Up until a couple of months ago, Mike Huckabee didn’t stand out much for anyone. He wasn’t polling well, and the mediots and his opponents paid very little attention to anything he did. However, since he’s risen in the polls and the spotlight’s brightened considerably on his campaign, what’s shone the most is not an image a potential president should want to emulate. Before I go any further, a few nice comments about Huckabee are in order: I’ve said before that Huckabee is a likeable guy. But likeable guys don’t always make good presidents. He’s someone you could take to the buffet breakfast at Shoney’s and shoot the breeze with. Somebody you wouldn’t mind being your neighbor. If he were still a minister, he’s someone you wouldn’t mind going to hear preach his Sunday sermon. But presidential material he isn’t.
Outside of the far left, you don’t find many people who are eager for a president who flies by the seat of his pants on any given day, not knowing which way to go. Essentially, that’s what we’ve learned about Huckabee: that he has no idea how to conduct himself as a man running for the honor of getting elected as president of the greatest country in the world, and, frankly, is a person who can be downright bizarro sometimes.
I’ve written before about Huckabee’s record of flip flopping and fiscal liberalism, which I’m not asserting is bizarro. Not good for a Republican candidate, but certainly not insane, either. But here’s where it starts to get a bit wacky: In that post, I noted Huckabee’s ignorance of the Iran NIE report, which had been released for a full 24 hours by the time he was asked about it. I also noted how he admitted he was flip-flopping on his position on the Cuba embargo because he was running for president.
In a later post, I talked about how Huckabee was wrong to bring up religious arguments in a presidential campaign, an issue which was made prominent by his questioning specifics about Mormonism during an interview for the NYT Magazine. The question was: “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?” As I wrote in my post at the time, the question itself is a valid one, but not one that should be included in the campaign to decide who can best lead our country.
Well, this week alone, Huck’s campaign has fallen to new levels of absurdity with four, count ‘em, four examples which show the candidate’s serious lack of preparedness to govern from our nation’s highest office. They are, in no particular order:
1) Huckabee’s claim that former US ambassador the UN and conservative favorite John Bolton was “advising” him. Bolton responded that he wasn’t. Bryan at Hot Air noted yesterday that wasn’t the first time Huckabee made a bogus claim about someone advising his campaign.
2) A “senior Huckabee official” told CNN that with Huckabee “there is no foreign policy credential” - a quote that will follow him the rest of his life, a la Senator John Kerry’s “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it” statement on Iraq war funding during the 2004 campaign for president.
3) Huckabee flubbed big time when talking about illegal immigrants this week after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, falsely stating that ‘the United States has more illegal immigrants coming from Pakistan than any other country besides those south of the U.S. border’.
4) Last but not least, via the Chicago Tribune Swamp blog:
Republican Mike Huckabee took his presidential campaign for a quick Huckabee replied, in a chuckling dig at the vice president’s accidental shooting of a quail-hunting partner last year.
Any good sportsman, though, couldn’t miss a distinctly Cheneyesque moment in the press accounts of the former Arkansas governor’s morning hunt: At one point, Huckabee’s party turned toward a cluster of reporters and cameramen and, when they kicked up a pheasant, fired shotgun blasts over the group’s heads.
This, friends, is dangerously bad hunting form.
Your Swamp correspondent, the son of a longtime hunter education instructor, grew up plying the corn rows and stream banks of rural Oregon with a Labrador retriever and a Mossberg 20-gauge pump shotgun. On our hunts for pheasant, grouse and quail, merely swinging a gun barrel in the general direction of another person was grounds for day-long banishment to the truck (which smelled like wet dog).
Suffice to say, if any of our hunting mates had pulled a stunt like Huckabee’s yesterday, we never would have invited them back. It’s the sort of behavior that drives safety-conscious hunters up the wall, because it reinforces a reckless, gun-totin’ stereotype.
My colleague James Oliphant reports that Huckabee’s party was about 75 yards away from the press corps Wednesday when a pheasant jumped up and flew toward the reporters, drawing several shots. “That was too close,” he reports a cameraman saying.
Gribbet at Stop The ACLU responds:
This is a huge hunting no-no. Apparently for all his joking at the expense of Vice President Cheney, Huckster never took a gun safety class. You DO NOT shoot any gun in the general direction of another person. He knew the reporters were there and he shot. The subject of his joke, Vice President Cheney, didn’t know his hunting parter was in his line of fire when he accidentally shot him while quail hunting. The VP should have known where his hunting parters were at all times, that was his mistake. But Huckster knew where everyone was and still took the shot. Who is more dangerous?
Object lesson: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Object lesson #2: “Let the candidate who is most clueless be the next to step out of the presidential race.”
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In a word, yes.
In a picture, think Wile E. Coyote strapped to a rocket.
Comment by steveegg @ 12/29/2007 - 11:38 am
Huckabee seems intent on never passing up a chance to prove he’s unqualified, and stupid to boot. This stunt with the shotgun is not a joke, it is criminal negligence and he ought to be charged.
For my job I have to maintain firearms quals - since 1975 I have, in one way or another, held jobs requiring proficiency with them. I have never been on any government range where this would have been tolerated. Just covering somebody with your barrel, however inadvertent, is enough to get thrown off the range and lose your quals.
Deliberately doing so, and then taking the shot, is not even remotely funny. Huckabee has removed all doubt - not only is he unqualified, but he is dangerously stupid and reckless.
Four universal firearms safety rule:
1. Treat all weapons as if they are loaded.
2. Never cover anything with your barrel that you are not willing to shoot.
3. Keep a straight trigger finger until your sights are on target.
4. Be sure of your target and what is beyond.
Comment by Steve Skubinna @ 12/29/2007 - 12:16 pm
I still like Fred.
Right now he is about the only one that seems to come across as genuine.
Huckabee is likeable but as you say, not Presidential in how he talks, his understanding or carries himself.
Guilliani, hate to say it, but I think is likeable enough, but not someone I htink should be president either.
Romney, he talks a good talk, he looks and acts presidential, has a bit of smoothness that will carry well. His Romeny care was too similiar to Hillary care for my liking, other than that, his faith should not be a litmus test for president.
Out of all the candidates, Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney are the ones I lean more toward. I hope Thomspon wins to tell you the truth, he seems to be the more Conservative out of all the candidates and more in line with how I feel and think.
But unfortunately I think the person who LOOKS presidential, or some sort will be the nominee, not because of ideas, but from silly things such as looks, or age, of who can throw the best story out there.
When it is time, i will vote for Thompson, if he loses hte nomination, I will be sad, but will still vote for hte Republican nominee, sad thing is, it will be the lesser of two evils - voting for a candidate I am not in agreement with but is a republican or not vote for a democrat that I feel will dmage the country worse.
[sighs]
Too bad the best man / woman for the job most times never wins.
Comment by sanity @ 12/29/2007 - 12:30 pm
Not insane, incompetent.
Comment by Fausta @ 12/29/2007 - 1:37 pm
I understand now why Huckabee has replaced Ron Paul as the MSM’s favorite candidate.
I can also understand why some conservative Christians support Huckabee. It represents a kind of “up yours” vote in response to the virulent Christophobia of the MSM and their Democrat pets.
But Huckabee (as one writer put it) is a member of the Religious Left. He is Bush without the foreign policy smarts, and at time he seems to channel McGovern. Despite his recent flip-flop on immigration, his record is that of an open-borders fanatic. Like Clinton and Obama, Huckabee has put no real thought into the Iraq War, the situation in Pakistan, and the Islamofascism threat beyond idiotic sound bites. His fiscal irresponsability on domestic spending rivals Bush’s. Only on abortion can Huckabee be considered conservative - and I wonder how long that will last.
Comment by Mwalimu Daudi @ 12/29/2007 - 4:05 pm
I like Huck, but have never believed he had much of a chance at actually securing the nomination. I think he’s at least partly a media creation. And I agree with others who believe some of his (early) support is coming from Christians who’re tired of being treated shamefully by elites and the MSM. He’s already begun to falter -and it appears the media’s chosen strategy is an attempt at resurrecting the McCain campaign.
Comment by Tango @ 12/29/2007 - 4:16 pm
Also let’s not forget that he brings the Fair Tax to the table in his policy choices. I have heard people talking about a Federal Sales Tax for many years, and here you have a candidate that is advocating one. THat draws some attention too. - Lorica
Comment by Lorica @ 12/29/2007 - 6:04 pm
Huckabee is unpolished, but he’s more clever than you think. And don’t forget that he’s been a very good Governor of a state for many years. His lack of foreign policy understanding is indeed his Achilles heal, but that was Bush’s, too, and Republicans, for better or worse, gave him a pass on that. They might this time around as well.
Comment by Franken Blunt @ 12/29/2007 - 6:50 pm
The Clinton adminstarion stock reply to a long string of scandals was “mistakes were made.” The stock line wore thin Mike Huckbeee’d stock line is that swe shucks. It too has worn thin. The Huckester is smooth. He also not a conservative.
Comment by DavidL @ 12/30/2007 - 10:35 am