Huck pre-postmortem

I really don't know where you're getting this Huckabee in 2012 stuff, Rod. Running for President is a huge undertaking, and while some candidates run more than once, most do not.

If Huck drops out without winning a primary, what's the basis for a 2012 run? He won't attract many campaign contributions, and he hasn't shown much ability to broaden his appeal beyond evangelical Christians in the Bible Belt.

There's much to like about Huckabee, and he certainly has a winning personality and stage presence. But unless he wins South Carolina and goes on to make more of a splash this year, I'm afraid he'll be just another former Iowa Caucus winner -- a political has-been.

Then again, it may be a case of the Establishment learning that when they courted us religio-evangelo-conservative types, they were getting the package deal. A lot of us out here believe in the basic principles that Mr Huckabee is putting forth because we live them personally, because it is already part of our belief system and fundamentally at odds with the consumerism that Limbaugh types would have us bowing down to....

Well that was quick Rod. Not a mere few days ago you endorse the guy and now you're ready to write him out of the race for '08. Have a little faith. We haven't even reached Super Tuesday yet. Heck if people aren't counting out Rudy, why should Huckaboosters count their man out. I think a win in SC and/or FL coupled with a some wins on ST would keep him in the mix. It ain't over, but the fat lady is going to be clearing her throat soon for all the candidates.

One of the reasons, many folks, particular young adults, are so excited about Senator Obama is the opportunity to move past race in this country.

IFM the media will let him and us do so. I wonder how many YEARS into his term President Barack Obama will have to hear news reports that begin: "Today President Obama, America's first Black President, called a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...." "Today President Obama, America's first Black President, met with the President of France...." and at press conferences: "Mr. President: As a Black American and America's first Black President...." Etc.

Re: Huckabee 2012

I just don't think so. This is probably his one and only real shot at the Oval Office (for which I am eternally grateful). Why would establishment Republicans turn around and suddenly become this guys's booster? Why would they do so if the Democratic president performs ably, making 2012 a much tougher fight than 2008?

Huckabee appeals almost exclusively to evangelicals. He has shown no skill at binding conservative factions.

More telling, if his 2008 run has made anything clear, it's that establishment Republicans have all but come out and admitted to saying that evangelicals are welcome as GOP voters/followers only, not as leaders.

In a post-Huckabee world, how will evangelicals look at the GOP? A lot of nasty things were said by the establishment. Are you going to pretend they never happened? If Huckabee drops out, will evangelicals again take their place as loyal GOP foot soldiers?

Just curious....

I'm really confused about what a crunchy conservative sees in Hucklebee. The first problem is that Hucklebee is simply a continuation and development of Bush's "compassionate conservatism". And we know how that turned out, now don't we?!

(For a clear example of this philosophy, see Bush's ex-speech-writer Michael Gerson's attack on Fred Thompson:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/17/AR2008011702243.html?hpid=opinionsbox1 . Now I understand why Bush did what he did, and how he compromised what I understand as conservative principles.)

The second thing is, what is conservatism? Mr. Dreher, you have been complaining about Mr. Limbaugh's supposed greed and selfishness (see "teacherkd" above); but that misses the point: from his, and (I think) Mr. Thompson's viewpoint, to ask government to take care of all these problems is ITSELF a form of greed.

Jesus didn't tell the poor, "get rich," he said, "look at the lilies of the field, they don't toil and spin," implying that wealth OR poverty is IRRELEVANT. Greed is not the amount in one's bank account, but a state of one's soul. And that applies equally to the poor and the rich. That is why Mr. Limbaugh can be understood as a conservative, and why Hucklebee's populism is not.

Thirdly, I don't understand what a traditionalist (Dreher) sees in an evangelical populism. Evangelicalism is a profoundly anti-traditional form of Christianity: anti-creed, anti-liturgy, anti-history. Furthermore, it has always been linked with the activist strain of American politics, from the Puritans, to Finney, and more recently to the evangelical left. The recent alliance with conservatism is an accident of history: the Civil War, urbanization, immigration, the disillusionment with American culture that followed the failure of Prohibition and the Scopes "monkey" trial.

Furthermore, evangelicalism lacks the sophisticated moral and political sense of Roman Catholicism (and maybe Orthodoxy, which I don't know as well): it doesn't understand natural law, or the difference between moral principle and political prudence.

It's quite sad to see that the fearless crunchy-con columnist is rooting for a GOP loss in November, pending the dropping out of the race by the fake-conservative Huck. Pathetic.

You have fallen far, Rod! ...and for Mike Huckabee??? What gives?

I am tad more optimistic. If Huckabee wins South Crolina it gets big MO for FLorida.

For all this talk of Huckabee getting outside his base he had no choice. He has no money for organizations. THese people moblize on their own. Thus he had to keep going back to the well

If Huckabee can get to Super Tuesday organization becomes a non factor. You cant do it in all those states. Thus the playing feel is more even. I would expect too see Huck at far fewer Churches plaeding for people to get their bodies to the polls and more Huckabee reaching out through the TV to the middle and other issues.

Of course if he does not win SOuth Carolina and Florida then there will be no money to do it

D Layman: Thank you for attempting a critique of Huckabee that does beyond a shriek "How can you support him?! He's a liberal,," which is what we get too often, including, in essence, from madkins. Your third point merits some reflection.

yes...
Huck has his base and not much else...
so there's probably not enough value there to win the nomination...
though...
if form holds and there is no outright winner before the convention...
you know... the likely BROKERED CONVENTION...
then...
the third(?) place Huck may appeal to one of the delegate leaders...
McCain or Romney...
who might want Huck as VP as a way of adding his base for the November election...
so...
McCain/Huckabee... perhaps...
or...
Romney/Huckabee...
or is that too weird?

it could be that a third place Huck actually arrives at the convention with the delegates needed for either McCain or Romney to get the nomination...
giving Huck lots of leverage...

vote faith hope love joy peace to all...

I think the referenced article had some points, but seemed to ignore the fact that for a time Huck lead in the national polls, and still currently is in a solid second place behind McCain, anywhere from 8 to 13 points depending on what poll you check out. And if he were to win SC, that could totally change. I don't see just evangelical support giving Huck those high polling numbers, and he has to be drawing it from somewhere else.

Yes, Huck can garner a high percentage of evangelical support, but that's not a given either. And, he has made some mistakes along the way, I would agree. I think it would serve him well to come across more as a candidate who is Christian, than a Christian candidate. I think he should be who he is, but of late he has sounded too much like what some people fear...someone who will be injecting their theology into everything. While he would probably decided things based upon his faith, as anyone would, there is a difference between having that in the background and flaunting it. But, at least he's being who he really is.

Guess we'll find out what happens tomorrow...or I should say by this point, later on today.

What is at the heart of the Confederate flag issue? You guys get all emotional over an emotional issue. Huckabee does not understand that a lot of people cannot get over thier predjudices, and the worse type of people who cannot get over their predjudices are people who believe that they are not predjudiced at all so they are above the fray. In fact they believe that since they harbor no predjudice, they have the moral high ground which gives them the right to "hate" anyone they believe is stuck in their simplemindedness of being predjudice.

The point that Huckabee was trying to make, and it made perfect sense to the crowd he was addressing, is that as a governor one of the most frustrating aspects of his job was to deal with unfunded mandates handed down from Washington. No Child Left Behing is a perfect example. And what did he have to do when he was a governor and was faced with these unfunded mandates. He had to raise taxes to pay for them. So now all of the Wall Street - K Street types are trying to portray him as a tax and spend liberal. I realize that dirty politics is part of the game. But some people like me are doing their job as a voter and actually investigating the candidate to get the whole picture.

But if it gives you "haters" the warm and fuzzies to think that you are taking the moral high ground about an issue that you don't understand fully in the first place, go ahead and do it. In fact I saw Dick Morris giving Huckabee the business because Dick relates the confederate flag to the swastika. Dick, do some research. Most of the Jews living in the South in 1860 supported the new country. Many of them helped to finance the cause. And many of them took up arms and died for their new country. And more of them came to the South from Europe after the war and filled a void in the business world because the Northerners were bent on revenge and still dealing out their punishment.

Here is something for all of you "haters" to think about. The state flag of Mississippi which flies over every state bulding bears the confederate battle flag. A decade ago the state held a contest for someone to come up with a new state flag. We had had enough. (I wish they would have taken a harder look at my new flag. It incorporated the CBF and the colors of Africa in the same manner as the flag of South Africa.) The winner was picked in a contest and it was put to a statewide vote. People, listen to me here, only 30% of the people voted. Mississippi is 35% African American. They had the perfect opportunity to get rid of the racist symbol you outsiders get so emotional over. They didn't even bother to show up to vote. More whites voted to change the flag than blacks, and it still lost.

"States rights" in 2008 does not mean the same thing as it did 40 years ago. Come to a high school football game down here and see for yourself. The fact that it is your hang-up makes it Huckabee's problem. Huckabee garnered over 40% of the African American vote in his Arkansas elections. They knew what is in his heart. Maybe you should come down here and talk to some of them.

Read what Abraham Lincoln said about slavery. Realize why he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Realize why the leaders of the South used race baiting the same way that Al Sharpton does to raise an Army to fend off the Northern aggressors.

Less than 5% of all Southerners owned slaves. Do you think that all of those non-slaveowners left their little farms and families so that the few wealthy planters could own slaves? How about the free blacks and the slaves who fought for the South?

If you really want to know what possessed Lincoln to pursue the unification of the states, listen to a tape by Fr. Thomas Hopko on the religion of America. That is what possessed the Christian leaders of the North to reunite the Southern states with the Northern states. The USA had no king, no Pope, no nonsecular right to exist as a nation. It was God's country and it had to be preserved.

Shelby Foote said it was a shame that a few malcontents had taken a symbol of pride and perverted it into a symbol of hatred. As did Hitler with a symbol that shows up in many ancient cultures. I have talked to Indians who say that the swastika is common in their culture. I believed that Mississippi should revert back to the state flag of the late 1800's, or even come up with a new flag. You still don't get it, the blacks did not care a few years ago when it was put up to a vote. So get over it and leave us alone to deal with our problems.

I bought a copy of a little book at Beauvoir, the last home of President Jefferson Davis, call "The Facts Historians Leave Out". I lost my copy in Katrina, and Beauvoir was almost swept away. I suggest you read that book, if there are any copies left.

There were many Southerners who advocated abolition. Many families freed their slaves. There were many slaves who earned their freedom and their citizenship. Kind of like today where we are going to require legal aliens to earn their citizenship.

I said they had to earn their citizenship, just as my grandfather did when he left Mexico with a gun to his back. They will earn their citizenship just as my Irish ancestors did after ten years of indentured servitude. My Prussian and Polish ancestors paid for their citizenship by living in obscurity in the swamps of South Louisiana where they met my French ancestors who were descendents of pirates.

One of the points in that history book I spoke of is that the Southern slave owners felt they had the moral high ground over Northern industrialists who took advantage of poor Irish immigrants as long as their muscles held out, and then turned them out to the cold. Southern slaves did not need social security because they were taken care of in their old age until death.

One point that Huckabee is trying to get across is that no one in this country should live in the shadows, hiding from the law, a slave to employers taking advantage of their muscles under threat of deportation. They should live here with their heads held high. They should get in line just as all of our ancestors did and become citizens legally. And if the tide of immigrants gets out of sync with the employment needs of our economy, we can stop it.

By this logic, the ancestors of my Cherokee grandmother didn't "earn" their citizenship because they dared to defy the Andrew Jackson's Trail of Tears and hid out in the Great Smoky Mountains, instead ...

Yecch.

John C., the Irish canal diggers you reference, were they Irishmen who were already in the US, but preferred ditch digging to factory work or where they recruited in Ireland and brought to New Orleans?

Because that was my original question - how many Irishmen left factory jobs in preference for the lifetime benefits provided by the slave owners?

At least tomorrow I get to watch two Mississippi quartebacks play for the NFC championship. And Larry, there are many Choctaws in Mississippi named Favre. If the Patriots win, I can cheer for the Kicker who went to the same High School as my kids. That teams counts four players in the NFL. Gotskowski, Harylson, Spencer, and Espy.

Matt: "More telling, if his 2008 run has made anything clear, it's that establishment Republicans have all but come out and admitted to saying that evangelicals are welcome as GOP voters/followers only, not as leaders."

That has been the case for some time, going back as far as the Reagan administration. Huckabee's situation is merely the most recent and the most obvious evidence of it.

When David Kuo released his book "Tempting Faith" just before the last election, he was criticized roundly by many in the evangelical community for aiding and abetting President Bush's opponents. Just two years later we see some clear evidence that David was right.

The question now becomes...what do evangelical Christians do about it? Will they be content in continuing their role as lap dogs to the fiscal conservative wing of the party, or will they step back and let the GOP fall big time this fall?

Huckabee's loss today in South Carolina should be the death knell of his candidacy. A McCain/Huckabee ticket might salvage the coalition within the GOP, but it will lose the general election. But if Huckabee is not a player in the GOP campaign this fall the party risks losing its most active grass-roots workers.

The next week will be very interesting.

John C.:

I thought this idea that slaves were actually "privileged" went out with the guy who founded Furman University.

Even the Bull Connor Jim Crow-types lacked such sentiment and pretense -- "We're on top, you're on the bottom, and we're using the firehoses and dogs to make sure things stay that way."

Have you tried this "privilege" idea out on any ACTUAL African-Americans?!

Speaking of canals, you're just digging your way in deeper ...

Larry:

Since you and I are probably the only ones reading this right now I will be frank. Why don't you come out from hiding and write a reply longer than two sentences. You lurk in the shadows and come out only to say as little as possible to get your point across when the situation arises. I am sure that you are way over my head in Jungian philosophy, but you relate very little in your discourse. I guess in order to have discourse you must have a discussion which entail more than two sentences.

So I am still waiting for you to answer just a couple of questions that I pose to you in response to your questions and comments.

John C

Larry:

What rock have you been living under? Ole Miss has had black athletes since the early 70's. In fact Ben Williams, Pro Bowl player for the Buffalo Bills, was elected Mr. Ole Miss in 1974. Mr. Ole Miss is the most popular man on campus. That was 24 years ago Larry. 24 years is certainly not recently in the history of modern day football. It was only about 34 years ago that players started using facemasks.

Do you want me to list the black NBA players that have come out of Ole Miss since the 70's. Start with Elston Turner and Carlos Clark. Would you like to hear about our black head coaches in track and basketball? How about Chucky Mullins? Look that up. A black young man so poor when he showed up for the start of football practices he has all of his clothes in one little bag. He was paralyzed in game against Vandy. The next week at the LSU game in Oxford the Ole Miss frat boys passed the hat and raised over $20,000. I was sitting near the LSU section and was amazed at the drunk Tiger fans pulling $20 bills out of their pockets. Chucky lived the rest of his life in a home built next to the campus and there is now a foundation in his name to help athletes with disabilities. I'll guarantee you that you will be hard pressed to find more than a handful of successful black athletes who have nothing but great things to say about going to Ole Miss.

Why do you have to mock Martin Luther King? You are a trip. You are clueless as to what has happened in Mississippi. Wait a minute, you give me no clue as to your background. Is that so you can keep me guessing and make you believe that I am digging myself deeper into a hole. I never said I was worse off than you.....I said the Irish immigrants digging the canals were worse off than the black slave laborers in New Orleans. Fact....deal with it. No Jungian philosophical rationalization with that fact.

What are you talking about resistance to hiring Coach Croom? You are out of touch big-time. Have you met Coach Croom? I met him just a few months after he was hired. Met him at the same ceremony where Robin Roberts, another black Mississippian, was honoring Brett Favre, a close personal friend of Brett's, at the dedication of a statue of him at his high school football field. The State alumni and fans were chomping at the bit to hire him after his alma mater, Alabama, turned him down for the head coaching position.

Tell you what, you have an open invitation to come visit me in the Magnolia State and see for yourself. I will put you up and show you around. The best time to come is in the Fall and you can go to a high school football game and see how far we have come. Then we can go to Oxford and tailgate in The Grove, the nation's #1 tailgate party.

Larry, the one thing that no one can accuse me of is being naive when it comes to the history of our state. I have lived it, right in the think of it. The problem that I have is people who are quick to judge but have never been here and rolled up their sleeves and made a difference. That is what is lacking in our state. Money won't solve the problems. Federal social programs won't solve the problem. People will solve the problem. Come down here and I can hook you up with many charities that I have worked with.

Larry:

Most people could figure out after reading all of messages and contextual facts which I have presented that I have a very clear understanding of the history of Mississippi. I'll put it up against anyone on this list including Susan whom I believe has a degree in history.

What you fail to realize is how far we have come. You also seem not to want to believe that we have made tremendous strides as if you take pleasure in believing that everything is Bull Conner and Jim Crow here. Why is that? Does it make you feel good that you have someone to hate? Do you channel your frustrations and angst against those whom you think to be not as enlightened as you?

You see Larry, this conversation started about a flag and Mike Huckabee's response to a question concerning his opinion of it. He never said what his personal feelings about the flag were. He said it was an issue for the state to decide. I agree. You seem to think that unless a white person falls over and cries and begs for forgiveness for the "ugliness", they are a bigot and a racist. Larry, most blacks in Mississippi have moved on. I gave you rock solid proof which you conveniently refuse to accept. The blacks in Mississippi had a chance to vote on a new flag. They didn't even bother to vote. More whites voted to change it than blacks. Only 30% of all voters even bothered to vote. If only 1/4 of the blacks had turned out it would have passed. They didn't care and neither should you.

I also told you that I offered my own version of a new state flag based on the South African model of reconciliation. What does that tell you about how I feel about the Confederate Battle Flag flying over public buildings? But Larry, I will never beg mercy from anyone for the CFB and what it truly stands for. Most people under the age of 60 in Mississippi have moved on and so should you and the rest of the country. Even Al Sharpton.

I never said white non-plantion owners had it worse off than African American slaves. Read my words carefully. Follow me here.....I said that the working conditions of the Irish immigrants digging the canals in the swamps were much worse than the slaves working on the docks or in the city or in the homes...fact. Second I said that the slave owners thought that their property, said slaves, were too valuable to be hired out (slave owners receiving such wages) to dig the canals.

Therefore the contractors in charge of digging the canals had to resort to imported labor. In the mid 1800's the most convenient and cheapest happened to be the British citizens of Ireland who were being starved to death because of a potato blight. The blight resulted in a famine and millions were dying of starvation while their English and Scottish overlords took what little crops they could grow as rents. Said Irish immigrants fortunate enough to escape starvation and leave for America, my ancestors, had a choice of going to work in the sweat factories of the North or the swamps of the South. Mine chose to work in the South. What is so hard to understand? Key words - working conditions. The canal diggers not only had to do more work, they risked death doing it and many died. Not perhaps, Larry, fact.

Larry I fully understand that the prospects of the Irish immigrants, if they survived yellow fever, malaria, TB, chlorea, dysentery, etc, to lead a full life was much better than the slaves. The Irish had it tough though, but they stuck together and lifted each other out of poverty. One of my ancestors did not have the money to attend school, but a check came in the mail every month with his tuition. Not from the government, Larry, but from his community. I gave you some insight into the black stratification in New Orleans. Some of the blacks looked down on the poor whites, and still do. Look up the Morial family.

Larry, do a little research. Did you know that in Mississippi during slavery it was a crime for a slave owner to whip his slaves with a crop? Did you know there were lynchings in the North? Did you know that the KKK had a bigger footprint in the North in the 1920's. Did you know that one of the main reasons for blacks and whites being poor and living in Depression from the 1860's to WWII was because of punitive economic santions of the Northern industrialists? Do you know what people living without hope or food brings....someone looking for a scapegoat. Ya know, I am not even going to bother trying to enlighten you because anyone who thinks me a bigot and racist because I discussed race relations on MLK day is "living a fantasy". I guess you think that of the Clintons, don't you. Have you been following their playing the race card even on MLK day. Buddy, that is sacrilege.

Think about his carefully Larry, Mike Huckabee garnered 40% of the African American vote. How did he do that, him being a racist and bigot for not begging mercy for the CFB and demanding that the citizens of South Carolina erase it from history. "Give me a break".

I live in the real world Larry, but I have been wrong. Let me give you an example. During school integration im Mississippi many communities opened private schools exclusively for white students. I started school in 1966 but attended Catholic schools which had been integrated a decade earlier. (Today those communities which did not open academies are much more vibrant than those that did.) The two seperate school systems belong to different athletic associations and do not play each other.

In 2007 the associations decided to allow the teams to play. All of the academies today allow blacks to attend, but most cannot afford it. (My children do not attend academies and are all excellent athletes). Before the season I thought that these games would be a bloodletting. I thought the kids of the schools whose teams are majority black would whip the kids of the academies. I thought those black kids would get so emotional they would be sky-high and exact their revenge now that after 200 years of injustice they had a legal means to put some white kids in the hospital.

Guess what Larry, I was wrong. The black kids didn't care. In fact, the smaller white schools won almost all of the games convincingly. It was no big deal to the black kids. They were just playing another game. I had to eat a little crow, but I was so glad to see how far the children have come. Larry, it is time you got over it also.

Larry:

My first claim was that white plantation owners in the South believed in their hearts that their slaves were better off than those Irish immigrants who were being subject to cruel and inhuman....working conditions..... which were worse than doing what mankind had done for the past 10,000 years, working God's soil to produce a crop.

Second claim was that the working conditions in the swamps of New Orleans was more backbreaking and life threatening than what the slaves had to endure in New Orleans.

Third was that the slave owners thought their slaves were worth more as a human being than the Irish, probably from the fact that their views of the Irish came from the English who thought them to be worse than chattle, having no human value. Slaves being chattle.

Fourth was the fact that in the eyes of the slave owners, their slaves had defacto Social Security benefits until death whereas the Irish immigrants where turned out into the cold as soon as their backs, or their teenage children's backs, could no longer endure the suffering work in the mills of the North.

Since the topic of who was better off overall was never on the table, I did not address it. When I did, you still fail to accept that fact that many blacks in New Orleans were worse "racists" as you define it, than poor whites. And some still are today, look up the Morials. The blacks in New Orleans had the opportunity to make a better life for themselves by helping each other and lifting themselves out of poverty. They never had the opportunities that the Irish immigrants did, but still had the opportunity for a better life all the same. You also must consider that up until WWII many whites in the South still had no indoor plumbing. And I can take you to some houses today that still don't. The difference was that the Irish helped lift each other out of povery, while the blacks segregated themselves. And this is still a problem today. And the Great Society of LBJ has made these poor blacks being left behind worse off than before.

Bringing up past injustices such as the Orangeburg massacre does more harm than good. It is time to address the problems of today. Jackson, MS had 51 homicides last year and averages about 40 per year. Noone can even speculate how many shootings there are. A young black man from Jackson has a better statistical chance of survival in Fallujah than in Jackson. Unless you accept that most blacks and white still harbor some sort of bigotry in their heart, and quit bringing up the past and judging people for the sins of their fathers, nothing will be done to bring everyone to the table to address the problems the poor face today.

I still see a problem that you have because you use the word "grudginly". You also use the word "think". I gave you concrete proof and many, many examples of how far we have come, but you still use the word "think". I have only spent 5 days of my life in SC, so I never compared Miss to SC. I find no need and will not predicate all of my comments on racial reconciliation in my region of the country with an apology for past injustices. People here are moving on, and you should too. And true reconciliation will not take place until we are comfortable with each others views and find no need to use words such as "grudginly" and "think". This leads to "sloppiness" in your acceptance of points of reference and facts.

I could do a Bill Clinton wagging of my finger in your face if I told you everything I had done in my life to achieve reconciliation on my home turf. At the same time, I will not forsake my heritage and I do not think that Southern whites should ever stoop to that. You are of the type that expects that, and if it is not forthcoming, you dismiss any facts and reference points that these "racist bigots" make. You therefore have a "failure to communicate" mindset built in. You fall for the Al Sharpton view of reconciliation, which only makes things worse. What upsets me is the huge double-standard people like you impose on us.

And I accept your apology, thank you.