Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

I was promised a recession.

Republicans in disarray!

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

A consequence of cucumbers

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Consistently wrong since 2002

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Everybody saw this coming.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Open Thread: Rev. Huck-ster Jumps Aboard the Klown Kar

Open Thread: Rev. Huck-ster Jumps Aboard the Klown Kar

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This guy, I’m gonna have no trouble whatsoever mocking. Mike Huckabee’s the evangelical version of Donald Trump. He’s just ‘in the race’ to market his brand, and within a few months (if not weeks), he’ll return to officially dividing his time between Fox News and amenity-valuable speaking tours. Ben Jacobs reports for the Guardian:

… The former Arkansas governor, who announced his candidacy for the White House on Tuesday, has long been viewed as a mainstay of the evangelical wing of the Republican party. Huckabee, who finished second in the 2008 Republican presidential primary, hosted his own television show on Fox News and has been one of the most vocal proponents of conservative viewpoints on abortion and same-sex marriage.

But, to some in the conservative movement who are far more concerned about economic issues than social causes, Huckabee is anathema.

Perhaps Huckabee’s biggest intraparty political opponent over the past two decades has been the Club for Growth, the powerful pro-business Republican Pac. As Dave Weigel at Bloomberg News noted, Huckabee has feuded with the group since a 2001 battle over a congressional primary in north-west Arkansas, and the battle has continued since then…

Huckabee faces a crowded path to the GOP nomination in a field with more than a dozen candidates, including Rick Santorum, a fellow populist-leaning social conservative who finished second in the 2012 GOP presidential primary, as well as others, like Ted Cruz and Scott Walker, who fit similar niches…

Huckabee, Santorum, and Walker are all competing for what Mark Ames labelled the Spite Voters:

… In this country, tens of millions of people choose to watch FoxNews not simply because Americans are credulous idiots or at the behest of some right-wing corporate cabal, but because average Americans respect viciousness. They are attracted to viciousness for a lot of reasons…

… What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance–and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left’s wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America’s rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage…

Reader Interactions

80Comments

  1. 1.

    srv

    ACLU discovers spy flights over Baltimore

    As Benjamin Shayne settled into his back yard to listen to the Orioles game on the radio Saturday night, he noticed a small plane looping low and tight over West Baltimore — almost exactly above where rioting had erupted several days earlier, in the aftermath of the death of a black man, Freddie Gray, in police custody.

    perplexed, Shayne tweeted: “Anyone know who has been flying the light plane in circles above the city for the last few nights?”

    One of Shayne’s nearly 600 followers tweeted back a screen shot of the Cessna 182T’s exact flight path and also the registered owner of the plane: NG Research, based in Bristow, Va.

    What Shayne’s online rumination helped unveil was a previously secret, multi-day campaign of overhead surveillance by city and federal authorities during a period of historic political protest and unrest.

    Your friendly Obama IMSI Catcher – sucking up all your cell phones.

    Snowden was right.

  5. 5.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @srv: You know what? I don’t think surveillance flights over an area that’s seen rioting in the past week is necessarily such a bad idea. It’s possible that they could be collecting nefarious information, but it’s also possible that they are looking for signs of trouble.

  9. 9.

    Little Boots

    will the Republicans cough up one plausible candidate before the year is out?

  11. 11.

    trollhattan

    @Little Boots:
    They have to invent one first. Since the big RINO drive of 2000 sent all those pesky Republican centrists to the slaughterhouse, the bench isn’t shallow, it’s empty.

  14. 14.

    srv

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym: The Skylane has operated over SF. I didn’t know what it was until someone caught a picture of it after the IMSI story leaked.

    A Citation has circled SF for every World Series home game. Didn’t know they had a Citation until today. Obviously used for “Nat’l Security Events”

    No such event for the three day Skylane droning droning, two years back.

  16. 16.

    Tree With Water

    @srv: I was living in the upper Napa Valley when GW Bush paid two visits to a posh resort thereabouts. For a full week before the first visit, and for a few days before the second, monstrously huge military helicopters flew in echelon up and down the valley a couple times a day. The windows would start to rattle before you could see them… and all because GW is yellow to his core, as he proved time and again throughout his miserable-ass life. He choppered into the resort both times.

  18. 18.

    trollhattan

    @Little Boots:
    He of the “perfectly lubricated weathervane” shot at Willard, for which I will forever be grateful.

    Huntsman was demonstrably sane but his policies were well right of center, which only shows Overton Window or something.

  25. 25.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @srv: Your trolling can be brilliant. This wasn’t. Don’t get bitchy. Do better.

  26. 26.

    Tree With Water

    @srv: True story, or so I’ve read: LBJ was at a military base when a soldier said to him, “Your helicopter is right over here, sir”, to which Johnson expansively replied, “Son, they’re all my helicopters”.

  28. 28.

    J R in WV

    I don’t quite know what to think about these religious hucksters. Partly I think anyone who believes in a literal Devil ! and angels interfering in daily life on Earth must be either crazy or vastly stupid.

    But the other possibility is their deliberate and aware effort to lure people into their religious circle, tell them that they must tithe in order to be saved, and laugh all the way to the bank. I suppose there could be some kind of blend of these two influences in some religious people, but the ones that go into politics, no chance of any genuine religious beliefs. They just want power and money.

    A friend is an Episcopal minister, and was seated beside a fundamental minister on an airlines flight. They introduced themselves, and then did a little bit of shop talk. My friend was amazed when the other fellow asked “What’s your take?” because Episcopal minsters are employees with pension plans, health insurance, tax deductions, etc.

    Evidently protestant fundagelical ministers get a percentage of the daily take, that is the donations made into the baskets passed from pew to pew, filling up with cash. And this guy was curious what percentage Episcopal ministers got of their take! And was frankly disbelieving that the number was zero!

    How can you attract ministers on just a salary? What draw is there if you can’t get rich by persuading your “flock” to give more and still more, until you become rich!? Evidently believing in the salvation of Jesus, and the word of Gawd wasn’t where this guy was coming from at all.

    So I’m suspecting that Hucksterby is one of those guys, who doesn’t really care much about the religious aspects of what he is preaching. Politics, Jesus saves, Reagan was nearly Jesus reborn, whatever brings the rubes in. If he was willing to work for Faux News, clearly he has no morality nor ethics.

    The rest of the Republican slate of would be leaders of the free world seem at least as crooked as Hucksterby, although a few of them seem like they may be warped enough mentally to believe every bit of the contradictory slosh of nearly Biblical mythology they profess to preach.

    Santorum, for example. He might believe what he preaches, although it seems so far from what Jesus preached that I don’t know how he could actually call himself a Christian. Jesus believed in feeding the poor, caring for sick or injured strangers, and out of the ordinary things like that. Nothing that would appeal to a Republican of today.

    Think of any seeker of the Republican nomination, faced with a stranger, obviously foreign, lying on the sidewalk, bleeding a little, moaning. Who among the clown car inhabitants would kneel beside the stranger, and care for him, physically. Take his coat off and use it for a pillow. Maybe one or two of them would call for help on a cell phone.

    But actually touch that foreign invalid?

    No way!

    They might have Mooslium cooties!!!

    Wash the guy’s wounds with their Fiji water? I’m not thinking so. Which makes them not Christian according to my book.

    Voting to kill Social Security? Raise taxes on working class people while cutting them for the rich? Not Christian, not at all.

    Voting against cutting interest rates on student loans? Not Christian, not at all.

    Nuff said. Good night all.

  29. 29.

    KG

    If I could bet on the GOP primary, I’d probably put ten bucks or so on Huckabee, depending on the odds.

  30. 30.

    Hal

    Sigh. Jon Huntsman. The man whose name was misspelled on the press passes handed out by his own campaign at the announcement for his run.

    I’ve always been under the impression that he is both very sane and not a rwnj. Which means he’s doa.

    Also, just watched a repeat of Lawrence O’Donnell discuss the huckster with a panel that included my future ex husband Josh Barro. So glad he grew the beard back so he doesn’t look like a 20 year old anymore.

  31. 31.

    Anne Laurie

    @Little Boots:

    run that rhode island guy.

    Be kind of narrative-suitable if Lincoln Chaffee went from R to I to D, back to R. But I misdoubt the other Republicans would accept an ‘apostate’ as their proposed candidate, no matter how desperate the math!

  36. 36.

    Tree With Water

    @Adam: And there was congressman Pete McCloskey before him.. McCloskey single handedly nipped Pat Robertson’s political career in the bud, when Robertson had won a primary and was briefly a major player in the (1996?) republican presidential campaign. Turned out McCloskey and Robertson were lieutenants in the same Marine outfit, and shipped out to Korea together. Only when they reached Tokyo, Robertson’s father had pulled strings to have him permanently stationed there, something Robertson had bragged would happen when they reached Japan. The other Marines proceed on to Korea, and endured heavy combat and many casualties. McCloskey also polled three delegates (I think it was) at the 1972 republican national convention, having challenged Richard Nixon by running as an anti-war candidate. Republicans of his caliber are today as dead as Julius Caesar.

  37. 37.

    dmbeaster

    @srv: Breaking news. Unmarked planes gathering data on car vehicle traffic – sending the results to cops on the ground….

    In order to issue speeding tickets.

    Snowden was right, but I dont think he concerned about law enforcement using planes or helicopters.

  41. 41.

    Tree With Water

    @dmbeaster: I wonder how many traffic tickets pay for a tank of aviation fuel, a pilot’s payroll, and general maintenance of the aircraft in question? More than a few, I imagine.

  43. 43.

    J R in WV

    @Little Boots:

    Dude: sometimes you just gotta carry the weight by yourself.

    I do wish you guys would tell us what the youtube bits you’re posting. Or is part of the game surprising people with how good a pick you made?

    Hang in there, I’m going to bed.

  44. 44.

    srv

    @dmbeaster: Interesting conspiracy theory there. Somewhere between black helicopters and chemtrails.

    Let me know what the ACLU says.

  45. 45.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Hal: I’ve always been under the impression that he is both very sane and not a rwnj. Which means he’s doa.

    His move of quitting as BO’s ambassador to China and coming back to run against Obama and doing is so badly was so weird as to almost, emphasize almost, give credence to the idea I saw in some of the cobwebbier corners of the web that he was a Dem double agent in the GOP primary. Others said it was some kind of a feud among the Mormon elite and Old Man Huntsman thought the Romneys were uppity par-venoos.

  49. 49.

    srv

    @magurakurin: Well, that’s why they went to a Cessna Citation jet, at 10K’ feet. At night.

    Quite the red light/speeder platform there. I’m too simple to know how that would work, but maybe Redstate can loan their Beauchamp Sandbox to the local Obots to draw out.

  50. 50.

    Anne Laurie

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Others said it was some kind of a feud among the Mormon elite and Old Man Huntsman thought the Romneys were uppity par-venoos.

    Yes, it was established back in 2011 that the Huntsmans and the Romneys were the Mormon equivalent of the Hatfields & the McCoys. Jon was supposed to have come back from China specifically at his father’s request, but it was clear from every press conference that he & Willard also despised each other on a personal as well as a political level. Imagine if Bill Clinton had run as a Republican, how outraged George Herbert Walker would’ve been… one of those people, hijacking his party!

  51. 51.

    Culture of Truth

    Sure Americans can be selfish and mean, and yes the right embraces this and liberals do not, but that does not result in right wing political success and liberal failure. If the GOP embraces the Fox hate machine, I guarantee you they lose their fifth out of seven Presidential elections. That just doesn’t fly nationally anymore.

  52. 52.

    EconWatcher

    If you’re feeling bad about the current state of our politics, may I recommend a book I’m reading now–Brothers, by Stephen Kinzer. It’s a biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles (focusing most on the period when they were Secretary of State and Director of CIA, respectively).

    Holy cow, what a couple of a-holes. What’s really amazing is how openly and brazenly they were able to aggrandize themselves and their long-time law firm (Sullivan & Cromwell) while purportedly doing public service. I would hope you’d get disbarred for this stuff today.

  53. 53.

    mikefromArlington

    Baby Jebus created the EMP pulse to bring us back to the creation like times to start over as a race. All makes sense now.

  54. 54.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Tree With Water: It was 1988, and it was sweet beyond belief when McCloskey took the vile Robertson down. Robertson had been touting himself as a combat veteran, and McCloskey knew for a fact that Robertson was not, and pulled strings to avoid it..

  56. 56.

    Gene108

    @Culture of Truth:

    Oddly enough, between 1968-1992, when Democrats were losing all but one Presidential election, the Dems had a stranglehold on the House, usually a majority in the Senate and control of their fair share of state governments.

    Seems the “script” has flipped in the last 20 years, with Democrats having an easier run for the White House, but are losing ground at other levels of government.

  60. 60.

    Betty Cracker

    @J R in WV: One of my grandfathers was a Southern Baptist preacher and a right-wing nutter in his politics. But he lacked the grifting gene.

  70. 70.

    Kay

    Huckabee is useful for this though:

    Mike Huckabee drew roaring cheers from supporters on Tuesday as the latest entrant in a sprawling field of Republican presidential candidates by declaring himself the guardian of so-called entitlement programs, warning, “Let them end their own congressional pensions, not your Social Security!”
    But his pledge to fend off any tinkering with the popular Social Security and Medicare programs put him at odds with his Republican opponents, exposing growing fault lines in the party over an issue that has long been considered a political third rail.
    Yet the party’s base of white — and often older — voters includes many blue-collar conservatives who mistrust the government but depend on its programs for older Americans.

    I remember I got a chain email from a local conservative during the Tea Party days ‘o rage. It was about congressional perks- mostly made up. It said they got student loan forgiveness, some other things, and also PENSIONS.

    I don’t even know if the pension part is true. When I worked for the postal service they switched over to a 401k type program. Anyway, it’s pure nasty Huckabee-style to set pensions up against Social Security. It’s brilliant- both anti-government and pro-Social Security.

  72. 72.

    brantl

    Huckabee, Santorum, and Walker are all competing for what Mark Ames labelled the Spite Voters:

    Then it should be a three-way tie for the nomination, then, all Republican voters are spite voters.

  74. 74.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Little Boots:

    will the Republicans cough up one plausible candidate before the year is out?

    Yes, I starting to wonder if the GOP can even find a candidate who is capable of just wining the nomination. Everyone one whose announced has been a dud.

  75. 75.

    Chris

    @J R in WV:

    I think these preachers are the place where the big business wing and the racist SoCon wing of the GOP intersect.

  78. 78.

    Gex

    I think everything we need to know about the state of the Republican party can be summed up by the posts in this thread about Huntsman.

  79. 79.

    karen marie

    If by “populist-leaning social conservative” you mean “god-bothering, interfering-with-women’s-health-issues morality-scold,” sure. Otherwise, not so “populist-leaning.”

  80. 80.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Little Boots: Jeb Bush was supposed to be plausible, but I just saw on a CNN crawl that he’s a distant 7th in Iowa. I realize Iowa isn’t everything, or even much of anything, but if he’s 7th there he’s probably not in the top 3 anywhere. That kind of puts a dent in his plausibility. It’s also proof that even republicans are smart enough to be completely tired of failed Bush presidencies.

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