Arkansas Blog: Meet the Press

Life is generally too short to endure Tim Russert, but he'll have Mike Huckabee on this morning. I'm guessing it'll be a critical point for the candidate to turn around a growing media perception about his weaknesss in foreign affairs. Time here: 9 a.m.

There'll eventually be a report of the show on the Meet the Press website. Here's Politico's coverage. The lead is on his change in tone, to attacking Romney.

UPDATE: I watched. I'd say Huckabee did reasonably well in defending himself against Russert's thrusts on Pakistan, tax increases, homosexuality and abortion, at least to the extent some of the positions are defensible.

Most troubling to voters, I'd think, would be his continued defense of a desire to make pre-emptive strikes in Pakistan against U.S. enemies.

It's a small point, perhaps, but he continues to be dishonest (not a good thing when he's attacking Romney for dishonesty) by saying tax increases were court-ordered. In the case of schools, tax increases WERE the only practical and rational way to meet court rulings. But, as a matter of accuracy, none was ordered.

His other stretch from my vantage poingt was to defend his desire for a ban on abortion not as an article of faith but as a U.S. constitutional imperative, a matter of equal rights for all humans. This is true only if you accept that even a minutes-old fertilized egg is a human being. Many religions do not take that view. If that constitutional view does gain acceptance, it will unleash some unbelievable consequences in legal areas far removed from abortion and its legality.

Elsewhere today:

BUBBLE BURSTS: McClatchy poll has Huckabee trailing Romney in Iowa. I think it's just about impossible to accurately poll the caucuses. I still think given the nature of Iowa caucus goers and Huckabee's fervent special interests -- hard-core evangelicals, home schoolers and fair taxers -- that he's the favorite.

SELLING SOAP: Here's an interesting article about how a Huckabee speaking appearance in Iowa dovetailed with a presentation by a multi-level marketing outfit. Pyramid schemes anyone?

BACKFLIPS: The NY Times editorial page discovers the candidate's feet of clay on immigration. That singular praiseworthy moment in which Huckabee rebuked Romney for his lack of compassion to immigrants has given way to something else, the newspaper observes.

For a while it looked as if Mike Huckabee would be a sensibly contrarian Republican. As governor of Arkansas he supported financial aid for illegal-immigrant students, and when Mr. Romney rebuked him for it in a debate, he scolded right back, “Our country is better than that, to punish children for what their parents did.” Then this month he did a stunning backflip, unveiling his “Secure America Plan,” which would require the expulsion of all illegal immigrants within 120 days. And last week, after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, he used the turmoil in Pakistan as an argument for building a border fence, and said the United States needed to watch whether “there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country.”

THE NEW REAGAN: Does Mike Huckabee hold the key to a new winning coalition of evangelicals, the working class, etc.? NY Times opinion section piece ponders his chances for creating a new Republican dynamic.

THE HEAT OF THE SPOTLIGHT: Politico wonders if Huck can hang on and, if not, suggests why:

But after months of close-up examinations of Romney’s newly conservative views, it has been Huckabee’s record and rhetorical hiccups that have drawn most of the attention for the past month.

It has been a devastating bill of particulars.

Huckabee has undergone scrutiny for his ethical transgressions in Arkansas, his support for the pardon of an Arkansas sex offender who committed murder after being released from prison, his 1992 statement that AIDS victims should be quarantined, his decision to continue to draw a salary from a nonprofit financed in part by tobacco money and his policy of taking speaking fees from controversial groups prior to his campaign.

Then there have been self-inflicted wounds like his Pakistan comments, his wondering out loud to The New York Times magazine whether Mormons believe Jesus and the devil are brothers, his description of the Bush administration’s foreign policy in Foreign Affairs as one of an “arrogant bunker mentality,” his unfamiliarity with the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program and his assertion that he was receiving foreign policy advice from people who said they had never spoken with him.

Asked whether they had been prepared for the level of scrutiny that has come their way, campaign manager Chip Saltsman said with a laugh: “I don’t think anybody is ready for that.”

STIll MORE PIN THE TAIL ON THE DONKABEE: On Daily Kos, a real bashfest.

Comments

Has anyone documented whether healthy-candidate Huck-the-Marathoner is putting the weight back on?

Posted by: Earl Swagger | December 30, 2007 09:46 AM

Earl, I totally agree and have been noticing it for weeks.
I wonder if anyone has documented that Huck's run (and his being more of a contender for the nomination than anyone ever thought) could be one of the best things to happen to Max as a journalist. Methinks he doth protest the Huck too much.

Posted by: ArkRoyD | December 30, 2007 09:55 AM

Whatever the difficulty of polling the caucuses, you also have to be careful not to place too much emphasis on polls that might be outliers. The McClatchy poll seems like it might be an outlier if you look at it in the context of all the other polling data that is available. Pollster.com aggregates that data and charts it--click my name below to see the Republican numbers in Iowa. Huckabee, whose line is green, looks to remain in pretty good shape in Iowa. I agree that polling is difficult in Iowa--and polls that call homes at a time of the year when many people are out-of-town for holiday visits are questionable, too--but Huckabee still looks to be doing reasonably well. I think we have to wonder whether voters care about Huckabee's gaffes as much as reporters do. After all, the current president has done pretty well despite being a gaffe-prone idiot. Competence is not exactly a requisite trait for Republicans.

Posted by: Gaddis | December 30, 2007 12:38 PM

I watched Huckabee this morning on "Meet the Press" I felt, if Tim Russert had continue to question him he would have exploded. Since, Huckabee has appointed himself the "Divine One", then why should he worry about Romney. He spent his time addressing what Romney said. That was to take some of the pressure off of him. Huckabee sounds like a damn fool on foreign policy. Can he not connect his bibical teachings with what is happening instead of thinking everything begins with immigration?

Posted by: Poetry In Motion | December 30, 2007 12:56 PM

We need to stop calling these dillweeds in Iowa "voters." They're blockheads who are so bored by looking at seven months of snow-impacted cornstalks that they'll go to some other dilweed's house and cluster in the corners to show their support for an out-of-state dillweed whose delusional views on evolution, flat taxes and colossal subsidies for the universally discredited use of corn to create ethanol match their own.

I, for one, resent the hell out of these hayseeds being allowed to convince the mainstream media that their crackpot political beliefs represent ANYTHING except the collective delusions of a bunch of right-wing thumpers who get most of their news from a newspaper owned and operated by the imbeciles of Gannett.

Posted by: Earl Swagger | December 30, 2007 01:20 PM

Spot on, Earl Lee. What is unfortunate, however, is that the dumber than dogshit voting bloc is not limited to Iowa.

Posted by: Zarathustra | December 30, 2007 01:47 PM

The eyebrows put me in a state of catatonia, think thats a word......maybe I'm still
hypnotized.............oh lord, bring on the senility and stop the world, I want to get off.!!!!!

Posted by: jazzy | December 30, 2007 03:30 PM

"Has anyone documented whether healthy-candidate Huck-the-Marathoner is putting the weight back on?"

He definitely is, Earl. For a while there, the dillweed was so gaunt I thought he had AIDS and should be quarantined.

Posted by: durangokid | December 30, 2007 04:04 PM

Any one of three count win the Iowa caucus. It's good to recall that the plurality winner will need to score about 26-27% among the 125,000 caucus goers in Iowa. It's not a real primary that's why it so often goes for Pat Robertsons or Pat Buchanan.

I expect John Edwards to do surprisingly well. R's fear him now more than they did in '04.
.

Posted by: eLwood | December 30, 2007 04:58 PM

Sometimes it seems like ol' Huck is just getting a free pass from some less discerning members of the press corps. You begin to feel that Mike could run a busload of nuns and orphans off the road and they would just say he was just having a bad day and we shouldn't get so worked up about it.

They'll probably say the nuns were lesbians and the orphans were Pakistani infiltrators in disguise. It's sound Republican tactics.

Posted by: Jake da Snake | December 30, 2007 05:10 PM

Had to wait to watch Meat the Press so I could comment with factoids in my head. Huckabee handles himself very well, I have to give him that. He's an extremist who works very hard and most times successfully to come off as a normal guy. Oh gosh, gee....don't mind me...I'm just like you guys.

Well....not really. He's about the greediest bastard we've ever had in Arkansas politics and that's saying a mouthful! It appears his one mission in life was to get the hell out of Hope and get to the top of some heap by any means possible. I applaud him, he's done that. But the better he does, the more he wants and that combined with his whacko religious views are too much to hoist on poor beat to hell America.

He may be the best of the Republican litter....but really...is that saying very much? Looking back at US election history it's easy to spot the years the Democrats didn't think they had a chance and the years the Republicans didn't think they had a chance. You can tell by who the parties pick to run. They don't run their A material in elections they're pretty sure they can't win under any circumstances. Think FDR for a minute.....the man was so unstoppable that the Republicans threw only their 2nd tier candidates at him. While we like Goldwater today, in 1964 he was damn near the Dimmy Altes of the Republican Party. They knew Goldwater couldn't beat LBJ with a ball bat in his hands.

So.....2008....the Republicans have FK'ed up for 8 years and no matter how stupid the electorate may be....only the Shia Republicans will be voting Republican this time around and fortunately, there aren't enough of them to beat the Democratic nominee, even if it's Joe Biden. So the Republican Party is running their 2nd & 3rd tier candidates this time around and our Huck could be the cream of the Republican crop. A loser still by any other name.

You know what I'm going to say next.........first we better make damn sure we have elections in 2008. Do you really think Cheney is going to walk away from the power he's amassed over the last 8 years? I don't. And when the Bushies are out of office they'll be ever so much more vulnerable to war crime prosecution. A damn good reason to never give up the power.

So before we start crowning Huck or Clinton....first we have to make sure we have an election 11 months from now. And I worry that IF is a giant IF. We like to think we're on a higher plain than Pakistan....but our history of the last 8 years doesn't bear that out. My advice to all Democratic candidates....do not stick your heads out of the sunroof!

Posted by: Deathbyinches | December 30, 2007 10:41 PM

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