SHOULD DEMOCRATS BE ROOTING FOR HUCKABEE TO WIN THE GOP NOD?

Yesterday Buzz Flash reported that the chief shaman at the Falwell Corporation, Jerry's son Jonathan, sent out memos about his version of a god intervening in the Republican caucus race in Iowa-- on behalf of Mike Huckabee.

According to Jonathan Falwell, presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee believes that it is God, not himself, who is behind his rise in the polls: "Mr. Huckabee also said that Divine providence was responsible for his recent surge in the polls in Iowa, as he noted that he is the candidate with much less capital firepower than his rivals."

Former Arkansas Governor Huckabee made his comments during a recent visit to the "hallowed" grounds of the Liberty University campus.

Huckabee mightily impressed "Falwell the Second" when he also "identified the 'fanatic religious zealotry' of Islamo-fascism as a 'real threat' that must be confronted to protect the American way of life."

Whether you believe in the religionist mumbo-jumbo from the world of fundamentalist hucksterism and the modern day Elmer Gantrys, one thing is undeniable: Mike Huckabee is climbing steadily in the Iowa polls. And though Falwell II may interpret this any way he likes, others can make an even better case that the gods are doing this as a favor to Hillary and the Democrats.

Huckabee is now ahead of Flip Flop Mitt, who Iowans have taken a good look at and rejected as a man with neither a moral compass nor a moral anchor and no believable values of any kind other than an insatiable lust for wealth and power. According to yesterday's Des Moines Register, "Huckabee wins the support of 29 percent of Iowans who say they definitely or probably will attend the Republican Party's caucuses on Jan. 3. That's a gain of 17 percentage points since the last Iowa Poll was taken in early October, when Huckabee trailed both Romney and Fred Thompson. Romney, who has invested more time and money campaigning in the state than any other GOP candidate, remains in the thick of the Iowa race with the backing of 24 percent of likely caucusgoers. But that's a drop of 5 points since October for the former Massachusetts governor." Giuliani has 13%, Frederick of Hollywood 9% and McCain managed to tie Ron Paul at 7%.

There are two opinion pieces in today's Washington Post that comment on this new development. One is by the ultimate Inside the Beltway hack, David Broder, who's pimpin' for an unlikely McCain/Huckabee ticket. No one knows Huckabee, the ex-governor of a small southern state-- except Broder, says Broder. He discounts the local Arkansas press, which has been following Huckabee's long and shameful career. But to hacks like Broder, local press is... well, beneath their pedigreed contempt. "Huckabee, who previously was known only to those of us who cover state government and governors, has been the surprise discovery of the campaign season. His combination of religious principle, good humor, tolerance and clear passion on education and health care complements McCain's muscular foreign policy and aversion to wasteful domestic spending."

George Will is usually about as relevant as Broder (i.e., not at all) but his rant today also looks at the Huckabee candidacy, and none too kindly.

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee's candidacy rests on serial non sequiturs: I am a Christian, therefore I am a conservative, therefore whatever I have done or propose to do with "compassionate," meaning enlarged, government is conservatism. And by the way, anything I denote as a "moral" issue is beyond debate other than by the uncaring forces of greed. His is a moralist's version of the intellectual vanity once ascribed to Oxford's Benjamin Jowett:
My name is Jowett
Of Balliol College;
If I don't know it,
It is not knowledge.
Many Iowans think it would be wise to nominate a candidate who, when the Republicans were asked during a debate to raise their hands if they do not believe in evolution, raised his. But, then, Huckabee believes America can be energy-independent in 10 years, so he has peculiar views about more than paleontology.

Huckabee combines pure moralism with incoherent populism: He wants Washington to impose a nationwide ban on smoking in public, show more solicitude for Americans of modest means and impose more protectionism, thereby raising the cost of living for Americans of modest means.

Although Huckabee is considered affable, two subliminal but clear enough premises of his Iowa attack on Mitt Romney are unpleasant: The almost 6 million American Mormons who consider themselves Christians are mistaken about that. And-- 55 million non-Christian Americans should take note -- America must have a Christian president.

Another pious populist who was annoyed by Darwin-- William Jennings Bryan-- argued that William Howard Taft, his opponent in the 1908 presidential election, was unfit to be president because he was a Unitarian, a persuasion sometimes defined as the belief that there is at most one God. The electorate chose to run the risk of entrusting the presidency to someone skeptical about the doctrine of the Trinity.

If Huckabee succeeds in derailing Romney's campaign by raising a religious test for presidential eligibility, that will be clarifying: In one particular, America was more enlightened a century ago.

And although Romney would be as bad a president-- if not worse-- as Taft, Huckabee is no William Jennings Bryan, a real populist whose entire life was dedicated to fighting for working men and women and for democracy. He was a scourge of the same big corporate and banking interests that Huckabee embraces. Huckabee is certainly "common" in his tastes and appeals but he will never be "The Great Commoner."

There is one point Huckabee has in his favor. His record traps him into supporting a reasonable and non-fascist solution to the immigration problem. While Tancredo is shrieking ominously about ending all immigration (to the nation of immigrants) and while CNN two-bit demagogue Lou Dobbs tries building TV ratings on a Know Nothing appeal to the ignorant and fearful, Huckabee joins McCain as one of the few Republicans willing to argue for a comprehensive approach that combines real border security-- which was purposely destroyed by the Bush Regime at the behest of corporate employers looking for cheap labor-- with an equitable solution for the 12-20 million people living among us without documentation.

Although he is primarily looking for cheap labor for his corporate supports-- like the Arkansas poultry industry-- Huckabee is probably more reasonable about immigration than the mostly frightened Democrats who have been taken in by Rahm Emanuel's siren song of catering to bigots and Know Nothings.

Back when he was governor, he got into a big public spat with a Tancredo-Shuler type in the Arkansas legislature, Denny Altes (R-KKK) of Fort Smith. He called the bill Altes and Republican state senator Jim Holt were trying to pass "inflammatory... race-baiting and demagoguery" and challenged the Holt's Christian values.

Huckabee said the bill, which seeks to forbid public assistance and voting rights to illegal immigrants, "enflames those who are racist and bigots and makes them think there's a real problem. But there's not."

...Huckabee, also a Republican and a Baptist minister, said Arkansans should be welcoming hardworking immigrants of all races. He singled out Holt, who often talks of his strong Christian beliefs, saying, "I drink a different kind of Jesus juice. My faith says don't make false accusations against somebody. In the Bible, it's called 'don't bear false witness.'"

Huckabee said Holt's plan to deny prenatal care for illegal immigrants goes against their shared anti-abortion principles-- that unborn fetuses should have a citizen's right to life. Joe McCutchen, the Fort Smith resident who lobbies for the immigration bill and has campaigned for tighter immigration restrictions around the country, called those fetuses "anchor babies."

I'm not sure if the "Christian" Conservatives would have considered Jesus an anchor baby or not but it was the religionist loons and the authoritarian and conservative forces of Society who felt most challenged by Jesus and his message. And they killed him. It's hard to imagine conservative Republicans getting behind him once they figure out (and look how long it took them to realize that Giuliani is a transvestite who promotes abortion, immigration, gays and everything else they've been taught to hate and fear) where he actually stands on immigration-- and on other issues near and dear to them. One of the extreme right bastions of the GOP, the Club for Growth, hates Huckabee with a passion. They claim he's a populist, which he certainly isn't. His "Fair Tax," is the most regressive, reactionary tax proposal any candidate has made and would make Bush's tax policies look populist in retrospect. But Club for Growth and other right-wingers look at what Huckabee did as a tax-and-spend governor, not as his promises to radically shift the tax burden further away from the rich and towards the middle class. (He also signed a minimum wage bill while he was governor, something they will never forgive-- even if they could get over the fact that he favored fair tuition breaks for undocumented immigrants after 3 years in Arkansas schools. Again, right-winger are looking at what he has already done, rather than at what he promises; in this case to change policy on birthright citizenship.)

And although a superficial look at Huckabee makes him look somewhat attractive on some levels, you don't have to dig too deeply before you realize he's just as bad as the rest of the pathetic pygmies™ that no one much likes. His corruption might be small potatoes when you put it up against Giuliani's but his record shows that given the chance he's rise right up to Giuliani's level. And although he hasn't had a whole flock of wives the way Giuliani has, like Giuliani, his wife has certainly had plenty of highly unethical benefits at taxpayer expense. I suspect Hillary's camp would be more than happy to go head to head with Huckabee any day of the week.