Arkansas Blog

Max, you were spot-on a week ago when you said you were dusting off your tux for the Huckabee inaugural. Might I suggest you also dust off the old trombone and form a Dixieland band to perform at one of the inaugural balls.

Look what musical ability has done for what the New York Post in its front-page coverage this morning termed "Gomer" Huckabee.

After the last two presidential elections, I would NEVER assume that Huck can't be President Huck. First, the Republicans know how to steal elections; second, NEVER underestimate the Democrats ability to F*#k things up.

in Arkansas, Huckabee ran as a member of a nationally ascendant party's alternative to the good-ole-boy/clinton-besmirched network. now MH's party is descendant and desperate.

i can see MH as VP on McCain's or Julie-Annie's ticket, unless the GOP decides to "Goldwater64" him.

i am now in danger of losing my $5 bet that Ron Paul will get more votes in New Hampshire than does MH, but 100 hours is a long time in today's politics, and as yet i am not overly concerned at having to skip a meal.

i was wrong about HRC winning by 10 in Iowa (ouch) and now it seems that i was wrong about Bill Richardson being on her ticket as VP (double-ouch)

You can't see me, but I'm smiling. It must have really hurt a couple of the AR Times bloggers to hear the results of the Iowa caucus.
It's funny how the writer's tone has changed in the latest "Morning Huck". If anyone who is reading this doesn't understand what I am saying read back into the archives. You'll find messages like "doesn't have a prayer", "America doesn't want another conservative Christian" and "lack of foreign policy will get in the way".
I'll admit, New Hampshire will be difficult for Huck but after that the candidates head to the South where the Evangelical population rises and the blue collar vote counts for even more than it did in Iowa.
I can't blame the writers of the AR Blog for changing their tone. It's not their fault that their political expertise is one-sided. Besides, most who read this know that the writings are not words of legitimate political analysts. They are more like an editorial comic strip. Someone's opinion sitting on a platform for readers to laugh at.

ARK. BLOG: I challenge you to find a single instance where the writer of this blog, me, used the phrase "doesn't have a prayer" or "America doesn't want another conservative Christian." I have said, as have many others, that lack of foreign affairs expertise will be a factor in the election, if not a deciding one. Commenters here may have said words to that effect, not me. If that's what you are saying, it is simply a lie, but typical of a Huckabee supporter. And, indeed, Huckabee himself.

Huck has the Mo, but judging by that look on Jethrine's face in the ArkDoG front page today, he better not be huggin on no more trophy wives of stars of Infomercials and Faux Rambo movies. To his credit, his hands are a lot higher on the TW than Bubba's would have been.

Yeah, I'll admit it...it hurts to know that such a small group of ignorant religious zealots wield such disproportionate power. (Again, YOU ARE IGNORANT if you believe the earth is 5-6 thousand years old and that women should be subservient to their menfolk.) But it was NO surprise that Huck took the Iowan Evangelical vote...which evidently is the Iowan Republican Party. If the Republican Party doesn't steal ANOTHER election or the Democratic candidate isn't assassinated...again...there's no way in hell that the majority of Americans will swallow the same Kool-aid that James and his brethren are gulping.

"Iowa won't settle the race, but the rest of the primary season is going to be colored by the glow of this result." - David Brooks, today's New York Times (name/link)

one of the funniest (accidental?) double-entendres' i've read in a long time.

if Iowa is a harbinger of americans wanting "change", i suspect that MIKE represents it's ultimate expression, even more than a woman or a black man.

Mike BLOOMBERG that is. a Jewish Bachelor Billionaire Independent.

plus (please pardon the reprint)

The United States has changed alot since 1974, so much so that it is entirely arguable that the film "Blazing Saddles" could not be made in America circa 2008. But that doesn't mean that it does not echo through the ages. Last night's political earthquakes (plural) in Iowa brought to my mind two quotes from Mel Brook's comic masterpiece.

"What's a dazzling urbanite like you, doing in a rustic setting like this?" (DEM)

and

"You've got to remember these are people of the land, the common clay of the New West, you know... Morons!" (GOP)

I suspect that during the next few weeks of the OHuckabamabee campaigns, memories of another Brook's classic will also come to the fore. "Young Frankenstein"

oops.. link/name

60% of the Repug turnout in Iowa was evangelicals - usually it's 40%. That's the reason Brother Gov did so well. That Iowa Repug turnout is far from "America" - a real skewing of the "electorate." He is a good possibility though for VP unless the country wakes up and journalists do their job and report the full Huckabee story.

It's the Dems' to lose if Obama is the nominee. Look at the great turnout he brought in Iowa with the new voters and the support he had from independents. That's what's going to do it for him. Obama ran even with Hillary among the Democrat voters, but he swamped her among the "new" people and especially among independents who went to the Dem caucuses instead of the Repug ones. Great speech from him too - very Kennedyesque, though more Jack than Bobby. Edwards and Hillary gave good speeches too but Obama sounded "presidential".

Sound trashing of Bush policies last night, just like the 2006 elections.

"It's 'change' stupid."

I am suprised Huckabee has come this far. Makes an Arkansawyerkansanarkie somewhat proud...admit it.

I have a lot of friends in various states of life throughout Arkansas and there is a suprising level of support for Huckabee. Obama? Well, not so much. Yes, he sounds "Presidential", but I think a lot of people are distrustfull of that for some reason.

Hillary? Not much talk of her amongst my friends. Her flip-flop war vote really has hurt her amongst my friends that have seen their brave family members in the Arkansas National Guard go back to Iraq for their second tour of duty.

Iowa signals a deep desire for something radically different in American politics. People--especially the young--are hungry for change.

People are tired of the same old pundits, of either political stripe, delivering the same old tired verities, controlling the conversation, talking about how exciting "this thing" of political free for all is. People are tired of the same old polarities being established by those pundits to control the conversation--the black or white choice, the either-or option, the future that is never anything but a repetition of a future imagined by those who already dominate the conversation. A future in which they will continue to dominate the conversation, or so they imagine, because they keep reading alternative voices out of the conversation, voices that don't reflect either stark polarity, voices that cannot be managed by the powers that be....

One of the most significant things that Iowa signals for the Democratic party is the failure of the liberal imagination, a balancing-act imagination dominated by those two stark polarities. Hilary has come to symbolize that imagination. She may well also symbolize its demise.

People want someone who can talk beyond the poles, who does not spout the liberal pieties while belying what those pieties mean, when it comes down to the wire. Liberalism is dying because it refuses to make choices, to place values in the forefront of its political imagination.

Any political ideology that talks about democracy without practicing it--as in, talking about wide-ranging and inclusive conversation without making such conversation possible--will ultimately undermine itself. It will do so through the very values it espouses, but refuses to respect in practice.

The wind is blowing against Hilary not because she is a woman, nor because she is Bill's wife. It's blowing against her because she engages in political doublespeak, doing that liberal balancing act thing again and again, betraying the fundamental values that are at the heart of her political party in order to cling to power.

We're in for an interesting ride now. Doesn't surprise me in the least that Iowa went for Huckabee. Conservatives will always try the same old, same old as long as it appears to work. Being devoid of political imagination is the very definition of American conservatism. It's an ideology that doesn't want to build a future. It wants to stop change in the present in order to assure that the future imagined by the marginal won't come into being. I suspect that the appeal to right-wing religion as a conversation-stopping tool won't work as well outside Iowa, and that will keep the Republican field unsettled for some time now.

I also think that, if the controllers of the Democratic conversation had any sense after Iowa, they'd stop looking to Hilary as a savior figure and ask why she was resoundingly rejected in Iowa, especially by younger voters. There are a lot of us out here--young and old--who might have something of importance to say, if the power mongers allowed our voices to be heard.

"I am suprised Huckabee has come this far. Makes an Arkansawyerkansanarkie somewhat proud...admit it.

I have a lot of friends in various states of life throughout Arkansas and there is a suprising level of support for Huckabee. Obama? Well, not so much. Yes, he sounds "Presidential", but I think a lot of people are distrustfull of that for some reason..."--Scottie

I'll admit I'm surprised by the amount of bubbas/bubbettes who have no problem with a candidate who publicly stated that women should be submissive to their husbands. Damn surprised...thought I left those sexist jerks in the 70s. I'll also admit that Huck is an embarrassment...he's a step backwards, not forwards...like the Obama presidential bid is. And Huck's attempts to ride the Obama-change bandwagon are pathetic. Huck is exactly the kind of backwards, sexist white guy that we (my fellow feminists) tried to either educate or leave behind in the 50s. He ought to turn into a pillar of salt for even thinking such sacrilegious thoughts. If it ends up an Obama/Huck race, however, America will, at last, have a clear, distinctive choice: Forwards or Backwards...but that's all moot if the Republicans are allowed to steal another one. (Hopefully Obama will kick back harder than Gore/Kerry.)

A lot of facts bother me about Obama. In short, his support from the hedge funder crowd and his constant Liebermanesque calls for bipartisanship non bickering. The largest money power brokers are historically averse to change or anything near the common good and they have placed their bets on Obama. Let's not forget, like Mark Pryor, Obamas mentor was Joe Lieberman.

America needs a partisan fight now more than ever on who we are and where we go from here only then can we reunite and carry on in some fashion. We have to stop committing genocide for a trillion wasted dollars a year... Obamas health care plan, war plans, his rhetoric on the Mid East is frightening. His tax proposals are ridiculous considering the state of our economy. The hedge fundies must pay much more in taxes and Obama sounds like Bushco when it comes to taxing the rich. The details suggest Obama's agenda resembles Clinton in re MIC and this bothers me a great deal. That said, I would support Obama over Clinton without a doubt because at least with Obama change is slightly possible. Clinton and M Albright and Co., beyond lipstick on a pig, no chance at all, zero.

The Iowa fundies in total revealed themselves to be the 30 percenters dipped in Kool Aid ..as we have known for a long time. Huck got roughly 30 percent of the GOP vote. Huck does not have the big money Corporate Republican support and never will because as much of a money grubbing preacher as he is, he cannot count high enough to steal what Bushco does on a daily basis in order to keep a lid on everything.

The PNAC/AIPAC crowd will never swing Hucks way because he cannot be trusted to do the dirtiest of work. Huckabee might actually say no to Nuking for oil, though I wouldn't bet on it. Without the PNAC/AIPAC/MIC types support, he probably cant organize another stolen election which is key with only a thirty percent base. Huck has no money connections like the Bush family and Huck has no Cheney/Delay/Baker III, to actually run things.

If the whole race comes down to Race.. well it's a fight worth having but the wealthy win again because we will be divided by race, immigration, and gays, etc... while real problems like genocide and pillaging of our constitution and treasure continues, unabated, under to many state secrets.

huck has only 2 mil at this point. where is he going to get the necessary money to finish the rest of the race? i don't mean to be tacky but prayer doesn't bring money. he still isn't bringing the supporters who sign checks. at some point there is going to be a realization that he has a real campaign and that will happen when he wins a few states that are not set ups like iowa which are not evangelical majorities. he is going to have to win real elections. the candidates are starting to slowly fall off. we will see what happens.

A race between Obama and Huckabee would probably result in an Obama victory...and that would be fine with me since I usually vote Democrat. Obama as President and Edwards as Vice President would be very interesting.

We need the next President to be a leader. It bothers me when those running who do have some true vision get bogged down in the whole "I'm a Washinton outsider and I'm going to clean up this town" talk. Well, no you won't, but do you have the skills to be a leader?

Eureka, you had me with you right up to the end, when you observed that "if the whole race comes down to Race.. well it's a fight worth having but the wealthy win again because we will be divided by race, immigration, and gays, etc... while real problems like genocide and pillaging of our constitution and treasure continues, unabated, under to many state secrets."

Like you, I don't see Obama as anywhere near a desirable alternative. We simply don't have those alternatives in the slate facing us. As I've said on several Times threads, given my druthers, I'd rather see Edwards get the nomination, than any other Democratic candidates.

What I do see in the Iowa results is a repudiation of Hilary as the candidate representing a viable future for our nation. Hilary is entrenched; she represents a more benign, but still noxious, politics of the status quo. She represents allocation of power to the same old "guys," as one Times blogger insists on calling the participants in the Iowa caucuses. (Were there no gals there, too? If not, then doesn't the use of that gender-inclusive term signal one of the central inclusiveness issues we're facing, in promoting a politics of change?)

Obama lost me when he insisted on inviting an "ex-gay" minister to his SC tour, giving that minister the spotlight while adding, as window dressing, an out gay minister to sit on the stage. In silence. In that nowhere place that liberals keep relegating so many of us to, while professing to be all about justice and inclusiveness.

All this despite the fact that Obama belongs to the first U.S. Christian denomination to ordain openly gay candidates for the ministry....

There is a large disconnect between the religious values that Hilary and Obama profess, and what they actually practice, when it comes to gay rights. The core values here are inclusion, respect, truth-telling, justice--not the question of the morality of who sleeps with whom. You can't talk the inclusion and justice talk, and fail to walk it re: a key justice issue facing our nation today.

Which brings me to your conclusion: in what sense are race, immigration, and gays not "real problems" like genocide, the pillaging of the constitution, and the rapacious economic practices of wealthy elites? From where I stand, they're all facets of one larger problem: the control by a tiny majority of people of the vast majority of the world's wealth and power. Those few have a stranglehold on the future, and they're determined not to relinquish it.

And they're represented in the very center of both parties, in their power structures and funders, as well as in the media that pimps for them--everywhere.

For Arkansas, the gay issue is neuralgic. It illustrates the problem, very starkly. The media--even the liberal media--does all it can to forefront the gay issue, engaging in hand-wringing about injustice against gay folks.

But it does absolutely nothing to include authentic gay voices in its conversations, to tell real gay stories, to educate the public about discrimination against gay Americans as it did about African Americans in the civil rights period.

And the churches follow suit, just as they did in the period of segregation, mildly decrying discrimination while shielding their adherents who engage in discrimination, and while practicing discrimination in their own polities and in their institutions.

These aren't diversions from the real problems the nation faces as the constitution is pillaged. They are on-the-ground examples of the real problems where they impact many of us, where we live and move and have our beings.

We need change. We have to change, if we want a future. Shuffling the same old hand and dealing the same old cards to the same old players is not going to build a world that will serve the needs of the humanity community well in the 21st century.

imagine for a moment, Huckabee vs. Hillary campaign later this year... especially at debate time, and HRC reminds MH of this:

In August of 1998, Huckabee was one of 131 signatories to a full page USA Today Ad which declared: "I affirm the statement on the family issued by the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention." What was in the family statement from the SBC? "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ."

The rest of the SBC statement, Article XVIII, The Family:
She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.

... can thouest imagineth how many millions of votes this would changeth ? i knew you could.

MuddlingThrough _ Thanks...You are right.. I knew it as I flubbed through the end of that comment. They are all very important problems. The whole race/sex/immigrant thing is used so effectively to divide us..and I would have to fight it tooth and nail on behalf of Obama just as I would have to fight the xenophobia sure to be directed towards Clinton if she pulls back into the lead.. I resent it a little because it's not me and it's all so stupid. I resent it because so much of what Clinton and Obamas history says is that they are not who they represent themselves to be. I grow weary of waiting on avg. people to drop their ignorant bigotry or at least quit allowing themselves to be played like two- dollar banjo by it.

All of which interferes with insisting big media and major candidates acknowledge much less deal effectively with the other issues... genocide for profit, MIC, corporate personhood , and government secrecy etc..

I guess in reality it's all connected.. Demand and face the facts/problems always or suffer our foolishness. Perhaps new media such as blogs will help propel our nation through this a bit more quickly..

I want "change" as much as anyone..and it will take enormous numbers of people rising up like we witnessed in Iowa last night. The thrilling part is they did rise up! Failures and set backs are to be expected..but the folks (Obama or Edwards?) in the lead must be sincere and willing to work like a dog.. Bill Clinton wasn't when push came to shove re our energy policy, gays, Joycelynn Elders, sanctioning continued genocide with air partition in Iraq, MIC grew, not a peace dividend, etc.. He gave in to the wrong folks.. What I need is to believe Obama is willing to go the distance.. because the country lost a lot of hope and steam when Bill let us DLC down by constantly swinging right for bipartisanship sake. Obama and Hillary when one looks into the details...seem to plan on being much like DLC Lieber-Bill. ..

Edwards is truly ready for a fight..as I see things now.

Eureka, I appreciate your response. I do see (and perhaps you're agreeing?) a web of interconnections between racism, patriarchy, homophobia, misogyny, and militarism. A society that promotes one is very likely to promote the rest. Pull on the web to unravel any of the strands in it, and you're likely to get fierce reactions from those whose primary interest is not truly in the strand being plucked at, but in other strands.

I suspect that many of those in the political center in our country who have been using gay folks as political footballs don't ultimately care a great deal about gays and what those of us who are gay do. Their real interest lies in protecting unfair economic power and privilege, the military establishment, and so on. Gays are just a convenient way to fight the other battles without naming the battles being fought.

Still, we're here, and we're being booted about. Hardly a day goes by that I don't see some picture on the internet of someone bashed or killed solely for being gay. The trial re: Satender Singh's murder in Sacramento is just starting, I understand, in Sacramento.

These are events no nation can close its eyes to, if it wants to aim at being a humane society. Nor can any nation or community claim to be a healthy, viable democracy if it excludes the voices of anyone from the conversation. (Which is not to say that public discourse can't call for norms of civility that permit discourse to occur at all....)

Like you, I don't pin a lot of hope on Obama, but I do relish his defeat of Hilary, and for many of the reasons you outline. I am appalled at the lack of loyalty Bill Clinton showed to friends such as Joycelyn Elders and Lana Guinier. I found his response to the question of gays in the military craven, and I believe he set himself up to be eaten alive by the right wing by caving in on that issue as his administration began. I also think that both he and Hilary caved on healthcare when they might have been much stauncher in their defense of a new plan for medical coverage for all of us.

They strike me--God help me--as rather soulless liberals who blow with the prevailing winds. When this position is given a religious gloss, it becomes very hard for me to stomach. I have heard far too many liberal church folks of the ilk of Hilary give glowing speeches about how much they love gays. But when occasion arrives, I've watched those same folks put the knife in the back of gays with seemingly little remorse as they do so.

This needs to change. If nothing else, the eyes of younger Americans are now more and more open about many of these issues, and they played a significant role in what happened in Iowa--and, my hope is, will continue playing a significant role in this election.

Of all the stupid remarks made by anyone in this campaign thus far--and there has been a pile of them--I think Hilary's statement that she grew up in a generation when folks didn't have to face the question of homosexuality and hasn't yet made up her mind about it is the stupidest of all.

Please. The woman is college-educated, and at premier institutions, at that. She is a U.S. senator living in a state that must have at least a few gay citizens. She is the wife of a former President. She belongs to a church with a set of Social Principles that explicitly address the issue of discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Hasn't made up her mind yet? Making remarks like that is not a way to instill confidence in folks who look for substance behind the glowing claims of supporting inclusion and justice for all. At least Rev. Huckabee tells us where he stands, though I think he's hard-put to defend his position as one that Jesus himself would support.

This needs to change. If nothing else, the eyes of younger Americans are now more and more open about many of these issues, and they played a significant role in what happened in Iowa--and, my hope is, will continue playing a significant role in this election.
<<<<<<<<<<<<

Couldn't agree more with your last entire comment..

Re Change and younger eyes.. Am asking myself today about change in a different light..considering the Obama wave.. Considering which remarks the crowd cheered most when listening to Obamas speech last night. It's such a large percentage of younger folks who don't recall the struggle in the same way 40 or 60 year olds do. The last wave of youngins were McGovern supporters and though somewhat naive..they were right. Am asking myself if I am incorrectly belittling the power of the people themselves rising up..or if my worry about false leadership need be so keen in light of the peoples rise up ... I think a lot of young folks are assuming the change has occurred because much of the problems seem only to have occurred before they were born during what? Reagans term? LOL Bizarre..but it could be helpful, not realizing from experience what all has been overcome in the last 50 years..

After all, Speaker Pelosi was greeted one year ago with enthusiastic tears of joy and hope...only to shoot it all down by denying the country impeachment investigations on countless criminal questions..countless. She will always be seen as the first woman..but lord god above, if you are there? let's hope she will also always be seen as the worst female speaker for her lack of spine..lack of upholding her oath. Let's hope the nation survives her blatant disregard for" A nation of laws".

I am too late to this thread, but gentlemen, if all goes well, George W. Bush has actually given this country a great gift. That gift was his total failure as President. That gift is the current horrible mess this country is in. His gift was doing everything wrong, for the wrong reasons, to benefit the wrong people. His gift was one of corruption, aggression, kidnapping, torture and death.

Because Cheney-Bush have broken the back of this nation, change will come. It will come with any of the Democrats you've mentioned. Only in a country so broken can we elect the first woman President. Only in a country so broken can we elect the first black President. Only while laying in the Bush gutter do we have a chance for real lasting change.

Though I can't discount or excuse the terrible suffering and injustice of the last 8 years, we can only hope that a whole slew of changes will result in a good equal to or better than the bad sown by Cheney-Bush.

I will die a happy man if America is a better place for my children than it was for me. We can only get there with massive changes and now we have the incentive for making giant turns and twists that will restore and even make a better America in the end.

Eureka, you're singing my song. Pelosi is a major disappointment. The same hope for change we're discussing now? It was there just after the last cycle of elections, with the election of more Democrats.

And I'm deeply disappointed at how they have performed. It's not as though the Republicans have been strong at the same time, impervious to challenge. On the family values front, my God! Look at the parade of Republican representatives who have been caught with their pants down in the same time frame. And yet the Democrats can't push the Matthew Shepard bill through?

Re: Pelosi, I have learned one tiny thing that does cast some light--for slow-to-learn me, at least--on what she is up against. This fall, I visited a family I know well in the upper Midwest. Good family, good Catholics, the kind of farm family that is spoken of as the backbone of the nation.

Traditionally, they've voted Democratic--which in their area means DSF, Democratic Socialist. Now they're split. The church hierarchy, as you know, has been adroit in using abortion as a wedge issue to get some of these families voting Republican--which means cutting off their nose to spite their face, economically, as well as voting for Republican administrations who could not give a hoot about life issues.

Anyway, what I learned is that this sweet little farm lady--and all of her friends--write Pelosi a letter DAILY pleading with her to stop taking part in the butchery of babies.

The right has us beat flat out when it comes to organizing, to passion, to wearing values (even pretend ones) on their sleeve. We on the other side shilly-shally about the language of values, when it's just as central to our worldview as it is to theirs.

The liberal balancing act, with its purported "objectivity" at holding together two black-and-white polarities, just won't bring about the change we need. Such fence-sitting always ends up on the side of the status quo. We need a shake-up--and here I agree with you, dbi, and welcome your comments very much. For my part, though, Hilary won't represent that shake-up. I'm willing to wait and see re: Obama.

In a cultural climate in which the media--of all stripes--has done far, far too much to pimp for the right wing for decades, I'm heartened that young folks have found ways to connect and network that bypass traditional media outlets. If their voice can be heard now, things may truly change for the better.

Some great news commentary this morning, exploring themes discussed in this thread:

On how the "real" issue for the right wing is not any of the wedge issues they exploit (e.g., gays, immigration), but money--who gets it and who doesn't--see Christopher Hayes, "The Return of the Swiftboaters," originally published in The Nation but picked up by alternet at http://www.alternet.org/election08/72696/. Hayes reports that the folks behind this sleazy sneak-attack group have given Rev. Huckabee a big chunk of money.

On the willingness of the "liberal" media to pimp for the right wing, see Jane Smiley's incisive, glowing essay "Bill Kristol in the NY Times Means I'm Done with the Paper," originally in Huffinton Post but picked up by alternet at http://www.alternet.org/stories/72747/. Kudos to Smiley. If more of us took such public, decisive stands to repudiate the liberal balancing act, the "liberal" media might just stop giving a voice to these lying scumbags.

And as always, quietly eloquent, Bob Herbert has a wonderful op-ed piece in today's NY Times (yes, I'm still reading it, but willing to go Smiley's route after I have enough coffee to think through the consequences--since I boycott the Dem-Gaz and rely on the Times for news) on Obama as the standard-bearer of real change, particularly for youth. Great line: "The Clintons, especially, have seemed baffled by the winds of change."

from wikipedia
note-Huck is not a womanizer, but he lusts for power and unearned income "love offerings"-

Elmer Gantry is a novel written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926 and published by Harcourt in March 1927. It tells the story of a young, narcissistic, womanizing college athlete who, upon realizing the power, prestige, and easy money that being an evangelical preacher can bring, pursues his "religious" ambitions with relish, contributing to the downfall, even death, of key people around him as the years pass. Although he continues to womanize, is often exposed as a fraud, and frequently faces a complete downfall, Gantry is never fully discredited and always manages to emerge triumphant and to reach ever greater heights of social status. The novel ends as the Rev. Gantry prays for the USA to be a "moral nation" and simultaneously admires the legs of a new choir singer.

In the novel, Gantry continues to womanize, is often exposed as a fraud, and frequently faces a complete downfall, yet he is never fully discredited and always manages to emerge triumphant and reaching ever greater heights of social standing. Mark Schorer, then of the University of California, Berkeley, notes that "the forces of social good and enlightenment as presented in Elmer Gantry are not strong enough to offer any real resistance to the forces of social evil and banality."
Lewis did research for the novel by observing the work of preacher Burris Jenkins, pastor in the Linwood Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri. Jenkins introduced Lewis to many other clergymen, among them the Reverend L.M. Birkhead, a Unitarian and an agnostic. Schorer says that both of these associations, as well as others, influenced characters in the novel. There's no record of the character of Elmer Gantry or any other characters as being fictionalizations of the careers of Billy Sunday or Aimee Semple McPherson. Schorer also says that, while researching the book, that Lewis attended two or three church services every Sunday while in Kansas City, and that "he took advantage of every possible tangential experience in the religious community." The result is a novel that represents the religious activity of America in evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s toward it. Elmer Gantry also appears in another, lesser known Lewis novel, Gideon Planish.
The novel is dedicated by Lewis "to H. L. Mencken, with profound admiration."
On publication in 1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. The book was banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the USA. One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. The famous evangelist Billy Sunday called Lewis "Satan's cohort." Shortly after the publication of Elmer Gantry, H. G. Wells published a widely-syndicated newspaper article called "the New American People," in which he based his observations of American culture entirely on the novels of Sinclair Lewis, including Elmer Gantry.[citation need