Don't be like Mike

Mike Huckabee? Really?

Seems like only a couple of years ago….in fact, it was only a couple of years ago, when some conservative Arkies at a local watering hole were complaining to me (that’s easy when me ‘n mama are the only libs in the room….or, the county, as far as I know) how the Huckster was more of a liberal than Bill Clinton ever pretended to be. Now, lookie here. He’s the darling of that loveable far right constituency of the Republican party. Numero Uno in some polls. As far down as number two in others.

Of course, “liberal” is only what the indigenous Neocons call anybody who doesn’t do everything exactly like they want it done. If a guy doesn’t drive an American-made pickup truck with a rebel flag front license plate; a “God, Guns & Glory” bumper sticker on the left rear; some anti-Hillary sticker on the other side; and a little plastic Jesus on the dashboard…well, that guy is a liberal. Even if he did start his career as Guv’ner in an American-made double-wide. I don’t know what Huck did to get tagged with such a nasty label, but he can take solace in the fact that the same guys slapped that moniker on the Duhbyuh himself. And look what a bang-up job he’s done for us.

See, what we have here, in our second-coming of “the man from Hope”, is a bona fide, honest-to-goodness Baptist preacher. And a funny one, at that. Not only funny with his little one liners, but kind of funny (given his calling, and all) with the way he takes liberties with the truth when addressing all these folks around the country who, through no fault of their own, think the same thing I used to think: that a preacher wouldn’t tell lies like your typical politician. Well, actually, the Huckster doesn’t lie like the typical politician. He takes the art to a whole ‘nuther level.

Take, for example, his denial that he was responsible for the parole of rapist-murderer, Wayne Dumond. That, according to the Huckinator, was the handywork of Jim Guy Tucker and, guess who, Bill Clinton. How are you going to get to be a serious GOP presidential contender if you don’t blame something on Bill Clinton? Huck says it was Jim Guy who commuted Dumond’s sentence. Well. That much is true. What he is smart enough to understand is that most of America is not smart enough to understand that commuting a sentence doesn’t mean letting a guy go free. See, Governor Bill Clinton refused to make Dumond eligible for parole. It was thought by the good ol’ boys that was because the 17 year old cheerleader the guy was convicted of raping was a distant cousin of Slick Willie. In some sense, in the minds of the hard-core Clinton haters, that meant what the pervert did was, you know, kinda OK. When Jim Guy became guv, he reviewed the case and did “commute” Dumond’s sentence. That means he changed the “life plus 20” sentence the guy originally got, and reduced it to 39 years, making him “eligible” for parole. That was in 1992. So, you see, Jim Guy didn’t let the animal out of the cage.

Then, along comes the new Governor Huckabee, who planned to release Dumond outright, for lack of sufficient DNA evidence – even though the victim of the crime positively identified him. That got a bunch of folks up in arms, so he backed off his overt plan to let the rapist go, and started putting pressure on the parole board to do it for him. That eventually worked, and Dumond was set free on parole in 1999.

The next year, according to the jury who convicted him in 2004, Huckabee’s pet project raped and killed a woman in Missouri.

So, is Huck telling the truth when he so cleverly says that the Governor in Arkansas doesn’t have the power to parole a convicted felon? Sure he is. Does that mean that he isn’t lying to the people who ask him about the Dumond situation? You decide.

Kind of brings to mind the commercial that shows the car submerged in hurricane waters and the seller re-writing the ad from “slight water damage” to “new interior”, doesn’t it?

But that’s all becoming pretty well known, now that Huck’s free ride is coming to an end. And, soon, all the details of his snatching stuff from the governor’s mansion and using campaign contributions for whatever he decided, and smashing computer hard drives when he didn’t want to leave behind any incriminating evidence will be out in the national light also. He’ll have something to say about those things. It will be carefully crafted to not be a lie, while at the same time completely concealing the truth.

But none of that stuff about the Huckster is what bugs me – because the media is beginning to catch on. It doesn’t even seem to weigh heavy on my opinion of the guy that he seems to honestly believe the earth is only 6,000 years old. What really gets my goat is how he keeps saying that he is the only republican who has “defeated the Clinton political machine in Arkansas four times”. That was confusing to me, what with my caveman digital artist mind and all. So I asked Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times (the ultimate authority on Mike Huckabee) what Huck meant when he referenced those four victories against Clinton. Turns out he was speaking of victories, in his run up to the governor’s office, after Clinton was already President, against Nate Coulter, Charlie Cole Chaffin, Bill Bristow, and Jimmie Lou Fisher. OK. They were democrats. But I even went so far as to re-arrange the letters of their names, and I couldn’t get “Bill Clinton” out of any of them. The closest I can get is if I use letters from ALL of their names, and even then, I can only come up with “Bill Clinto”.

Wait! I left off the “N” in “Nate”.

The Huckster wins again.

© 2007 Rick Baber
http://www.rickbaber.com/