GOV. SARAH PALIN: I know you're at Ft. Benning for your son's graduation from infantry training, and that you've recently visited this site. You and Track are much in our thoughts and prayers. Please keep "tuning in." As young American patriots, your son and his friend John Bates are in exactly the right place.
My next column will appear tonight (Saturday), after the South Carolina Primary. If John McCain wins in SC, he probably will end up as the GOP's nominee. If he doesn't, then things will continue to remain very complicated. The Florida Primary occurs in 10 days and "Super Tuesday" will be in 17 days. Will we have a nominee by Feb. 6? Anyone who knows the answer to that question should let the rest of us in on it. Also, is it just me, or does Obama look like someone who's going to be nearly impossible to beat in the general election? As the saying goes, "we live in interesting times."
One of my biggest problems with "Mike" Huckabee is his embrace of the Confederate Flag, a symbol of racism, slavery, and segregation to many in S.C. and the nation. A little good ole Arkansas racism seems to be the way to get some vote from the Pavlovian "evangelicals," who make up most of his supporters. A little offense against Black folks isn't going to hurt him in in the heart of Dixie.
Of course, the Confederate flag means different strokes to different folks. To African-Americans, a group that doesn't "like Mike," the flag stands for racism, slavery, segregation, and humiliation. To the group that drives dusty pick-ups and drinks throws Blue Ribbon cans out the window, the flag reflects a time when Black people "knew their place."
Mike Huckabee claims to be a Christian -- a claim for which I see no evidence. I don't take him at his word, because I don't see any deeds. I see another Southerner out conning the boobs.
Of course, many politicians in the Republican Party (including Mark Foley and Duke Cunningham) have made the faith claim. But I have no earthly (or heavenly) idea what Mike Huckabee believes -- if anything. He exemplifies the stylistics of a backwater form of what passes for Christianity in rural areas of the Deep South, but I don't see anything more substantial. He seems to love his neighbors, but not the ones two streets away.
As I've tried hard (but failed) to explain to Larry Perrault, a big backer of Pastor Mike, people can claim to believe anything, and of course some of them believe nothing. I increasingly tend to think Mike falls in that category. And I'm beginning to wonder about Larry, who seems to have two issues: abortion and gay marriage, which happen to Huckabee's key issues. For someone like Larry, disagreeing with him constitutes a deviation from "The Word of God."
Huckabee knows (and so does Larry) that the chances for a constitutional amendment on either issue are about the same as polar bears migrating to Miami. (The last effort at an amendment on abortion was in 1983, and it fell 18 votes short of passage in the Senate.) Mike knows there's no chance for such amendments, but if that waves his rhetorical version of the bloody sheet in front of the primitives, some grunt and some drool.
The only way we can determine an individual's beliefs -- be it Larry or Pastor Mike -- is by their acts. "By their fruits ye shall know them." If the fruit is rotten, well . . .Mike's "fruits" right now seem to be confined to cozying up to the Primitive Baptists and racists crawling out of the S. Carolina swamps.
The push-polling on his behalf is Exhibit B of the racism and foulness that afflicts his campaign. There has been an effort in 2000 and another one this year by Huckabee supporters (Christians all, one presumes) to make false statements about John McCain. Pastor Huckabee could stop this, but he chooses not to. The claim made in the sewers of South Carolina politics is that John McCain "faithered an illegitimate Black child." As I've explained, John McCain and his wife Cindy adopted a dark-skinned orphan in BanglaDesh, and she's been their daughter for many years.
As I mentioned, Mike Huckabee could stop the slurs about the McCains, but he chooses not to. Are there enough good Republicans in S. Carolina to repudiate Mike's tactics? I guess we shall see soon.
The admonitions of Jesus Christ are difficult ones, and the "evangelical favorite" is falling far short of living up to them. He's Goomer Pyle with an attitude -- and not a good attitude.
Regarding another Huckabee supporter, Triva, of Greenville, SC, she and I have had an interesting "relationship." She made many comments on this blog, and I reprinted all of them. I made a few comments on her blog, and she reprinted none of them. I guess that struck her as fair.
Triva is a homeschooler, a group that strongly backs Mike Huckabee. She doesn't send her children to public school in Greenville, SC, because, as she explained, "the schools aren't good enough." In the Deep South, the "not-so-good schools" are code words for having too many people that don't resemble "us."
I told her that her views on the free exchange of information didn't augur well for preparing her children -- many pictures of whom she prints on her blog -- for life in a diverse world. She didn't appreciate the advice, mainly because she hasn't yet grasped the fact that some people disagree with her! There are occasional signs that Triva could actually be a good person, but somehow that doesn't look like a realistic possibility. Self-righteousness and goodness don't go well together.
She doesn't like me, and right about now the feeling has become mutual. As for Mike, he reminds us why so many people continue to view Southern Baptists as symbols of narrowness, sexism, meanness, and intolerance.
In the 2000 SC Primary, John McCain backed off on criticizing having the Confederate Flag fly above the capital. In 2008, McCain called his earlier position "an act of cowardice." Of course, John McCain is a 20th century model of American heroism.
Somehow, I have the strong feeling that terms like cowardism and heroism have little meaning to Mike Huckabee, who is the former but not the latter.
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2 comments:
Steve:
I'm trying to figure you out: What makes your clock tick? Maybe you could do something to help clear up that picture. I'd just ask, "Are you serious?
Honestly, it's difficult for me to believe that a literate person could seriously write some of the things that you do. But, maybe it's just a cultural difference. Maybe, those wacky things you write are not as rude and deceptive as they sound, but just so far impenetrable ignorance.
Disagree with me, fine. But, there's no cause for your your repeated disparagement of me. You do not read my responses to those things, they are irrelevant to a tactical case that you are trying to make, or you think I'm a shameless liar. Should I make that assumption about you? Call me mistaken, call me in error,but calling me a liar is a waste of time. I'm not taken to lying. I have moral problems with it. Somehow, my childhood burned that one in early. As a boy, I remember a few times that I lied to my father, and it about burned a hole in me.
I've told you that a constitutional amendment recognizing the human life of unborn children could not succeed, today. That's why we need a president with the mind and the facility to make the case to the public, just as with The Fair Tax.
And in case I DIDN'T tell you, I DON"T support a marriage amendment to The US Constitution, because it isn't and shouldn't be any of the federal government's business. Defining marriage is none of the federal government's province. Mike Huckabee said if someone from Washington came to Arkansas and told them what to do with their flag, "We'd tell them what to do with the pole..."
Some conservatives fear a federal judge will tell all states how they should define marriage. They should tell them what to do with their order, which is what states should have said about Roe v. Wade.
John McCain "faithered an illegitimate Black child." I hadn't heard that one, but it's ridiculous. To me, it isn't even despicable. It's idiotic. Perhaps, you aren't as naive as I am to find it impossible to see how that could be a political help to anyone. Where does one try to sell that? Mike Huckabee would feel the same way.
Back in the 80's, when he was a pastor, a young black man asked to worship in his white church. There was some resistance. Huckabee threatened to resign if the man was not accepted.
In case you didn't read my response to your comment at my blog, Huckabee did not embrace anything. He correctly said that it was for South Carolina to deal with, not anyone from Wasgington or anywhere else. You think not? You want the federal government to tell the states what they can and can'r do on every detail? And, you call yourself a Republican? Have you ever heard of the 10th Amendment? Huckabee refused to interfere. Incidentally, former SC Governor David Beasley, who has been helping and traveling with the Huckabee campaign, took the confederate flag down from public buildings in South Carolina when he WAS governor, and took the heat for it.
I have remarked before on your presumptuous and unkind comments about Treva. She's an admirable young woman, from what I can tell. My wife is working. Our children went to public schools, and my 17-year-old comes home with some ideas that I think are just falsehoods. But, consensus is a powerful thing. Facts are determined by actual states of affairs, including objective truth about moral obligation. Facts are not determined by how many times they are put in public print.
Larry, I'm have to consider your question about whether you're "a shameless liar." I tend to think you're more of a shill for Huckabee -- and incapable of making even mild criticism of him when he comes up with anti-Mormon comments (the Jesus and Satan as brothers nonsense) or appeals to the vestigial racists in SC with his celebration of the Confederate flag. As to your Christianity and Mike's, I just don't see it.
I brought up the scurrilous anti-American comments of your favorite pastor, Dr. Laurence Kuhn. At that point, it was your moral and intellectual obligation to point out how Kuhn had gone over the top. But you refrained from doing so because you lack any sort of honesty in your analysis of anything political. Mike Huckabee's web site reprinted a guest editorial by Kuhn, and that kind of action by a person running for Presidet is shameful. Huckabee shills will not agree with that assessment, although they can't refute it.
Huckabee's suggestion that the U.S. use the Bible as a template for revising the Constitution shows that he, as I have assumed for some time, has no understanding of the Constitution's rejection of an establishment of a particular religion.
As for Treva, I suggested in my nice way that it was not a good idea to put up all those pictures of her kids on the Internet. Apparently, she's dumb as brick because she's incapable of any serious reflection on the subject. She strikes me as a classic Huckabee supporter. He goal seems to be to "school" children that are bigoted and narrow-minded as she. Her assumption that her comments (perhaps a dozen) of them deserve posting while those of her critics don't tell us all we need to know about Treva.
One thing children, including hers, need to know is what it means to grow up in a free society, one where education takes precedence over indoctrination. In my view, she is crippling her childrens' capacity to live in a diverse society. The homeschooling enterprise in SC and some other states is mainly an effort to "shield" white children from contact with Blacks and other minorities, and it stinks.
My assumption about Mike, based on his lack of Christian ACTIONS is that his "faith" is mainy a political tactic. When he manifests some Christian BEHAVIOR, please let me know. Being anti-gay and anti-Black (as with the flag) is not Christian.
steve maloney
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