There Are Two Teds

Yesterday, Fox News Sunday was unable to book the serious candidates so they got stuck with Long Island neocon Peter King and the Rev. Huckabee, who's on the verge of dropping out of the race. Huck says he won't drop out if he can do well in Iowa though. And he's gone on the attack against Iowa frontrunner, Ted Cruz, the candidate in the race further to the right politically than even he is. The ad above, from Huckabee's SuperPAC, Pursuing America's Greatness, is a case to conservatives-- albeit a poorly executed one-- that Cruz is not to be trusted because he's just another two-faced phony who will sell them out, no better than Paul Ryan.

On Fox, Huckabee defended the highly edited ad claiming there is "nothing deceptive" to it. "The point is that in Iowa he’s made a major point, and he’s pitched to evangelicals as a person who is utterly authentic; he’s going to fight for religious liberty [right-wing code for intense homophobia]; he’s going to protect the right of people to disagree with decisions on same-sex marriage. But that’s not what you heard in that Manhattan fundraiser and that's the only thing that I have pointed out." He slipped when he said "I," giving away the fact that he's legally coordinating with the SuperPAC, just like all the crooked politicians do (and never get punished for). He even went out of his way to further lie about it by saying "I had nothing to do with the ad... So there is no coordination or communication there."

The ad was basically paid for by two Huckabee supporters, Ronald Cameron, a rich chicken processor from Little Rock who inherited the company his grandfather started in 1914, Mountaire Corp, and who gave $3,000,000 to Huckabee for the SuperPAC-- that's $3,000,000 out of the total of $3,604,987 the Huckster has raised for it. Cameron, a major Tom Cotton backer, normally gives money through Club for Growth and the Koch Brothers' Freedom Partners Action Fund (to which he gave a million dollars last year).

The other person who chipped in to pay for the ad is Sharon Herschend of Herschend Family Entertainment, owners and/or operators of Dollywood, Silver Dollar City in Branson, Wild Adventures in Valdosta, Georgia, the Harlem Globetrotters brand, Ride the Ducks, and Stone Mountain, (the Confederate Mount Rushmore and a birthplace of the KKK). Sharon gave Huckabee $500,000 for his poisonous little SuperPAC.

Meanwhile this is the emotionally charged ad Cruz has been running all week in Iowa, red meat obviously aimed at evangelicals and right-wing ideologues. He's taken a a bit of a beating lately-- the right-wing New Hampshire Union-Leader refers to him as "Pander Cruz"-- about being a two-faced politician-- even before Huck hammered it home on Fox yesterday, and the whole "Trust Ted/Trusted" thing should help him come out with a solid win in the caucuses there.