment, but Bill had been president for nearly a year by then). The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza isextremely impressed by this ad, though it's no nastier about the Clintons than every other Republican's ads will be, and it sacrifices some of what used to be one of Huckabee's natural advantages -- his nice-guy persona -- for standard-issue GOP slash-and-burn.

But that's not why I'm writing about the ad. I want to direct your attention to something Huckabee says about 36 seconds in:












In Cillizza's words:

Ask yourself who in the current 2016 Republican (or Democratic) field could say the following words without sounding like a total phony: "Any drunken redneck can walk into a bar and start a fight. A leader only starts a fight he's prepared to finish." The answer is, aside from Huckabee, no one.
The problem isn't that anyone else in the field who said that would sound like a phony -- the problem is that anyone else who said it would be offending rural Southern voters. Jeb can't say it. Marco and Scott and Rand can't say it.

So why can Huckabee say it? Because he's a genuine son of the rural South. He's eaten squirrel. It's his group. So he can use a word for members of the group that would be offensive coming from an outsider.

Which is precisely how the N-word works. Black people have a certain leeway regarding its use that we white people don't, and it's not because black people are special -- it's because in-group members always have a certain leeway regarding in-group slurs.

I've said this before here, but I grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood, and when I was a child I regularly heard Italian-American adults use words like "guinea" and "greaseball" in reference to fellow Italians when talking to other Italians. Within the group it was fine. Outside the group, not so much. Whether you like the logic or not, that's how it works.


***************************************************************************************************

Sure, Huckabee can say things to a southern crowd that the other candidates can't because he is "a genuine son of the rural South."  Nonetheless, SM uncharacteristically misses a few points.

Leave aside for the moment that however offensive "redneck" (or even "drunken redneck") is, it is less offensive and incendiary than the "n" word.  SM evidently believes that Italian-American adults using words like "guinea" and "greasball" were inoffensive and thus acting appropriately when talking to other Italians.

But it wasn't fine. It was merely not offensive. The two colloquialisms still were (and are) derogatory terms. Moreover, use of the terms by Italian-Americans helped normalize them, implanting the message that they were acceptable- after all, even that group was using them.

Notice, additionally, how SM slips in the noun "adults."  Most blacks- as with most non-blacks- using the "n" word are not adults, but  juveniles.

Consider that not only are blacks using the word with other blacks often given a pass, but whites are sometimes, also. If you as a European-American, while clearly not in anger use the "n" word with a black friend, you may (depending on the circumstance) not be rebuked. Your friend, believing that you are not a bigot and don't mean it in a racist sense, may not be offended.

And that would be... what- okay?  It would be fine if our only consideration were whether an individual or a group is offended.  When increasingly these days we are armed with our exquisite sensitivity, our feelings become not only an inflated issue but the only issue.  We have lost sight of the term "derogatory" and the accompanying concept that some actions and statements simply are wrong.    Repeating an offensive word ad infinitum does not justify using it.

The members of the group may believe they are privileged and enjoy the untrammeled right, immune from criticism, to use the "n" word or, in Steve M.'s old neighborhood, the "g" word. Nonetheless, they can't escape the reality that outsiders are going to believe (or accept subconsciously) that the term- allegedly so offensive to the group- must then be acceptable. Whether you like the logic or not, that's how it works.

Share |

In A Short Line Of Heretics

Don't look for Mike Huckabee any time soon to advocate increasing Social Security benefits, cutting the age of eligibility for the program, or removing the cap on income taxable for Social Security. However

"I don't know why Republicans want to insult Americans by pretending they don't understand what their Social Security program and Medicare program is," Huckabee said in response to a question about Christie's proposal to gradually raise the retirement age and implement a means test. 

Huckabee said his response to such proposals is "not just no, it's you-know-what no."

"I'm not being just specifically critical of Christie but that's not a reform," he said. "That's not some kind of proposal that Republicans need to embrace because what we are really embracing at that point is we are embracing a government that lied to its people--that took money from its people under one pretense and then took it away at the time when they started wanting to actually get what they have paid for all these years."

Huckabee also said he wouldn't sign congressman Paul Ryan's plan to reform Medicare for Americans who are 55 years old and younger. "At 55, that still means if I started working, started paying in when I was 14, so for me that would be 51 years [sic] that I'd be paying in and suddenly you're telling me they're going to be changing the rules for you here."

Digby recognizes

This is very unusual for a Republican. They may not want to take that vote for cutting the program, especially since their base is very much among those who benefit from it, but they are never this unequivocal about it. It’s extremely rare for them not to issue any disclaimer about The Deficit and The Government Spending Too Much, etc, etc. To come right out and take the retirement age and means testing off the table — that actually is the “bold” and “authentic” breaking-with-conventional-wisdom for which the beltway media had already Christie all the credit.

Departing from conservative, neo-liberal, and Beltway wisdom on earned benefits is unusual, and laudable-  but not unprecedented- for Republicans. In the summer of 1998 William Saletan explained how in January of 1997 cultural warrior Gary

Bauer opened fire on the corporatists. In a New York Times op-ed, he argued that schemes to privatize Social Security would strip stay-at-home mothers of federally guaranteed benefits designed to reward them for raising children. "Why do we think the nation will be better off," Bauer asked, "by forcing workers to put their money into stock rather than, say, spending it on rearing children?"

 In April the next year, the Republican outlier spoke at the Harvard University Institute of Politics when

A student in the back of the room challenged Bauer to extend his critique of capitalism to domestic issues. He noted that Bauer had criticized advocates of Social Security privatization for undermining the nation's commitment to dependent spouses and children. Was there a "potential for realignment," the student asked, "between social conservatives and a more progressive strand of economic thinking?" Bauer smiled. "A lot of realignments are possible," he replied.

Unfortunately, Bauer never went much further, perhaps because shortly thereafter he embarked on a (inevitably doomed) effort to steal the GOP nomination for President. At the time, Bill Kristol found "The business wing of the party wants social conservatives to vote Republican, but doesn't like the idea that social conservatives might have ideas about foreign policy or tax policy. "

Kristol noted Ralph Reed "was willing to abide by that bargain. Gary isn't." Bauer economic advisor Jeff Bell added "Gary is testing the hypothesis that the pro-family movement is ready to break out. It's ready to have an economics and a foreign policy of its own."

It never was; the pro-family movement failed that test.  In retrospect, it wasn't at all surprising that "In 1995, when Bell and his colleagues presented their ideas to a Republican tax-reform commission, they found themselves outgunned by 'corporatists' who preferred tax breaks for businesses."

Saletan observed "Bauer's economic ideas flow from three principles: virtue, family, and human capital." Creating a PAC called the Campaign for Working Families, Bauer stated "I was trying to send a signal that this wouldn't be a PAC concerned about capital gains tax cuts as opposed to decent wages."

It isn't terribly surprising, either, that Mike Huckabee would be one of the two Repub presidential aspirants (the other: Lindsey Graham) to blow the whistle on Chris Christie's assault on the elderly. Bauer, whose primary causes were anti-gay rights and abortion, was nonetheless at least as interested in "decent wages" as capital gains tax cuts, unlike the GOP donor base and the vast majority of its elected officials and strategists.

Similarly, Huckabee, himself a cultural warrior who targets same-sex marriage and abortion, once referred to the Club for Growth (excerpts from its anti-Huckabee ads, below) as the Club for Greed and on a later date remarked

I kind of have a standing philosophy: If the Club for Growth hates you, I like you.

When they’re against a candidate, I’ve got to figure out — there must be a reason I will like that candidate, and most likely will go help them, because I’m just so disgusted and frustrated and tired of the mind-set of the Club for Growth.








Huckabee remains an anti-abortion extremist, ludicrously and offensively in November offensively maintaining “If you felt something incredibly powerful at Auschwitz and Birkenau over the 11 million killed worldwide and the 1.5 million killed on those grounds, cannot we feel something extraordinary about 55 million murdered in our own country in the wombs of their mothers?” Asking Christians to accept same-sex marriage, he has said, is "like asking someone who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli."

The people who run the Repub Party like their candidates to oppose abortion. but not too strenuously, and they're even more uncomfortable with resistance to same-sex marriage.   (Their voters, likewise, are to oppose abortion, then move on quickly to complain about taxes on the wealthy and benefits for poor people.) They're not partial to anyone focused on virtue, family, and human capital, however they're defined.  As with the Beltway insider crowd, they're far more enthusiastic about candidates who want to undermine the social safety net.  Digby realizes

So, Chris Christie is probably very smart to be playing to the beltway crowd on this one. There’s nothing they love more than to see some loudmouth bully “tell it like it is” to most vulnerable people in our society. And, needless to say, he won’t be alone. The GOP was stung by Bush’s failure to cut the programs, and the Tea Party has not been willing to let them try it again as long as a Democrat is proposing it. Most of the other 2016 candidates are being careful, but it’s unlikely they won’t go along with a program like Paul Ryan’s latest, which is nothing more than warmed-over privatization. It’s in the Republican DNA.

Mike Huckabee, as he no doubt understands (whether or not he enters the race), will never be the GOP presidential nominee.. Even though his reason for opposing the conservative/neo-liberal anti-elderly consensus on earned benefits is less than rigorous, he is, almost as much as Gary Bauer in the last century, a man without a party.







Share |

Come On In, The Water's Fine!

Jon Stewart is right. Jon Stewart is wrong.

In the video (from Dailymotion) below, Mike Huckabee maintains "It is a biblical issue and as a biblical issue, unless, you know, I get a new version of the Scriptures, it's really not my place to say "O.K., I'm just gonna evolve.'"

Daily Kos' Egberto Willies argues

Jon Stewart made minced meat out of that argument. He used the following Bible passages to show the hypocrisy of the evangelicals. If they want to be literally biblical, there is much for them to ponder.

Leviticus 19:19: Keep my decrees. Do not mate different kinds of animals. Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

Leviticus 19:27: Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.

Leviticus 19:20: When a person has sexual relations with a woman servant who is engaged to another man, but she has not been completely redeemed nor has her freedom been granted to her, there is to be an inquiry, but they won't be put to death, since she has not been freed.

Leviticus 21:13: The woman he marries must be a virgin.

Mike Huckabee said it; Jon Stewart or someone had to challenge it, and challenging it with Scripture- that is, on the minister's own terms- is the place to begin.

Except that the comedian and the former governor are not on the same page.  Reverend Huckabee would agree that Scripture, including both the Old Testament and the New Testament, is "god breathed," as the apostle Paul declared it.  But they are operating on different premises.

It is not as if the law, such as described in the four passages from Leviticus (and elsewhere in the O.T.), is useless. It was there, and to be obeyed, until a Savior would arrive, as Huckabee no doubt emphasized as a pastor. (Moses: "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.")  Paul tells the Galatians "it was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made..."

So "the law," John (or someone else) wrote, "was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." All people,  as reformed Christians such as Huckabee will tell you, "sin and fall short of the glory of God."  Keeping the law is impossible. It is why, since the advent, saints and non-saints alike cannot achieve favor with God by obeying the law, committing good works, or doing anything. Everyone is imperfect, hence unable to achieve salvation without a savior.

One commentor explains

Paul says that we have died to the law — even the Jews have died to the law through identification with Jesus Christ. Therefore, the law no longer has authority over us, since we belong to Christ, not to the law. Christ is the one we obey, so that we can bear spiritual fruit. The law is contrasted with Christ, and it is the old covenant law that Paul is talking about — the Torah, the Law portion of the Scriptures. We can be under the law, or under Christ. Being under both is not an option.

The new covenant replaced the old covenant, as understood by the (undetermined) writer of Hebrews when he states "Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises."   This is illustrated by Jeremiah's prophecy, built around and upon the Mosaic Covenant God is said to have made with the people of Israel at Mount Sinai, in which he assured the people of Israel

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant,though I was a husband to[d] them,[e]” declares the Lord.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord.“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God,and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,”declares the Lord.“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Mike Huckabee's scriptural interpretation can be disputed.  His perspective on gay marriage, moreover, is not required given his interpretation. Even his emphasis on the Bible is not one held by all churchgoers, nor even all believers. Surely, however, Reverend Huckabee understands (better than do I) the distinction between the two covenants, in which the Old Testament conceals what the New Testament reveals, and its importance to hermeneutics.

Jon Stewart has ventured into the world of theological disputes, where two few enter. We'll all be the better in the unlikely event that Huckabee, who must play down (as he has) his identity as a Christian minister if he wants to run for president, responds to criticism of his criticism of same-sex marriage. If he does, it will be revealing, and Stewart will have performed a public service.

Share |