Good coverage of anti-Catholic comments by Huckabee supporter

If you haven't heard, one of Mike Huckabee's supporters in Iowa (ironically, a minister named "Rude") made some anti-Catholic comments in an email sent to Evangelical supporters of Sam Brownback.

Well, I just came across this excellent coverage of the situation. The Maritime Sentry: Catholic League Responds To Bigoted Comment By Rev. Rude - UPDATED WITH GOV. HUCKABEE'S STATEMENT

Updated:

Here was Huckabee's statement (received via email) disclaiming the (Rev.) Rude comment:

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee Issues Statement About Campaign Supporters

July, 31 2007

LITTLE ROCK, AR – Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee Tuesday issued the following statement in response to media inquiries about an e-mail issued by Rev. Tim Rude in Iowa:

“We are glad that Rev. Rude issued an apology and clarification for his comments. They were not authorized by, disseminated by, approved by, or condoned by the campaign. Our campaign enjoys strong support from Catholics as well as evangelicals, and for that matter, from people whose support is not faith-based at all. I have spoken in Catholic churches and maintained a strong relationship with Christian brothers and sisters from many denominations.

“While I’m deeply grateful that many people of faith support me because they know I represent views compatible with theirs, I know that there are many others who support me because of an effective record of achieving results. Either way, I’m grateful for the support.

“I consider Sam Brownback a Christian brother and know that he feels likewise toward me. Like Senator Brownback, several key members of my staff are Roman Catholic. As believers, we don’t have time to fight each other. We need to focus on having a servant’s spirit and bringing hope to those who have given up.”

Can't a guy get any respect?

Many Democrats (begrudgingly) praise Mike Huckabee (for his temperament and winsomeness), but calling him a Democrat is a bit much, I'd say. I just came across this article ("Plight of the poor emerges as an issue / Candidates Edwards and Brownback offer heartfelt proposals") from the San Francisco Chronicle that puts Huckabee in the "D" column:

"By early summer, the Pew Forum had posted anti-poverty profiles for 10 candidates: Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney on the Republican side, and Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson among the Democrats."

Anyway, let me say that I always bristled at Dubya's use of the qualifier "Compassionate" with the word "Conservative," and I reject the notion that a candidate only cares about "the plight of the poor" if s/he proposes some gov't scheme to seem to be doing something about it.

On the subject of poverty, "John Edwards Vows To End All Bad Things By 2011," | The Onion - America's Finest News Source.

(You'll also find this posted at WisdomisVindicated.

Huckabee and others viable despite numbers

This report Arkansas News Bureau - Huckabee touts momentum, not money explains how candidates like Huckabee cannot be counted out--so many Republican voters are still "in play"

: "Despite the widening money gap, Goldford and others said the former Arkansas governor still has a chance to emerge as the Republican choice since many party voters remain undecided six months ahead of the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses."

. I sure hope so.

That being said, Fred Thompson's "official" entry into the race will help many voters make a decision . . .

cross-posted at WisdomisVindicated.

Irony of the Day: Michael Moore, Inc. accuses someone of media stunting

I just read (via sloanereality.blogspot.com) that Michael Moore Inc. and Mike Huckabee are mixing it up a little. ("Huckabee : Filmmaker Moore an example of health care problems").

It appears that Huckabee was asked during a 7/11 conference call with journalists to comment on Michael Moore's crocumentary "Sicko." As Huckabee often does, he turned the discussion about healthcare toward preventable maladies like obesity and heart disease.

But both the AP writer and the spokeswoman for Moore imply that Moore is the target of mean ol' Republicans or just greedy/contribution-hungry ol' GOP Presidential candidates.

"Looks like Mike Huckabee is auditioning for some insurance company dough, since he's raised just about no money and sparked zero interest since jumping into the race," O'Hara said in a response provided by Moore's production office. "I wonder what the good governor would say to the French, who drink more, smoke more, eat more cheese and still live longer than us despite paying less for health care?"

. At the end of the article, they reference Fred Thompson's youtube RESPONSE to a verbal assault from Michael Moore earlier in the Summer. In that instance, Moore threw some elbows at Thompson in an apparent effort to generate attention just prior to the release of "Sicko," but now it is handy for characterizing Moore as a Republican punching bag.

Further irony is that Huckabee is probably most sympathetic to Moore's premise that something has to be done to reform the American healthcare system. But I guess a knee jerk reaction by Moore is predictable given that Moore can only conceive of one prescription for everyone else's problems: socialism.

Huckabee Blogcall -- 7/11/07

I participated in a blogger conference call for Huckabee today, and have a couple of observations. I asked two questions on the call, both related to Sen. Sam Brownback--Huckabee's main competition for Conservative Republicans.

First I asked Huckabee to comment on Brownback's votes last week in favor of and then in opposition to cloture on the "Immigration Reform" bill. Huckabee's response was very gracious, but substantive. He said (and I'm paraphrasing),

"It demonstrates the difficulty of running for president after having served in the senate–you are vulnerable to challenges for having taken both sides of issues."

Later I asked his Iowa Campaign Chair, Bob Vander Plaats, what his reaction was to the Brownback campaign's announcement of his "Faith and Family Leadership Committee"--a group of 50 Iowan Religious Conservatives backing him for president.

I have to admit I was surprised by the news report ("Religious conservatives get behind Brownback in Iowa")--though I wouldn't be able to judge--from looking at the names, how "impressed" I should be by the announcement.
But I was more surprised to hear Vander Plaats say that he wasn't aware of the announcement, an announcement that I heard about on July 7th. Like me, Vander Plaats said that he would have to see the list of names to be able to comment on the import of the announcement. (Here's the list.) But he also said (and I'm paraphrasing) “Iowans aren’t as impressed with who endorses a candidate as they are with the candidate.” I suppose that's true in most campaigns aside from certain EXCEPTIONAL endorsers.

All in all, another great opportunity to witness Huckabee's noteworthy ability and willingness to answer any and every question posed to him.

also posted at WisdomisVindicated.

Romney and his stem cells device

I inadvertently came across an op/ed from the Mitt Romney campaign today and it struck a bad note with me. Mitt Romney on Stem Cells on National Review Online. While I want this blog to focus on Huckabee's strengths rather than other candidate's weaknesses, I feel like this is a good opportunity to articulate why at this stage of the contest I prefer Huckabee over Romney.

Romney's piece is intended--I would surmise, as a means for Romney to demonstrate his ability to see beyond politics (and the subset of that, "be above the DC/Federal/Partisan game"). It also can serve to signal to the casual reader/voter/thinker--who also happens to be "socially Conservative," that Romney has this issue on his mind. This last use is valuable because Romney asserts that his "conversion" on the abortion issue (a couple years ago) happened in the context of this debate while he was Governor of Massachusetts.

But I have some problems with what Romney writes. First, Romney implies that people on both sides of the stem cell debate are extreme:

Opposing advocates (ed.: that's an interesting phrase--"opposing advocates"; in any event that's folks like me) told me that the pluripotency of stem cells — their ability to become a very wide variety of different cell types — would not be of great therapeutic value, and that other sources of tissues and cells could serve the same purpose. But they ignored the unique role pluripotent cells could play in basic science.

Uh, not exactly; no one on my side of the debate was ignoring anything, it's just that someone whose position on this is based on the principle that innocent human life--regardless of the stage, is sacred does not feel compelled to accept embryonic harvesting (and certainly not taxpayer funding of such) just because there is some advantage to humans at other stages of development; and the argument is even less compelling when such advantage is merely potentially advantageous.

Next, Romney seems to say that it's about time that everyone began to adopt his prescient position on the issue. Writing in light of (and in reference to) medical discoveries only coming to light in the last few months, Romney implies that his position has always been based on an understanding that adult stem cells contained the same pluripotency (so to speak) as embryonic stem cells:

Couldn’t the strongest part of each side’s argument — the utility of pluripotent cells on the one hand and the importance of protecting human life on the other — be brought together? I studied the issue for many months, and entered into conversation with experts from across the nation who were looking for consensus solutions, like Stanford’s Dr. William Hurlbut. In the end, I became persuaded that the stem-cell debate was grounded in a false premise, and that the way through it was around it: by the use of scientific techniques that could produce the equivalent of embryonic stem cells but without cloning, creating, harming, or destroying developing human lives.

A number of such techniques have begun to emerge in recent years, and as last week’s exciting scientific publications showed, some of the world’s best stem-cell scientists are hard at work bringing them to fruition.(emphasis added)

Frankly, the difference between now and then is that some people were willing to destroy human embryos for research and others said, we have to find another way. These new developments merely make the principled position easier to swallow.

Romney correctly points out that these developments change the dynamic of the debate and that Democrats--for apparently political and certainly intolerant reasons, aren't interested in fighting the stem cell battle on these new terms. After all, it is easier to demagogue the issue and characterize Conservatives as anti-science, fanatically-pro-life, and compassionless on the old terrain. But Romney's corollary theses are insulting to me.

I doubt Romney contemplated that this latest communications tactic on the stem cell issue could be a slight to "social Conservatives"; however, Romney's op/ed is only slightly more generous (toward Religious Conservatives) than the Democrats' treatment of the issue. That's unfortunate, and it is one reason I am supportive of someone like Mike Huckabee, whom I'm confident has not had a "Road to Des Moines" experience on an issue this important to me.

Dem opp research in full swing v. non-candidate

An article I've just read helps demonstrate the problem with endorsing a candidate too early or before "all the facts" are in; though, I'm not sure about the implications of such reports on a Thompson campaign.

The L.A.Times ("Thompson star dims on abortion issue") is getting up to speed on its opposition research, especially in light of the fact that Fred Thompson is technically still only considering a run for president. Either they're doing some extraordinary digging, or they're lapdogging the abortion-is-AOK lobby. Witnesses and corroborating witnesses et al are being sourced for the story that Fred Thompson lobbied on behalf of the chipper-sounding "National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn."

But I like this choice paragraph from the article: "In 1991, according to several people then affiliated with the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn., [Thompson] accepted an assignment from the association to lobby the White House to withdraw or relax a 'gag rule' that barred abortion counseling at clinics that received federal money."I like the convoluted way they describe the legislation; I guess it was a little difficult to craft a sentence that used the term "gag rule."

Of course, this news (even with the denials) will serve to unsettle Conservatives, but many are opting for ultra-pragmatism going into '08 . . . emphasis on "ultra" and "going into" . . . there's plenty of time between now and the primaries. Even John Kerry had to mortgage his wife's house to stay afloat after losing in Iowa. But too many Republicans are obsessing on guessing what voters think (or will think) come some future date against an unknown candidate that they're choosing the the "lesser of" before a choice is necessary. Come on folks, just because Huckabee hasn't been a national celebrity to date doesn't mean you should dismiss him.

More or less crossposted at Wisdomisvindicated.

Newsmax's Huckabee hit piece

As I've noted elsewhere this morning (here) , I am kind of disappointed in Newsmax.com for publishing a hit piece today about Mike Huckabee. Here's the link. Huckabee's Record: Anything But Conservative.

The reason I categorize it as a "hit piece" is because the article is listed under "Top News" yet it merely recycles a lot of old data/news and it is more or less an op/ed. In sum, it wasn't "news" and it wasn't a "report."

Oh, and it was published on the day before almost all "news" will go silent for the Fourth of July holiday--it's what Conservative news junkies will be reading during this slow news period. I personally don't read Newsmax, but I know it is a favorite site for many in the so-called GOP base.

Regarding the substance of the hit piece, I've posted a little bit in the past about Huckabee's economic record.

Huckabee Blogger Conference Call and Home Ec hardballs

I commend candidates like Mike Huckabee and Nashville Mayoral candidates who are reaching out to bloggers, but--especially on the Presidential level, it is a serious risk for the campaign . . . a risk that your candidate will react the way a normal non-candidate would to some of the stupid questions they are asked. This reminded me of Fred's touch-down in Nashville last week.

I guess there is the same danger with a professional journalist audience; but it's kind of a different type of "danger." I was eager to get Huckabee's reaction to what has all the appearances of a hit piece in Newsmax.com today--I say "hit piece" because it is recycling a lot of old data, is categorized under "Top News!" and it has a thesis akin to an op/ed and unlike a news report.

I was also interested to get his reaction to disappointing fundraising numbers for this quarter, but, alas, some blogger used precious con call to follow up their question (from the last conference call) about teaching home economics in schools.

The savvy and kindness with which Huckabee handled the Home Ec hardball is a credit to him and his strengths as a candidate . . . but the buzz in the blogosphere on the subject of Huckabee today is not likely to focus on the value of teaching teenagers how to make french toast.

cross-posted at WisdomisVindicated.