Elections '08 National Politics Presidential Race

Why I Heart (and fear) the Anti-Evolutionist—and you should too

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(NOTE: This is cross posted at Huffington Post’s Off the Bus section.)

Watching the YouTube/CNN debate Wednesday night,
I was appalled to realize that, if I alone was charged with choosing the next president of the United States, and the only possible POTUS candidates were those standing on the St. Petersburg, Florida stage last night (and Anderson Cooper was definitely not an option), God help me, I’d choose the guy who doesn’t believe in evolution.

Yes, of course, I’m opposed to nearly all of Mike Huckabee’s stands on the issues: abortion, gays in the military, capital punishment, stem cell research and so on. But, when fielding the YouTubers’ questions, while undeniably conservative, he also appeared remarkably un-poll-driven, thoughtful and compassionate. Plus he didn’t seem to need to insult everyone who held an opinion other than his own.

And weirdly, all through the evening it was Huckabee
who seemed to be the candidate most willing to be the President for all Americans–rather than just for Republicans.

Not so for the others on the stage:

Mitt Romney still comes off like a guy playing a candidate on television, a casting director’s creation. He waffled irritatingly on any question that demanded he not behave like a Republican Ken doll, and tied himself in Boy Scout knots over his former (gasp) support of gays in the military. When confronted with McCain’s articulate hammering on the issue of waterboarding, he was completely on the ropes.

Then when Cooper cornered Mitt about whether he believed the Bible was, page for page, line for line, literally all true—while Huckabee, the evangelical preacher, handled the question without completely alienating those of us who don’t look to The Book of Revelation for life instruction—Romney was suddenly a man wishing he had urgent business elsewhere.

As for Fred Thompson, there was his bizarre and clumsily-produced attack" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen> ad. And with each passing day, he looks more distressingly like a very tall bullfrog. I think he’d be swell at providing a character voice for the next Pixar movie. But, trust me, the Republicans are not going to select a bullfrog as their candidate.

McCain had a couple of winning moments (condemning torture), and a couple of crazy dude moments (Shouting at Ron Paul that Paul’s attitude would have helped Hitler win, or whatever it was he said.)

And Rudy? Well, the polls suggest he’s still probably the one to beat, although he’s polling poorly in Iowa and, there are a zillion ways he can implode. He explained himself awkwardly on several of issues, like the 2nd Amendment question that had him scrambling frantically for the right I Like Guns tone. But, he broke out well with his opening jab at Romney on immigration: “Mitt had a sanctuary mansion, not just sanctuary cities,” referring to the fact that undocumented workers had been found to be employed at the governor’s mansion during Mitt’s tenure.

Rudy certainly had most of the good jokes: “Not bad to have a Republican who can beat Bill Clinton,” he quipped when he was challenged on the successful lawsuit he brought while New York mayor to yank the federal line-item veto away from Clinton. And then there was his Yankees riff: “when I was mayor of New York City, the Yankees won four world championships….and since I’ve left being mayor of New York City, the Yankees have won none.”

Yet it was, Huckabee, not Rudy, got the biggest laugh of the night with his answer to the WWJDCP? question. (What Would Jesus Do about capital punishment.) ”Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office, Anderson,” said Mike and the audience loved it (in part, maybe, for its off-handed slap at the I’m-more-Christian -than-you-are hypocrisy that has run rife through this campaign).

Huckabee also scored the biggest applause line of the night with an answer that was not very Republican sounding. I’m talking about his eloquent defense of college scholarships for undocumented kids: “With all due respect,” Huckabee said, “we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did. We’re a better country than that.” And there was wild cheering because, well, we are a better country than that.

Here’s the thing: If the 2008 presidential match-up turns out to be Rudy against Hillary, I think and hope Hillary will take it, although even that is by no means clear. But if by some chance dark horse Mike Huckabee is the Republican nominee, we Dems could be in deep trouble. When I drove to Montana this summer and, while on the road, questioned people about their views on issues, it quickly became very clear to me that Americans are sick of the vicious partisanship, sick of the poison. They want a uniter not a divider.

And, while we’re on the subject, Andrew Sullivan got it right in his essay in December’s Atlantic Monthly: Obama is a uniter. But in a Huckabee Clinton match-up, rightly or not, the candidate I suspect is most likely to be viewed as the uniter by a big portion of the American electorate…. is the one who thinks Darwin got it wrong.

25 Comments

  • Huckabee’s problem is simple. He has no cash and the compressed primary season with the big enchilada on Feb 5 leaves him precious little time to raise it and spend it to build organizations in those states. But I agree with you. Rudy is toast after those stories about his taxpayer subsidized lovenests – coming on top of Kerik et.Al). Thompson is going nowhere and Romney is Romney.

    Woody, the guy is a Log Cabin Republican and asked a question that is important to that group. He is also a retired Brigader. So tell me. How is that a plant? Think a lot of people aren’t concerned about that?

    Honestly, if you want to know why the GOP is heading for another Whippin’ its attitude like this. Dis the largest new group (Latinos) Dis the blacks (don’t show up at their debates – Huckabee, again, excepted) and turn the party into a White only club with a southern drawl. Well, guess they gotta be clobbered a few more times.

  • rlc, since you asked me the same question in two places, here’s my earlier response to it.

    rlc, a question to the Republican candidates is not a “legitimate question” if it’s asked by a potential competitor and intended to inflict harm rather than obtain information. Further, there were multiple questions of that type, and each one squeezed out truly legitimate questions from conservatives.

    My point above was that there will be a time and place for the presidential nominees to address issues of all voters. However, the Republican debate is intended to address issues of Republicans who will vote in the Republican primaries–not Democrats.

    That guy asking the Republicans about queers in the military is like me asking Hillary Clinton what she’s going to do to reduce the size of government.

    Okay, that’s it. I’m not going to let this get into another back and forth boring exchange.

  • Woody, since Reg answered that over at Marc Cooper’s blog – of the same name – I’ll let his reply stand for both of us. But, I’ll add this. As John Cole – a conservative blogger writes – what with the panicky VA GOP now “Demanding” a “loyalty oath” that voters in their primary agree to vote GOP in the fall (unenforceable of course) and now this flap that only true blue (or is that red?) Republicans can ask questions of their candidates – sorta like Bushn “Town Meetings” – they should not be surprised that – soon – they’ll be able to hold these events in a closet.

  • rlc, reg, DID NOT answer my comment, as you can see from my response to him. He tried to prove (and failed) that Clinton reduced government…as if that had anything to do with Marc’s post or the point of my comment. Why is that hard to understand? While I haven’t gone back to that site to check, I’m sure that reg is trying to put up some ratletrap rebuttal, which I will ignore.

    Unless one is an Republican or independent, he should stay out of the Republican primaries–both voting and influencing. Let each party choose their nominees based upon their unique political philosophies, and then let the nominees slug it out in the general election, in which everyone can participate–including the dead for the Democrats.

    The Democratic debate wasn’t loaded with Republicans, was it? Fair is fair.

  • Maybe I missed something but I understood the YouTube Debates to be about people submitting questions via the “tubes” for the candidates to answer. I don’t recall anything about the swearing of blood oaths to a party. But then I’m not a member the cult that currently calls itself the GOP.

  • rlc, I don’t remember the debate being about submissions from Democratic operatives, but I’m not a member of that left-wing radical, terrorist supporting, U.S. hating, military loathing, NY Times protected, big spending, high taxing, anti-Christian, second amendment attacking, illegal immigrant loving, Constitution trampling, global warming whinning, union supporting, turn and run, nanny state promising, Waco murdering, word parsing, White House trashing, lie to your face, and hide documents in your socks porn association.

    What happened was that CNN picked questions that they thought were important, but they missed what was really important to conservatives because they are a bunch of liberal Democrats. They even went further to pick questions that would make the candidates squirm.

    What was a question about the Confederate flag doing in there?! Didn’t we settle that somewhere in the past? Where were the questions on terrorism? None. Where were the questions of limiting government growth? Nothing on stopping government takeover of health care. What about Supreme Court appointments? On and on and on.

    These were Republicans running for the Republican nomination. Democrats should not have been welcomed in the process, much less dominated it. We didn’t get to hear the Republican candidates views on issues that concern Republicans voting for those running for the nomination.

    Why the Democrats don’t even trust their own to ask the “right” questions, so they plant their special questioners. The Republicans just didn’t want the Democrats planting them in the Republican debate, too.

    The Democrats and their go-along press are so dishonest.

  • “He tried to prove (and failed) that Clinton reduced government…”

    I quoted an article from the National Review, which pointed out that the size of government shrank under Clinton far more even than under Reagan and that W has bloated it more than anybody since the good old days of Johnson and Nixon (and will probably surpass Nixon). Woody’s response was that liberals don’t know what they’re talking about !!!! No kidding.

  • And, I responded that there are better and more honest ways to measure the growth of government. Look, I’m not going to argue this on two fronts.

    If you want to go on believing that Clinton got the government off of the backs of business and citizens by gutting the military and increasing the number of private contractors, then you’re welcome to deceive yourself.

  • Some numbers would be nice. You’ve offered none – other than a link that used data on the size of the total federal workfoce if you include contractors, etc. spanning 1984 to 1996. Hardly a refutation of the shrinking of federal employees under Clinton, regardless of any contextual issues about contractors, etc. You make a bunch of assertions, with no numbers to back it up that could be construed as relevant, and claim I’m a delusional liberal because I offer figures from an article in the National Review. You also offer no counter to the fact that W has grown the federal government. And if you want to talk about “contractors” being hired under W to camaflouge the “real numbers” and compensate for criminally incompetent planning, well, yeah that’s been a bit of a problem.

    Pretty pathetic.

  • Well this probably belongs on the thread below on LAUSD but its o/t there as well. Still Celeste here’s something for you to look at. Remeber Disney Company’s “Teacher of the Year” gig? Well over at DAILY KOS you might read the diary of one “SteveUFT” (I’m betting the UFT stands for “United Federation of Teachers”). Seems that back in 1992 he was the recipiant of the award for best in the Social Studies category.

    Well he recently signed a petition to Disney complaining about their pushing a book and program by John Stossel that took teachers and their unions to task. OK that was Stossel’s view and this was the counterpoint by some teachers. Guess what Disney did? Go to their websight and look at the Teacher awards. The 1992 honor for social studies is now BLANK. Yep, The mouse disappeared him! And that is corporate speech these days. Anyone wonder why some get upset over media concentration and net neutrality?

    Oh, look over there. CNN let a Dem Queer ask the Republicans a question. BAUGH!

  • I will say that the “Liberal” debate host Anderson Cooper was 10000X better that the Pumpkin Head. Yes, I am talking about Tim Russert, that blow-hard moderator of the MSNBC Democratic debate in New Hampshire. The blow-hard who logged more televised talking time than any of the candidates, he hogged most of the camera time for himself. Anderson Cooper was moderator and NOT the center stage of a circus act. Tim Russert asked those stupid-ass questions, about UFO/aliens, haircut spending, favorite Bible verse and other assorted stupid-ass questions.

    Using the Internet and YouTube cartoon characters to ask questions is just lame, at least to this “old guard left”. I preferred the day when a live person in the audience asked the questions. It is much more effective when the laid off Auto worker ask the presidential candidate why he should support moving manufacturing and increase trade with China.

    CNN should have let more “Log Cabin Republicans” ask questions, so as not to seem biased in the eyes of the conservatives.

    I remember “Big George“ Formen, the best grill salesman and boxing announcer ever, talk about his learning experience as a minister. “Big George“ Formen tells how being a minister has taught him to be a good salesman and motivator. Mike Huckabee demonstrated those skills during the debate.

  • reg, you are so pathetic. The issue that you’re raising a stink over is simply a red herring to divert attention from the point made and has nothing to do with anything except what’s in your own head. Then you go off on your rants. What a psycho.

  • Woody – time and time again you expose yourself. You can’t bolster your arguments with evidence. I will defer any further characterization because your knee-jerk reductionism, petty biases and logical lapses are too obvious. Will leave the serial and crude ad hominem invective to you and Maggie.

  • reg, since you don’t accept any sources which disagree with you, then you have taken away 90% of what I could use. And exactly what does your great concern over Clinton and, now, Bush have to do with the primary point of CNN loading up the Republican debate with questions from Democratic activists? Nothing. And, it’s hilarious that you would call a conservative “knee-jerk” and then smugly say that you won’t engage in ad hominem attacks. Go back to the farm.

  • I called your reductionist approach to the world “knee-jerk” because it obviously is. There are qujite a few conservatives who are intelligent, can think critically, don’t trade in crackpot bullshit and encompass a view of the world beyond simple prejudice and mindless invective. You don’t happen to be one of them. You represent an unadulterated strain of the current corruption of conservatism by vile opportunists and cranks like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the “Hillary called Vince Foster” crowd. Your bizarre injection of no less than Josef Stalin (!) into numerous attacks on me is proof enough that you inhabit some political netherworld that has little or no connection to reality. Kind of like Maggie dragging some alleged connection to Che Quevara into the mix when I call her on dubbing Fareed Zakaria “moronic” because he doesn’t believe Iran is about to take over the world. This is very sorry stuff. Normal folk would be ashamed to descend into this kind of stuff. You happen to be shameless. It’s of absolutely no consequence except that it DOES drive me crazy when I see people making such agressive asses of themselves. That’s “my bad” and if I were less neurotic I’d not even bother with anyone who is consistently so ridiculous, predictable and – in the context of rational discourse among adults – worthless.

  • reg: I will defer any further characterization because your knee-jerk reductionism, petty biases and logical lapses are too obvious. Will leave the serial and crude ad hominem invective to you and Maggie.

    How soon we forget. It only took forty-four minutes for reg to forget his pledge.

    He’ll teach Napa State Hospital to throw open its exit gates.

  • reg, stop dragging me into your exhaustingly tedious, spiteful and pointless diatribes, all of which reflect your being “unburdened by a college education,” and therefore, the ability to either organize your thoughts logically or respect the right of others to express theirs without spewing venom at them. I NEVER started an attack on you, it’s always you — in blogging and in person, I stay away from such nasty, low-class individuals because no good ever comes of engaging them/ you.

  • go screw yourself, maggie. you dragged my name into your hysterics on successive threads, without once unburdening yourself of a substantive thought. Take your crazy “Che Guevara” rants in response to quite coherent criticisms of specific comments you’ve made and stick them where “the moon don’t shine”, as Dick Cavett so elegantly put it. If you need to rave on about my lack of a college education in order to inflate your self-regard and allege a superior intellect and/or refinement – all the while engaging in ridiculous invective – it proves you’re a classless, tasteless, insecure individual. I said that one of your specific statements was crazy – in response to your own “nutcase” brief against Rosa Brooks. Your statement was, in fact, “crazy” – absolutely indefensible as a rational assessment of the issue at hand. If you want to reel it back and explain why what you said made even a shred of sense, I would welcome the opportunity to once again point out how baseless and bizarre your comments were. But don’t act like your ad hominem rants are anything other than a smokescreen for incredibly flawed argument.

  • Like a bad penny…

    Woody Says (at Marc Cooper’s):
    November 30th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
    Workers Held Hostage At Clinton Office In N.H.
    Man With Bomb Holding Campaign Volunteers

    Didn’t Stalin create crimes and blame his opponents? And, oh yeah, Vince Foster.

  • I made that comment for your benefit, reg, after you made a statement about such things above. Wouldn’t want to disappoint you.

    reg: But don’t act like your ad hominem rants are anything other than a smokescreen for incredibly flawed argument.

    Should we say “projecting?”

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