Fox News personality and former governor Mike Huckabee parachuted into Ohio yesterday to kick off the campaign to support former Fox News personality and governor John Kasich.
Governor Kasich has a long and profitable relationship with Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, and the news channel promoted his bid for governor, so I’m not surprised they’re again pulling out all the stops in my state.
Watch this if you’d like to see my governor stammering and stuttering as he presents an emotional defense of his former employer. It’s cringe-worthy.
Preacher Huckabee is either lying or uninformed on the state law he’s lecturing on, but, as we discovered in the health care debate, asking a conservative leader to read a law before he opens his mouth to opine on it is asking too much.
Huckabee defended SB 5 as a “reasonable, common sense” approach to Ohio’s budget woes while deflecting criticism that it is anti-union.
In many ways Senate Bill 5 goes further than the antibargaining law that Wisconsin’s Republican-led Legislature enacted in March over the protests of tens of thousands of union supporters. Ohio’s law allows only limited bargaining: If management and union do not reach a settlement, then city councils and school boards can impose their side’s final contract offer unilaterally. The Ohio law bans binding arbitration and bargaining on health coverage, pensions or staffing levels.
Huckabee continues:
“In every state and in every municipality in this country, there is a huge crisis going on. In Ohio, an 8 billion dollar one. And that has to be made up somewhere,” he said. “I don’t know how many Ohioans you’re willing to put out of work in order to fund a bigger and bigger and bigger government.”
Ohio does not now and never had an 8 billion dollar deficit. Governor Kasich’s budget director admitted it, months ago.
I know facts and preparation don’t matter when a millionaire media personality is opining on a law he hasn’t read and a budget he doesn’t understand in a state he doesn’t live in, but I am curious about how he earns that huge paycheck he receives.
Maybe Huckabee earns the big bucks at Fox for telling jokes like this:
“Make a list… Call them and ask them, ‘Are you going to vote on Issue 2 and are you going to vote for it?’ If they say no, well, you just make sure that they don’t go vote. Let the air out of their tires on election day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date. That’s up to you how you creatively get the job done.”
Is one or another police agency investigating the now-weekly allegations of criminality and corruption around Rupert Murdoch, or do I have to listen to his mouthpieces conduct yet another political campaign in my state?
Maude
I love it when You call the governor the Fox personality. I remember him from back when and once a sleeze ball, always a sleeze ball.
Huck is trying to suppress voting. He was nicer when he was fat.
arguingwithsignposts
I am continually amazed at how brazen they have become in advocating the dirty tricks they used to only whisper about in private conversations.
Lolis
It is still shocking to me how open Republicans are about trying to sabotage the voters who disagree with them, and the media’s utter disinterest in covering it. IMO, it was one of the major reasons we have the Congress we have now.
arguingwithsignposts
The pres is speaking now. CSPAN link.
kay
@Maude:
The Arkansas delegates to the Dem convention said he had surgery to lose weight, which (I believe) he denies. They were convinced. It was absolutely hysterical. I was interrogating them, and they couldn’t wait to tell me their theories. I was completely encouraging this behavior :)
arguingwithsignposts
@kay: The fact is Huckabee wasn’t even nice when he was fat. He’s always been a fundamentalist baptist preacher with the ideas that go along with it. But, like Rick Warren, he has an affable personality. That dickweed pastor of Rick Perry’s was on Bill Maher Friday night yucking it up. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to install a theocracy.
kay
@Lolis:
That’s not how they do it. They do it legally. By shunting disfavored voters to second class, “provisional” ballots that are less likely to be counted.
That way, people think they’re voting, which cuts down on a lot of bitching and unrest and such.
Maude
@kay:
I guess he doesn’t have the stomach to run for prez, but he canjust go around saying stupid things.
He lost too much weight to have done it without surgery.
kay
@arguingwithsignposts:
I never thought he had an affable personality. I always thought he was a nasty piece of work, under all that fake chuckling and twinkly-eye business.
Elizabelle
@kay:
Really appreciate your spotlighting GOP efforts to disenfranchise, especially younger voters and university students.
I think some of the energy behind OWS will translate into ensuring the young turn out to vote. And demand the 99%’s right to vote.
I hope.
kay
@Maude:
The theory is much more elaborate than that. It involves missed work, trips to SC clinics, all kinds of things. I don’t remember all the details, but they were SURE :)
Elizabelle
Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall at Fox News HQ this weekend?
The world is turning.
Maude
@kay:
Ooh, thanks, I didn’t know about that. Gossip can be a thing of beauty.
Amir Khalid
@Maude:
From the most resent picture of him that I’ve seen, it appears he’s getting fat again.
WereBear
I find the arguments for Huck to have done it with surgery quite compelling, but for me the most damning evidence was his own book on how he did it.
I’ve read a million of them… and Huck’s is a bland account full of platititudes. NOTHING about his struggles, about overcoming the lure of junk food or the thrill of the new pants… NOTHING.
And that’s just not how it happens. Losing weight is all about the minutiae, from the tiny plates that help someone to control portions to realizing sugar is what triggers a binge.
So yeah.. another lying hypocrite who is raking in the dough by doing so.
maya
If he did have stomach bypass surgery he cannot drink alcohol. Spike the punch wherever he appears. Same as letting air out of his tires. Which would obviously be, yuk yuk, a funny thing to do.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In the Lost Gospel of The Apostle Kochus, Jeebus says there’s an anti-union exemption to that whole ‘false witness’ thing.
cminus
To be fair to the Huckster, he did say that the figure was “made up somewhere”.
Anya
Isn’t there something in the bible about ” thou shall not bear false witness”? Huckabee the preacher bears a lot of false witnesses. He did it against gay families, the stimulus, President Obama, ACA and now he’s doing it in Ohio. Someone needs to hand Huckabee a Bible, stat.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
We must lay off cops, fire-fighters, teachers and social workers in order to decrease unemployment!
Krugman had a piece about this infantile “small government” shibboleth. These mouth-breathers have been remarkably successful in selling this nonsense.
WereBear
I never fell for it either; the mean little feral-hog eyes are a dead giveaway.
But he trades a great deal on the inbuilt respect people are taught for religious figures. A lot of nasty goes on under that cloak.
Rick Taylor
The important thing is that Huckabee is serious and willing to make hard choices. The substance of his views don’t matter, nor the fact he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Or at least that’s how the punditocracy treated Paul Ryan.
kay
This is my favorite from Tea Party people. I think it sums up the whole ideology. They want the full roster of fireman standing by to rescue their asses, but they simply don’t give a shit whether those people lose rights.
She likes the idea of ample staffing, in an abstract way, but once they rescue her they should be placed in cold storage or something, until her next emergency, when they magically spring to life.
kay
@WereBear:
Exactly.
Pundits are poor judges of character, I think. They thought John McCain was a great guy, and he’s clearly a mean-spirited, bitter, angry person. I don’t know how they missed that one.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@kay: The practice of having people believe they’re voting when they aren’t does indeed cut down on lots of bitching and unrest. Then it can tie up election results for nearly a year to date.
JPL
@kay: I don’t know how they missed that one. hahaha… MSM can be bought with barbecue and slaw.
Redshift
You know, I’ve heard a lot of political jokes told by speakers at Democratic events, and none of them involve encouraging dirty tricks to win by undermining the will of the people. Funny that.
I’m sure conservatives would consider it prime evidence of how liberals don’t have a sense of humor, just like our failure to be amused at all their other “jokes” about the powerless getting hurt by the powerful.
The Republic of Stupidity
Yeeeeeeeee gaaaaaawds that clip of Kasich defending Fox on Meet the Press is embarrassing…
After his political career is hopefully over, and if he can’t get rehired by Fox, Kasich will most definitely have no trouble finding work as a fluffer in adult videos…
If it hasn’t been covered here yet (and it most likely has…) a new Murdoch/news Corp scandal… this one in Europe…
Like I’ve been saying for years… anyone who takes Fox’s endless blathering about their popularity and what it means at face value gets what they deserve…
MikeJake
Cleveland Plain Dealer had a “vote ‘Yes’ on Issue 2” editorial today. They seem to think that, though flawed, any problems with Senate Bill 5 can be hashed out later.
Yeah right.
EIGRP
@Anya: It’s not false witness when a Republican talks like that. Just doing God’s work…
Eric
JCT
Huck is a nasty piece of work, every time he opens his mouth I feel like asking him WWJD?
And I have a bunch of medical colleagues at UA-Birmingham, and after he lost his weight they were all laughing over his gastric-bypass denials (that are sometimes very carefully parsed). The rapid timecourse of his weight loss screams g-b, not to mention his post-procedure pallor that persists.
Honestly, I could care less if he wants to lie about how he lost his weight IF only he wouldn’t lead others to believe that he was able to acheive this simply by diet, exercise and a good dose of moralizing. It’s cruel to all of the folks who struggle with obesity and the horrible co-morbidities that accompany it. Not to mention it’s a fucking disaster in his home state.
Kasich and Huck deserve each other.
/rant
Matt
“That’s up to you how you creatively get the job done.”
Ol’ Huck is just ITCHING for people to start trying out some “Second Amendment remedies” to people voting against the GOP, isn’t he? I’d love to be shocked – but at this point another conservative who’s decided, given a choice between losing power and destroying democracy, that democracy’s gotta go isn’t really a shock at all. Where’s Zombie Thomas Jefferson when we need him? :)
Ash Can
After that “take a jackhammer to the UN” phone message Huckabee sent out on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, any slack I was ever willing to cut him went right down the crapper. He’s as bad as any of the rest, and possibly worse.
FlipYrWhig
@kay:
That’s actually pretty easy to explain. For a politician, McCain is more willing to be (or seem) uncensored. He apparently charmed the press with stories of raising hell, getting loaded, chasing tail, etc. If you’re an easily-bored reporter, you don’t want a Bill Clinton or Al Gore talking your ear off about some kind of _policy_. You want to hear about nailing broads.
And, for that matter, reporters even love mean-spirited, bitter, angry people who _don’t_ have Tales of Foreign Sexytime — to wit, Chris Christie.
SiubhanDuinne
@kay:
Didn’t he have a son who tortured dogs, or deliberately killed a dog, or something equally unsavory? I hope I’m not slandering/libeling anyone here, but that’s what sticks in my mind about Huck.
JCT
@SiubhanDuinne
Yes, dirtbag son hung/ killed a dog at a Boy Scout camp.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Yep. Good ole’ Mike pHuckabee. The guy who released a violent serial rapist out of prison (who promptly raped two more women and killed one) because Jesus said so.
Needless to say if pHuck were a Democrat … Well, you know how that works.
However, I’m surprised Mikey didn’t some how blame this all on the horrible gays doing gay stuff. That’s been his favorite schtick for a while.
scott (the other one)
The tale of Huckabee’s son and the dead dog.
WereBear
What is it with dogs and Republicans?
Not that they treat humans any better.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@JCT: One of his brood was also busted for trying to take a gun on a commercial flight.
‘Cos you know, 9/11 changed everything except the right of reaLAMEricans to take their detachable pen1ses where ever they go.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Can you imagine the nonstop outrage in the MSM if any nationally known Democrat said:
“Make a list… Call them and ask them, ‘Are you going to vote on Issue 2 and are you going to vote against it?’ If they say no, well, you just make sure that they don’t go vote. Let the air out of their tires on election day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date. That’s up to you how you creatively get the job done.”
There would be calls for an investigation of election tampering. And of course it’s okay to misrepresent Grandmothers if you’re on the side of King John. There should be a Huckagate right there with Grannygate. Creeps, each and every one of the Rs who only want to win, not to govern (which I recognize is 99% of them).
rikyrah
thank you for keeping us updated on these sociopaths
catclub
@arguingwithsignposts: Although I agree with you that he was never _particularly_ nice. The reasons that he failed in the 2008 primaries were that he was considered toxic by the big money republicans
( in other words, possibly human) and that he actually did raise taxes in order to improve the welfare state in Arkansas. Not much or enough to make a socialist utopia of Arkansas, but enough to cheese off the vindictive side of the GOP.
catclub
@SiubhanDuinne: The other thing about Huck was that money tended to stick to his fingers. He also had the Governor’s computers erased when he left office. Yet, he still had enough baggage that he decided not to run for pres, since the FOX gravy train was good enough.
I will also note that he was hated by the Club for Growth wing fo the GOP ( a vote that implies he is more human than that group can stand) because he raised taxes in Arkansas – and not just to give to cronies. Some good may have come of it.
nancydarling
@scott (the other one): A few years ago, the same son was caught boarding a flight out of Little Rock International with a gun in his carry-on. He said he forgot he had it in the bag. I can’t remember what the final outcome was or if charges were ever filed.
Chris
@WereBear:
As someone who gets most of his news from Internet rather than TV sources, I never saw enough of him to judge on those standards. I just knew that he’d called for segregating homosexuals from the general public in the AIDS crisis, and called for the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank by moving all the Palestinians to some vaguely defined new homeland to be carved out of Egyptian or Jordanian territory.
The man’s a psychotic, and I continue to think “he’s the kind of person I can see loading non-Christians onto cattle cars” is the best description I’ve heard of him.
Nutella
@arguingwithsignposts:
And isn’t that “joke” a conspiracy to commit felony voter suppression? Not that I’m up on Ohio law, either, but it sure sounds like he’s telling people to commit a crime.
Calouste
@Anya:
It’s “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor“. And as Huckabee doesn’t live on 1602 Pennsylvania Avenue nor has any gay neighbors, he is all in the clear in his corrupt little mind.
Linda
How hard up is Kasich that he is calling in a celeb from Fox? Do you see any Ohio GOP heavies campaigning for this? Like…um…the last 2 Republican governors, Taft or Voinovich? No? Hell, Kasich is lucky they aren’t publicly coming out against it, as the two of them did when an Ohio water bottler/legislator tried to ram through a bill removing Ohio from the Great Lakes Compact. That was so self-serving that Kasich vetoed it. Barbara Sears and the current House Repub leadership are battling for it, and my own dumber-than-a-post Mayor Bell of Toledo, but most municipal leaders are coming out against it or keeping their mouths shut.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Anya: It’s something that the Moonies refer to has “heavenly deception”.