{"id":944,"date":"2015-05-07T20:26:09","date_gmt":"2015-05-08T01:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=944"},"modified":"2015-05-07T20:26:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-08T01:26:09","slug":"race-2016-mike-huckabee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/05\/07\/race-2016-mike-huckabee\/","title":{"rendered":"Race 2016: Mike Huckabee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Governor Mike Huckabee is throwing his hat into the ring again.\u00a0 His On the Issues Quiz <\/a>answers strike me as a doctrinaire hard line conservative:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The one exception might be his opposition to free trade.<\/p>\n

Ballotpedia <\/a>notes he had the computers in his office destroyed before he left the governorship of Arkansas.<\/p>\n

Steve Benen <\/a>feels a little ill concerning Mike’s activities between public service gigs:<\/p>\n

How sketchy? Huckabee\u2019s [e-mail] list has been used to<\/a> \u201cblast out links to heart-disease fixes and can\u2019t-miss annuities.\u201d And this isn\u2019t just some unfortunate part of his distant past \u2013 as recently as this year Huckabee was still sending<\/a> his mailing list bizarre messages \u201cabout food hoarding.\u201d
\nTo be sure, Huckabee isn\u2019t directly responsible for the often ridiculous messages, but these email addresses have gone out under his name and face<\/a>, giving the appearance of an endorsement.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s also not overlook the fact that Huckabee\u2019s lucrative snake-oil operation isn\u2019t limited to unfortunate uses of email addresses. Just two months ago, Huckabee also appeared in an infomercial-like video<\/a> in which he touted an \u201camazing\u201d treatment that can \u201creverse\u201d Type 2 diabetes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Council on Foreign Relations notes that he seems fixated on Islamism <\/a>and, in fact, says virtually nothing about the rest of the world:<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s the nature of modern presidential campaigning that candidates eventually have to stake a flag on foreign policy. Huckabee laid out his vision of \u201cAmerica\u2019s Priorities in the War on Terror<\/a>\u201d in a Foreign Affairs<\/em> article. He also took positions on issues such as democracy promotion in the Arab world<\/a>, Iran<\/a>, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict<\/a>, Russia<\/a>, and climate change<\/a>, though he said little or nothing about places like Africa<\/a>, India<\/a>, and North Korea<\/a>. …
\nHow would Huckabee defeat violent Islamic extremists? He has not laid out a specific blueprint, but in a recently released<\/a> ad, he strongly implied that the answer was force.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re dealing with Islamic jihad, that has as its goal the annihilation of everyone who does not agree with their absolute religious fanaticism, you\u2019re dealing with a rattlesnake\u2026As a kid growing up in south Arkansas, one thing I learned about rattlesnakes, you don\u2019t try to get in their head and figure out why they want to bite you. You don\u2019t try to have a conversation with them. You don\u2019t negotiate with them. You sure as heck don\u2019t feed them. You take their heads off with a four ten shotgun or a hoe before they bite you\u2014because the one thing that you can be sure of is that snake will bite you if he can.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Huckabee has yet to explain why his envisioned use of force would be more successful than George W. Bush\u2019s or Barack Obama\u2019s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The folks at the Advocate.com find little to like<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“It is a classic example of \u2014 really a page out of 1984<\/i>, when what things mean are the opposite of what they really are,” Huckabee told the Family Research Council president in early April, referring to the George Orwell novel about a dystopian future. “And that\u2019s what I\u2019m seeing here is that in the name of tolerance, there\u2019s intolerance. In the name of diversity, there\u2019s uniformity. In the name of acceptance, there\u2019s true discrimination.”<\/p>\n

He claimed that “intolerance” of Christians \u201cwon\u2019t stop until there are no more churches, until there are no more people who are spreading the Gospel, and I\u2019m talking now about the unabridged, unapologetic Gospel that is really God\u2019s truth.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

National Review notes he may have some tough sledding <\/a>in portions of the course lorded over by the anti-tax folks:<\/p>\n

[and] … the tax increases he didn\u2019t protest as governor, have earned him the enmity of the behemoth of conservative outside groups, such as the Club for Growth, whose president has promised the group \u201cwill make sure that Republican primary voters thoroughly examine his exceptionally poor record of raising taxes and spending as governor.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, if you accept that the average GOPer believes in torture, he has changed his ways for the better:<\/p>\n

If Huckabee is, to some conservatives, maddeningly stubborn in his fiscal heterodoxy, he\u2019ll be charting a different course on foreign policy than he did in 2008, an area where he struggled. Then, he called for the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and for \u201ctreat[ing] others the way you\u2019d like to be treated\u201d in matters of foreign affairs and diplomacy. In fact, he called that \u201cthe fundamental issue that has to be reestablished in our dealings with other countries\u201d as the Bush presidency drew to a close. This time around, he\u2019s sounded downright hawkish, promising to \u201clead with moral clarity in a dangerous world\u201d and to \u201ckeep all the options on the table in order to defeat the evil forces of radical Islam.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His website is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Governor Mike Huckabee is throwing his hat into the ring again.\u00a0 His On the Issues Quiz answers strike me as a doctrinaire hard line conservative: The one exception might be his opposition to free trade. Ballotpedia notes he had the computers in his office destroyed before he left the \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":947,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions\/947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}