Former Arkansas Governor and Republican Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee announced today the endorsement of professional wrestling legend "Nature Boy" Ric Flair, the former 16-time World Heavyweight Champion known worldwide for his "stylin' and profilin'" personality and his signature "Whooooooo" with which he ends interviews. …
"It's a tremendous honor to offer my support to such an outstanding leader as Mike Huckabee" Flair said. "His authentic conservative qualifications and level of executive leadership experience are unmatched by his opponents. And like I always say, to be the man, you've got to beat the man and Mike Huckabee is the man. Whoooooooo!"
Perhaps Huckabee is seeking to bolster his foreign policy credentials, given Flair’s experience fighting “The Iron Sheik.” Or maybe Huckabee is trying to counter the efforts by the Club for Growth to paint him as an economic populist:
In other entertainment news, Huckabee also garnered endorsements from motivational speaker Zig Ziglar and “Left Behind” co-author (and former “Gil Thorpe” writer) Jerry Jenkins.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 11/9/2007 12:24 pm
If this turns out to be true, it’ll likely do significant damage to Mitt Romney’s effort to secure the GOP nomination by pandering himself into the Right’s good graces – via The American Spectator’s “Washington Prowler”:
Dr. James Dobson, who has largely been made irrelevant to the 2008 Republican presidential race, has apparently found his man, and according to an adviser, is ready to change the landscape of the Republican nomination race.
"He is the leader of the evangelical and social conservative movement in America, and he's going to reassert that position and leave no doubt that he's in charge," says the adviser based in Colorado.
Sources close to Dobson say that within the next ten days he is coordinating an endorsement plan with the presidential campaign of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. According to a Huckabee insider in Iowa, the event would be staged in that state at a rally, followed by a bus tour across the state, and an appearance by Huckabee on Dobson's radio show, which is heard nationally.
Dobson's endorsement, according to the Huckabee source, could mean millions in fundraising to the campaign, allowing it to compete at the same level with the top tier candidates Huckabee has been inching toward in the polls after a series of strong debate and campaign appearances.
Huckabee has already secured a handful of right-wing endorsements; enough to mobilize those who oppose him to try and sink his nomination. So this will be a real test of Dobson’s influence to see if he can get other leaders in the movement to back Huckabee and, more importantly, to see if they possess enough influence to propel Huckabee into top tier and help him overtake the current frontrunners.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 10/26/2007 4:25 pm
Fresh off his resounding victory at the Values Voter Debate in Florida and his first place (depending on how you count) finish in the straw poll at the Values Voter Summit, it seemed as if Mike Huckabee’s campaign was gaining traction – for a while, at least.
After all, following the Summit, a group of right-wing leaders met to discuss their options going into the 2008 election and many appeared ready to come out in favor of Huckabee:
Phil Burress, president of the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values and member of the executive committee of the Arlington Group, declined to talk about the meeting but said he has personally decided to support Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister. Another well-respected Christian conservative leader, Kelly Shackleford, a Texas lawyer, is also expected to come out on behalf of Mr. Huckabee in the coming days.
Since the summit, Huckabee has hit double digits in the polls for the first time, saw his fundraising skyrocket, and even picked up the endorsement of Joe Carter, who is not only Director of Web Communications for Family Research Council but also an influential blogger in his own right.
His progress appears to have prompted others on the Right, such as the Club for Growth’s Pat Toomey, to take his campaign seriously and mobilize to stop it:
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 10/23/2007 3:57 pm
Heading into the recent Values Voter Summit, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins was careful to make clear that it was unlikely that any one candidate would emerge from the event as the Right’s candidate of choice, thus rescuing them from their current dilemma and confusion. But he also predicted that the event would at least help narrow down the field a bit:
“These are the influencers, these are the talkers,” Perkins said of the attendees that will take over the Washington Hilton hotel. “This could be when things start to shake out and a candidate begins to emerge with a certain level of support. I don’t think anybody’s going to walk away with a lock, but maybe one or two candidates, maybe three, will begin to take off with strong support from the base.”
The one candidate who got the biggest boost from the Summit was Mike Huckabee, who came in second place in the straw poll and was the overwhelming favorite among those in attendance – something which, oddly enough, only seems to have confused things further:
The influential social conservatives who comprise the Arlington Group met over the weekend to discuss the possibility of endorsing a presidential candidate and could not reach a consensus, according to a source familiar with the process.
Though leaders of the individual organizations may make their own endorsements, those selections "cannot be considered a blanket endorsement by the 'Religious Right,'" according to the source.
While many leaders want to endorse fan favorite Mike Huckabee, others are more hesitant. The source informed me that "the dilemma is over whether to choose the preferred candidate of their constituents or go with the pragmatic choice and risk offending our base."
According to the source, James Dobson of Focus on the Family likes Mitt Romney, Gary Bauer of American Values prefers Fred Thompson, and Don Wildmon of the American Family Association likes Huckabee. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council is still on the fence, but nearing a decision.
In fact, very little has changed: Supporting McCain or Giuliani was never much of a possibility and the right-wing leadership has always been torn between Romney, Thompson, and, to a lesser extent, Huckabee. The only new development is that some are becoming more willing to openly back Huckabee:
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 10/23/2007 9:10 am
One of Mike Huckabee’s points of pride is that he alone among the remaining Republican presidential candidates, does not feel the need to pander to the Religious Right because, as he puts it, "I come today not as one who comes to you, but as one who comes from you” – a point he also emphasized when he appeared at the Values Voter Debate back in September.
But despite the rock-solid right-wing record and credentials, he just hasn’t been able to capitalize on the discontent plaguing the movement’s most influential organizations and leaders who seem to be just looking for reasons not to support him. For instance, last week Tony Perkins and Gary Bauer held a conference call for reporters in which they faulted Huckabee’s apparent lack seriousness regarding the threat of “radical Islam”:
Neither Perkins nor Bauer muster a great deal of enthusiasm for the candidacy of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, even though he has strong evangelical credentials. Mr. Huckabee attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, served as a Baptist pastor, and later was president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.
"While Governor Huckabee is very good on all the social issues, he has not seemed to find solid footing on the issue of the threat internationally from radical Islam," Perkins said.
"In a major foreign-policy address a couple of weeks ago that did not get much attention … in the middle of the speech [Huckabee] went after the Bush administration on not aggressively negotiating enough with Iran and suggested that the administration needs to offer economic incentives for Iran to change its policy," Bauer said. "That just struck me as a very naive approach."
That message obviously wasn’t lost on Huckabee, who now seems to be trying to cram tough-guy talk into his speeches at every opportunity, telling the audience at the Values Voter Summit:
I fear that many Americans simply are not fully aware of the depth of threat we face from Islamofascism. And I’m afraid that if we do not wake up and understand that this threat is one that we cannot negotiate, accommodate, or placate – it is one which we must eradicate, because we they don’t care whether it takes 1,000 days or 1,000 years, their goal is not simply to make sure that your grandchildren don’t live as well or have as nice a home. They don’t want your grandchildren to ever live at all ... Ladies and gentlemen, our nation, our world, our freedom has never faced the level of threat that we currently face. We can fight those countries who have a war over borders and boundaries, who fight with bullets and with bombs and who fight under the banner of flags, but we cannot completely ever fully understand the depth of fanaticism that drives Islamofascism, and that’s why we must make sure that every American understands that the threat of our freedom is real. It’s going to be here. And we cannot have the naïve idea that if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone. That will get us killed.
He trotted out a similar line during the recent Republican debate in Florida, warning that if Hillary Clinton becomes president” our military loses its morale, and I'm not sure we'll have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this country's ever faced in Islamofascism.”
Huckabee was the overwhelming favorite among those who attended the Values Voter Summit, and it is not hard to see why:
He called for a constitutional amendment declaring marriage to be between a man and a woman and decried the "holocaust of liberalized abortion."
"We do not have the right to move the standards of God to meet cultural norms. We need to move the cultural norms to meet God's standards," he said, bringing the crowd to its feet.
With his campaign and prospects slowly gaining steam, perhaps all Huckabee needs to put him over the top is regular doses of manly talk about just how tough he’ll be in facing down “Islamofascism.”
Submitted by Peter Montgomery on Sunday, 10/21/2007 10:34 am
Immediately after Tony Perkins announced the result of the FRC Action straw poll, in which Mitt Romney edged Mike Huckabee by 30 votes out of 5,775 cast, Huckabee boosters cried foul – and reporters peppered Perkins with questions about the legitimacy of the poll.
Turns out that Huckabee won a majority of the votes cast in person at the Values Voter Summit, 51 percent, and Romney only took 10 percent. Some unknown number of votes were cast online by people who also attended. But other votes were cast anytime online between August and Saturday. That’s how Ron Paul showed up in third place with 865 votes even though he was picked by only 25 in-person voters.
Huckabee’s clear victory in the in-person vote wasn’t much of a surprise if you experienced the rapturous reception Huckabee received on Saturday morning. Huckabee’s speech was non-stop Religious Right prime red meat and he had people cheering and hollering throughout.
Submitted by Anonymous on Saturday, 10/20/2007 1:47 pm
Mike Huckabee, the second-tier candidate many at the Values Voter Summit hope will become their champion, brought down the house when he said that he appeared “not as one who comes to you, but as one who comes from you.” In an endorsement of Dobson’s threat to bolt the Republican Party, the former pastor and governor of Arkansas came back time and again to the idea that some issues are “non-negotiable”: namely, opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion.
Submitted by Peter Montgomery on Wednesday, 9/19/2007 12:15 pm
Given the radical right’s longstanding obsession with denying legal recognition or protections to LGBT Americans, it’s not surprising that several questions at the "Values Voter Debate" were about protecting America from the gays. Also not surprisingly, these candidates lined up to oppose equality.
The first question of the night, from the American Family Association’s Buddy Smith, was about “protecting” marriage. Every candidate except libertarian Ron Paul pledged to push for a federal marriage amendment. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee touted his record of pushing a marriage amendment in his state and promised to lead an effort to have a constitutional amendment that would affirm marriage as “one man, one woman, for life.” Rep. Tom Tancredo pledged to do everything possible to pass a federal constitutional amendment, warning that Americans are just “one kooky judge” away from having homosexual marriage forced on them. Sen. Brownback bragged of his efforts in the Senate to pass the FMA and complained that President Bush had not done more to pass it. Alan Keyes, who had just tossed his hat in the ring, took a shot at the absent Mitt Romney, calling him “single-handedly responsible” for gays getting married in Massachusetts (not, shall we say, a view widely shared among marriage equality activists).
Paul Weyrich, a founder of the modern Religious Right political movement, closed the first section of the program by asking what candidates would do to counteract “the homosexual agenda.” Most candidates went back to the need for a marriage amendment to prevent, in Keyes’ typically tempered words, the “destruction of traditional marriage.” Brownback and Rep. Duncan Hunter talked about keeping gays from serving openly in the military. Libertarian Ron Paul, while saying he is opposed to legislating morality, called for eradicating hate crime laws. Brownback also attacked hate crimes laws as criminalizing thought and moving into an agenda of not allowing people to speak their beliefs. Businessman John Cox talked about common sense but spouted nonsense, talking about opening floodgates to bestiality and polygamy and warning darkly of “transvestite” teachers in public schools as a reason to support “school choice” and homeschooling.
During the “yes or no” segment of the program, Stephen Bennett, self-proclaimed “former homosexual,” argued that homosexual behavior is immoral and dangerous, and asked whether, as president, candidates would support legislation ensuring that schools would forfeit federal funding if they expose children to “homosexual propaganda” that puts them at risk. All the candidates clicked their green lights to answer “yes.” A later question asking whether they would pledge to veto ENDA also won unanimous support.
During a segment in which questions were directed at a single candidate, anti-gay zealot Peter LaBarbera asked the absent Mitt Romney why voters should trust him when he spent so much of his career promoting “anti-life” and “pro-homosexual” policies and not challenging Marriott’s providing pornography in its hotels as a member of its board. But perhaps the most memorable anti-gay question came from Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver, who cited Abraham Lincoln in criticizing Fred Thompson’s “federalist” approach to marriage, essentially making marriage equality the moral equivalent of slavery:
While you were senator you opposed the Federal Marriage Amendment, but recently you stated that you would support a marriage amendment that would prevent judges from imposing same-sex marriage, so long as it would not prohibit state legislatures from adopting same-sex marriage. This reasoning is like saying that you favor a constitutional amendment that prohibits judges from imposing slavery, so long as the state legislatures were free to do so. Does not your position fundamentally misunderstand the universal importance of marriage in the same way my latter example about slavery indicates a misunderstanding of human dignity?
Submitted by Peter Montgomery on Tuesday, 9/18/2007 2:06 pm
The top-polling GOP presidential candidates may have snubbed last night’s “Values Voter Debate” hosted by the American Family Association and a collection of B-list to D-list Religious Right leaders, but debate organizer Janet Folger (author of “The Criminalization of Christianity”) was ecstatic because her prayers had been answered. She had been praying for God to reveal “the David among Jesse’s sons.” And David turns out to be Mike – former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
Folger declared Huckabee the “clear winner” of the straw poll taken by attendees at the event, apparently hand-picked by the organizers and right-wing leaders and activists who lined up to ask questions in the 3-hour marathon. Religious Right leaders have been frustrated by the fact that the somewhat pro-choice and pro-gay rights Giuliani is leading in GOP polls, and that no consensus candidate has emerged that excites the movement’s leaders. Folger is out to change that, and to make her event the moment at which God’s anointing of Huckabee as the candidate to rally around was revealed. It’s not yet clear whether the movement’s major political players like James Dobson and Tony Perkins will join the bandwagon. Folger’s co-panelist Phyllis Schlafly, for one, wasn’t letting herself be bullied into saying who she would vote for, even after Folger’s revelation.
“We won huge,” Huckabee himself boasted. “I’m pleased, and proud, and honored to have this historic endorsement from America’s leading social conservatives who believe, as I do, in the core values which define American culture and life. This overwhelming vote affirms that conservatives are coalescing around one candidate and that candidate is me.”
It’s no surprise that the folksy Huckabee was popular among the far-right faithful at the event – he answered every question to their liking, while touting his populist, blue-collar credentials. On marriage, he would lead an effort to pass a constitutional amendment affirming marriage as “one man, one woman, for life.” On abortion, he needled the missing candidates and said “on this issue our culture rises or falls.” He backed the Iraq war, calling it a “theological war” against people “whose religious fanaticism will not be satisfied until every last one of us is dead, until our culture, our society, is completely obliterated from the face of the earth.”
During an interminable “yes or no” segment, Huckabee pledged himself to a long far-right wish-list: support for Roy Moore’s court-stripping bill to keep federal courts from meddling with public officials who use their office to promote religion, vetoes of hate crimes, ENDA, and the fairness doctrine; stripping schools of federal funding for exposing children to “homosexual propaganda,” repealing IRS restrictions on churches endorsing candidates, bringing back Bush’s social security privatization plan, imposing a ban on federal funding for any U.S. group that performs or advocates for abortion, boosting federal abstinence spending to match contraceptive funding, and more.
Huckabee closed by telling Janet Folger, Roy Moore, Rick Scarborough, Phyllis Schlafly, and the rest, that “many [other candidates] come to you. I come from you.”
Submitted by Anonymous on Sunday, 8/5/2007 9:51 am
With the upcoming straw poll in Ames, Iowa a make-or-break moment for second-tier GOP presidential candidates – and for Mitt Romney, the only major candidate not to skip the event – tensions at the bottom are flaring up. The Club for Growth -- a group known for translating its strict economic conservatism into large cash expenditures in Republican primaries to weed out so-called “Republicans in Name Only” – has made its first TV ad of the 2008 campaign, spending $85,000 in the Des Moines/Ames market to accuse former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee of “a willingness to slap a tax increase on everything from groceries to nursing home beds.”
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Monday, 7/30/2007 8:59 am
Sen. Sam Brownback got the ball rolling last week when he started running “robocalls” in Iowa questioning the pro-life credentials of Rep. Tom Tancredo and Gov. Mitt Romney. Tancredo was especially outraged that Brownback was targeting his campaign for accepting money from population-control zealot John Tanton, whose views the Brownback campaign characterized as “racist:”
"Conservatives and liberals alike have abandoned Tanton once they learn about his bizarre obsession with population control.”
The Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly has now come to Tancredo’s defense and has recorded her own calls targeting Iowa voters:
"I want to go on record as saying I've known Tom Tancredo for 30 years and I know for sure he has always been a champion of the right to life of the unborn.”
Both Tancredo and Romney have called on Brownback to apologize and pull the calls, which he refuses to do.
For his part, Tancredo has not been content merely to defend himself and his own record. He had unleashed his own ads attacking most of his opponents – ads which are themselves drawing complaints from other candidates:
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on Thursday called on rival Tom Tancredo to stop airing a "blatantly dishonest" campaign ad in Iowa that accuses Huckabee of favoring amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Huckabee said Tancredo either did sloppy research or deliberately mischaracterized Huckabee's position.
"When people engage in a completely false attack, it's usually an act of desperation. To me, it's a badge of honor because he sees that we are reaching the people we are trying to reach," Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, told The Associated Press.
Tancredo campaign spokeswoman Bay Buchanan said the ad would not be pulled and insisted it was accurate. She said Huckabee supported a plan by Bush that would have allowed illegal immigrants to earn the right to stay in the United States, and that Huckabee refused to sign a pledge opposing amnesty.
"All indications are that Huckabee supports amnesty. He's a pro-amnesty politician who is in denial. There are a lot of pro-amnesty politicians in denial," she said.
The radio ad calls Mitt Romney a flip-flopper on abortion, amnesty and gun control, then attacks Sam Brownback, Fred Thompson and Huckabee, claiming "they're all for amnesty."
Submitted by Anonymous on Thursday, 7/19/2007 9:02 am
Last week, Prince William County, Virginia passed an ordinance to crack down on undocumented immigrants by denying them government services, citing what resolution sponsor John Stirrup called “economic hardship and lawlessness” in the affluent D.C. exurb. “Left unchecked, illegal immigration will almost certainly put our county on a downward spiral, similar to the patterns to be found in the Third World countries these illegal immigrants left,” Stirrup wrote, urging other localities to follow in his suit in reviving the Hazleton-style ordinances of last year. Politicians in nearby counties expressed interest.
Now another Northern Virginia exurb, Loudoun County, has adopted a similar anti-immigrant resolution. Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, main sponsor of the legislation, said, “We need help in Loudoun. We are struggling. We are a small county, and we can't handle the hordes that are coming here and using up our services.”
Although Loudoun, which is the wealthiest county in the nation, has had a population surge of almost 60 percent since 2000, few of these new residents are immigrants, leading one to wonder about these “hordes” which Delgaudio claims are exacting “a greater and greater toll.”
But Supervisor Delgaudio has a long history of colorful hyperbole, dating back the 1980s and his Republican activism through his right-wing non-profit group, Public Advocate of the United States. Delgaudio specialized in what he called “street theater,” or “premeditated hysteria,” in which he would organize protests where his compatriots, often in costume, would sing or perform some ironic stunt – on rare occasions, fooling local media into thinking that, for example, “Pornographers Against Helms” was a bona fide organization attempting to show support for a congressman who voted to fund the National Endowment for the Arts.
Others highlights from Delgaudio’s thespian career:
Submitted by Anonymous on Wednesday, 6/6/2007 5:44 pm
In last night’s Republican presidential debate, moderators returned to the subject of evolution, pressing former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee:
Huckabee gave an elegant answer to the inept question -- “I’m not planning on writing the curriculum for an eight-grade science book. I’m asking for the opportunity to be president of the United States,” he said. The idea that the president won't set science curriculum seems to echo the conservative view of federal versus state policymaking authority, but in practice the president may have a role doing just that.
In the midst of a heightened period of debate two years ago over teaching “Intelligent Design” creationism in public school science class, culminating in a federal judge repudiating the Dover, Pennsylvania school board, President Bush spoke out in favor of injecting creationism into curriculum, helping to legitimize ID proponents’ case. “With the president endorsing it, at the very least it makes Americans who have that position more respectable, for lack of a better phrase,” said Gary Bauer.
And the president’s role may even extend beyond shaping the terms of debate to setting actual policy. During congressional debate over Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind education plan, among the provisions considered was the so-called Santorum Amendment, containing language designed to make ID an integral part of science standards across the country. Although the amendment was rejected, confusion around the legislation caused many ID supporters (including Santorum) to imply that it was law. At the very least, this shows that a future president could potential be in position to implement an anti-evolution policy for public schools.
As we noted after the last debate, Huckabee expressed support for teaching creationism when governor of Arkansas. Last night, while Huckabee seemed to state that the theory of evolution is incompatible with belief in God, he correctly noted that his personal belief (much less his understanding of science) does not necessarily bear on public policy. But the policy question of whether creationism belongs in public school science class, on the other hand, is very relevant to the job.
Submitted by Anonymous on Tuesday, 5/22/2007 4:24 pm
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has withdrawn from an effort to disentangle Baptists from partisan politics – citing politics. Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and a Southern Baptist pastor, was invited and expected to attend a meeting of the New Baptist Covenant organized by former President Jimmy Carter to bring together members of the North American Baptist Fellowship, African-American Baptists, the Southern Baptist Convention – which was “taken over” by theological (and, largely, political) conservatives more than 20 years ago but has recently made motions toward centrism – and others around common-ground issues like poverty and AIDS. Huckabee, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley were among prominent Southern Baptist Republicans invited, joining prominent Baptist Democrats Carter, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore.
This effort to establish the New Baptist Covenant’s bipartisan credentials has been stymied, however, by Huckabee’s withdrawal over comments made by Carter in the political realm. After Carter criticized President Bush’s foreign policy, Huckabee told the Florida Baptist Witness that the comments were “unbecoming to one whose conference is supposed to be about civility and bringing people together.” Also complaining that Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, whom Huckabee described as “very, very liberal,” would be speaking, Huckabee said,
In light of the program and roster of speakers, as well as the very harsh comments toward our president this weekend, I feel it would be best for me to decline the invitation and to not appear to be giving approval to what could be a political, rather than spiritual agenda.
Huckabee was in Florida that day, along with fellow presidential candidate Sam Brownback, to speak to the far-right Florida Family Policy Council (a state affiliate of Focus on the Family). The two long-shot candidates, popular among the Religious Right, apparently impressed the partisan crowd (which included Republican National Committee chair Mel Martinez). But while Brownback was willing to share the stage with Democrat Barack Obama at Rick Warren’s megachurch to talk about global AIDS last winter – in spite of vicious criticisms from the far Right – Huckabee is apparently unwilling to give up the partisan mantle of his presidential campaign for the Baptist-unity event.
David Currie of Texas Baptists Committed responded,
The [New] Baptist Covenant meeting has never been about politics but about Jesus and unity. The fact is, if we have a meeting and only preachers preach, the national press will not cover our message. If prominent politicians of both parties speak, the national press will cover it. I am sorry Gov. Huckabee withdrew, as I have been impressed with him on TV several times. But I'm sure the Religious Right put great pressure upon him. I wish him well.
Still, Huckabee’s act may gain him some new friends, such as Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention leader who has helped define the SBC’s right-wing political reputation and who had scoffed at the New Baptist Covenant’s aims.
Submitted by Anonymous on Tuesday, 5/8/2007 5:53 pm
Last Thursday, the American Enterprise Institute hosted a debate on “Darwinism and Conservatism” in which Discovery Institute fellows John West and George Gilder sought to persuade conservatives that the scientific theory of evolution is incompatible with their political ideology, no doubt by attempting to link evolution to eugenics and abortion. That same night, the idea was tested in a more practical theater: the Republican presidential debate. John McCain was asked whether he believes in evolution – his answer, after a pause, was yes. Then the co-moderater asked for a show of hands:
Submitted by Anonymous on Tuesday, 4/24/2007 5:23 pm
While Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been under attack from politicians from both sides of the aisle over the firing of the U.S. attorneys, and while groups ranging from People For the American Way to the conservative American Freedom Agenda have called for his resignation over the abuse of civil liberties and other issues, the Republicans running for president have, for the most part, stayed mum. Now, two long-shot candidates are speaking out against Gonzales – albeit for different reasons.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee suggested Gonzales should resign so as to “not force the president” to make the decision, since the attorney general “is clearly creating a major distraction for the president and for the administration and for the Republican Party.”
And anti-immigrant firebrand Rep. Tom Tancredo said Gonzales should go because he “didn't fire enough” prosecutors – in particular, the U.S. attorney in Texas who “went after” border-patrol agents involved in the shooting of a fleeing Mexican.
Submitted by Anonymous on Wednesday, 4/18/2007 5:25 pm
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, beloved by many on the Religious Right for his positions on wedge issues but dismissed as a serious presidential candidate, has spent the last few weeks deploying a seemingly desperate gambit aimed at undermining support for frontrunners Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. They should “be held to a standard of personal accountability and responsibility for their personal lives,” he said, alluding to what Vision America’s Rick Scarborough called “multiple marriages and serial adultery” among the candidates. “If Republicans in this election vote in such a way as to say a candidate’s personal life and personal conduct in office doesn’t matter,” said Huckabee, “then a lot of Christian evangelical leaders owe Bill Clinton a public apology.”
Unfortunately for Huckabee, the strong attack apparently has not helped his own candidacy: he has yet to break 2 percent in polls, and he’s raised less than $600,000, putting him in the lower end of the second-tier candidates.
In a recent appearance in Iowa, Huckabee sharpened his “personal lives” attack, noting that “I’m specifically referencing Christian evangelical leaders who were the most vocal in saying back during the Clinton era that personal behavior, personal responsibility and character were the key factors in a president’s criteria.” He accused those leaders of selling out to the Republican Party.
‘‘That’s my challenge to Christian leaders — either be consistent, be Christian leaders or just say I’m a political boss and it’s really about the power,’’ he said.
What’s at stake, Huckabee said, is the credibility of religious conservatives.
‘‘Christian leaders need to be Christian leaders, not Republican leaders,’’ he said.
Of course, Huckabee isn’t running for a church board, he’s running for the Republican presidential nomination, so it’s not exactly clear why embracing his own political bid would prevent a religious-right leader from being a “political boss.”
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 4/5/2007 2:15 pm
As we noted last week, Federal Judge Janice Rogers Brown warned students at Harding University in Arkansas that Christianity is under attack in America from “narrow positivism, moral relativism and the totalitarian reign of the radical multiculturalist.”
Not surprisingly, this sort of rhetoric was music to the ears of Vision America’s Rick Scarborough:
Judge Janice Rogers Brown, of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, recently gave a speech at Harding University that deserves an enthusiastic amen from every Christian in the land.
…
An African-American from California, who came from an impoverished background, Janice Rogers Brown has thrown down the gauntlet to the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the rest of their ilk.
…
God willing, someday I’ll write about Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown. Whether or not that day ever comes will depend on what Christians do between now and Election Day 2008. If Hillary Clinton takes the oath of office in 2009, if the Senate remains in liberal hands, the next nominee for the high court will be another Ruth Bader Ginsburg or David Souter, rather than a true judge of Brown’s caliber.
Submitted by Anonymous on Friday, 3/30/2007 5:57 pm
Federal Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a far-right nominee who was appointed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2005, recently spoke to students at Harding University in Arkansas. Brown, known for her strident legal views on the “socialist revolution” of Social Security and other topics, set her sights on critics of the Religious Right and our supposed “demands”:
Brown said those who attack the religious right “essentially argue (that) the true American religion demands acceptance of, indeed submission to, a common political vision — their vision.”
In the 20th century, secular humanism crept into American and Western governments, promising openness and tolerance for diverse groups, religions and philosophies, she said.
“What we got was narrow positivism, moral relativism and the totalitarian reign of the radical multiculturalist,” Brown said. “It promised peace. What we got was a process of permanent revolution, tumult, strife and a ceaseless assault upon the foundations of faith, family and civil society. It promised if not the pursuit of truth, at least rationality and acknowledgment of objective reality. What we got was postmodernism.” The battle, in her view, is not political but theological: “Contrary to the prevailing secularist dogma ... a society cannot exist without a fighting faith. Where society has nothing to die for, it has nothing to live for and cannot long survive.”
Brown is occasionally touted by the far Right as a future Supreme Court nominee.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 3/15/2007 4:30 pm
Amid the ever-widening scandal surrounding the purge of several U.S. attorneys, now involving everything from subpoenas to bipartisan calls for Attorney General Gonzales’s resignation, one interesting bit of information has so-far gone unnoticed: the fact that several of the fired attorneys had previously been involved in supporting White House and Justice Department efforts to secure passage and renewal of the Patriot Act.
As Legal Times reported back in August 2004:
The Justice Department launched an unprecedented nationwide campaign in 2003 to boost support for the USA Patriot Act and beat back opponents. Recently obtained internal DOJ documents reveal just how organized and aggressive that push has been.
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"Your role is educational only. You must not encourage citizens or public officials to make congressional contacts or to attempt to influence any vote concerning the USA Patriot Act," one DOJ memo states.
To avoid ethical pitfalls, Main Justice instructed the 93 Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys, who are exempt from the Anti-Lobbying Act, to contact Congress members personally, not through staff.
Apparently, not every Attorney was eager to participate:
