The Political Whore

The poli sci minds at UVA have a good roundup of the presidential hopefuls four years out, and even before Obama is sworn in. Here’s the intro to the red list:

Here’s the worst kept secret in politics: Presidential campaigning never ends. For periods of time it becomes quieter–a little subtler–but it never stops. Every morning 100 senators, 50 governors, quite a few grandees in the House of Representatives, and an assortment of corporate titans all hear their Rice Krispies shouting “2012!” “FORM A PRESIDENTIAL EXPLORATORY COMMITTEE!” and “RUN … YOU’RE THE ONE!”

Democrats will shush Snap, Crackle, and Pop, pleading with them to instead say, “2016!” Republicans on the other hand, will pour another bowl, and ask the three sirens of Battle Creek, Michigan, to repeat what they just said.

Of course, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are already doing battle for the hearts and minds of the social conservatives for 2012. (Kee-rist, you can’t even turn on the TV without seeing Mitt comment on the auto bailout or anything he is asked.) And Sarah Palin, La. Gov. Bobby Jindal, and Tim Pawlenty from the 2008 Veep race are mentioned, of course. Newcomers to the GOP list include Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour and SC Gov. Mark Sanford. Bubbling under is Cong. Eric Cantor, a darling of the right. Others: Former Md. Lt. Gov. Michael Steele (also seeking the RNC chair), New Jersey’s Chris Christie, and Va.’s Bob McDonnell.

Not a very inspiring list, huh Republicans? Where’s the great white hope that will lead the GOP out of the woods and back into the hearts of centrist voters?

Former Ark. Gov. MIke Huckabee has a new book out in which he berates his fellow Republicans for not embracing his presidential campaign the way they should have. He calls out Mitt Romney, according to an NYT account of Time’s preview:

Mr. Huckabee, who came from way back in the Republican pack to defeat Mr. Romney in the Iowa, excoriates his former foe in the book as “anything but conservative until he changed the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for president,” according to a report in Time magazine.

Oh, snap!

The Huckster is bringing his road show of part-memoir, part-2012 campaign launch to Tampa in a book signing being sponsored by the independent Inkwood Books:

On Friday, November 28, Inkwood Books presents MIKE HUCKABEE as he signs his book, DO THE RIGHT THING: INSIDE THE MOVEMENT THAT’S BRINGING COMMON SENSE BACK TO AMERICA. The event is for one hour only, from 9 until 10 a.m. in Hyde Park Village – our thanks to the management.  Do the Right Thing is part campaign memoir, part manifesto, with the inside story of Huckabee’s longshot grassroots Presidential campaign, plus his optimistic vision for America’s future. The signing is limited to books purchased from Inkwood, with no personalization. Books will be available for purchase at the event, but we encourage advance purchase for your convenience. For additional details contact the bookstore at 813-253-2638 or inkwoodbks@aol.com.

The best explanation of the FairTax movement and criticisms of it comes in today’s WaPo, in a story about how Mike Huckabee is riding a wave of FairTaxers with large rally audiences:

To Huckabee, there seems to be no downside to a national sales tax. By eliminating federal income and payroll taxes, businesses would save considerable sums and pass on the savings. The FairTax would lower the cost of retail goods, make U.S. companies more competitive internationally, send the economy into overdrive and even encourage thrift, since the national sales tax would apply only to new goods.

“Am I running for president to shut down the federal government? Not exactly,” Huckabee says on his Web site. “But I am running to completely eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes. And I do mean all — personal federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment. . . . Instead we will have the FairTax, a simple tax based on wealth.”

But the article goes on to detail lots of potential downsides, from the fact that FairTax shifts the tax burden from the rich to the poor, creates the largest entitlement program in the U.S. and creates an underground economy in cash transactions as a means of avoiding paying the retail tax.

The story doesn’t longer on one of my biggest points of contention with the FairTax argument: the idea that the tax preparation and advising industry (lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, etc.) and the attendant government agencies that administer taxes now (the IRS, mainly) would go away and free up savings now embedded in the cost of goods and services. I find it hard to believe that will occur as envisioned (lawyers and accountants drying up and blowing away? not without a fight), and I find it even harder to imagine that whatever embedded savings are freed up will be returned 100 percent to consumers. Corporations, despite the pressures of the marketplace, have many ways to keep a healthy chunk of any possible embedded savings in the form of returns to investors rather than passing them along, at least initially or for a number of years.

Here’s the FairTax rebuttal to these criticisms in general. Here’s CL’s former Atlanta political writer Doug Monroe’s 2005 piece calling FairTax a sham. Here is CL’s soon-to-be-former writer John Sugg in 2005 with an even more pointed analysis of the tax proposal and Boortz’s pimping of it.

And here’s Ron Paul’s assessment of the flat retail tax, which he says is better than the current system but only effective if the income tax is repealed.

1. The Hillsborough School board can’t agree on secular vs. non-secular holidays but didn’t have any problem naming a new high school for what passes for a hero and celebrity in Tampa Bay: NY Yankees partner George Steinbrenner. The Boss was convicted of felony charges in connection with illegal campaign contributions made to Nixon in the 1970s, and he was later pardoned. The Boss has done lots of charity work in our area, no doubt, but his offer to snitch on other political wrongdoers back in the 1970s is perhaps more insightful as to whether he should have a school named after him.
2. Why is everyone in a snit about Mitt Romney’s failure to address the wackier aspects of his religion to the exclusion of any questioning of how evangelical Christians have/would run this country (see: Bush, George W., and Huckabee, Mike)

Stealing the headline and link from a reader who prefers to remain nameless. Even conservatives dislike Huckabee.

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi has a profile of Huck in a recent issue, and it is a nice antidote to those who are in love with the former AR governor and those who can’t understand why the national media soooooo heart him. A sample:

This God stuff isn’t just talk with Huck. One of his first acts as governor was to block Medicaid from funding an abortion for a mentally retarded teen­ager who had been raped by her stepfather — an act in direct violation of federal law, which requires states to pay for abortions in cases of rape. “The state didn’t fund a single such abortion while Huckabee was governor,” says Dr. William Harrison of the Fayetteville Women’s Clinic. “Zero.”

As president, Huck would support a constitutional amendment banning abortion and would give science a back seat to religion. “Science changes with every generation and with new discoveries, and God doesn’t,” he says. “So I’ll stick with God if the two are in conflict.” Huckabee’s well-documented ­disdain for science was reflected in the performance of the Arkansas school system when he was governor; one independent survey gave the state an F for its science standards in schools, a grade that among other things reflected Huckabee’s hostility toward the teaching of evolution.

and this:

Huckabee also has a televangelist’s knack for getting caught with his fingers in various cookie jars. In his first year as governor, Huck used a $60,000 tax­payer fund for personal expenses like dog food, pantyhose and meals at Taco Bell. (One of his sons — also a very heavy man, as his ­father was — reportedly joked that “there’s not a Huckabee alive that can eat at Taco Bell for seven dollars.”) The governor also tried to keep $70,000 in furnishings for the governor’s mansion supplied by a local cotton grower, and used inaugural funds to pay for clothes for his wife. “Mike is first and foremost about Mike,” says Brantley. “He’ll nickel-and-dime whoever he can to line his pockets.”

Huckabee has also been accused of paying himself as a consultant to his own senatorial campaign, allowing special interests to pay for airline tickets for his daughter, receiving a canoe from a Coke bottler and — hilariously, if you’re wont to laugh at the sheer small-town gauche greediness of it all — setting up a “wedding registry” at Target and Dillard’s department stores so citizens could lavish the Huckabees with gifts as they renewed their marriage vows. The long list of desired goodies included twenty-four settings of Lenox “Holiday Nouveau” china, a KitchenAid mixer and a “Jack La Lanne power juicer.” If you didn’t want to pick out something yourself, the Huckabees were glad to take straight cash. “Message from the couple,” the registry noted. “Target GiftCards are welcome.”

Read the whole tale here.

(Photo: Wayne Garcia)

Norris on his man’s performance at the YouTube debate tonight:

“A week ago, Mike Huckabee was a dark horse. Tonight, he was a shining stallion.”

And you thought the Hollywood writers were on strike …

Here’s a sneak preview of my Next President series installment coming out in Wednesday’s issue. This time it’s three GOP candidates fighting on the far right of the party:

When Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee began their longshot candidacies for the president, it is unlikely they thought they would be forever tied together in history for simply, and wordlessly, raising their hands.

But their footnote in American history is indeed a joint entry. Tancredo, Brownback and Huckabee, after all, are the three Republicans who raised their hands at a Republican debate in May when moderator Chris Matthews asked, “I’m curious, is there anybody on the stage that does not agree, [does not] believe in evolution?”

The blogosphere lit up in outrage and disbelief. One Democratic strategist said the trio made the Republican Party appear to be “a front for the Flat Earth Society.”

The (un)funny thing is that Tancredo, Brownback and Huckabee have a majority of Americans on their side. A USA Today/Gallup Poll taken shortly after the debate found two-thirds of the respondents believed “creationism, the idea that God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years, is definitely or probably true.” That was more than the 53 percent who said evolution was definitely or probably true.

All three candidates offered varying degrees of clarification in the wake of the debate, essentially parsing a position that doesn’t completely deny evolution but requires the hand of God in explaining human development.

They’re all anti-gay marriage. They’re all against abortion. Huckabee is even a Baptist minister.

So why aren’t any of these three competitive in Florida, the land of the Defense of Marriage Act and Terri Schiavo interventions?

It appears that times have changed.

Pick up your copy of CL this week to read the rest of the series, or check back here and I’ll post a link as soon as we have it up on our website. (And thanks again to illustrator Joseph Di Nicola for the great depictions of all our candidates in this series.)

For those who weren’t glued to their cable-enabled televisions for what one wag has termed a 10-man simultaneous press conference (more commonly known as the GOP President Debates from California on MSNBC), there is this gem about evolution.

John McCain was asked about his views on the scientific fact that is natural selection and evolution:

Moderator: Senator McCain, this comes from a Politico.com reader and was among the top vote getters in our early rounds. They want a yes or a no. Do you believe in evolution?

McCain: Yes.

Moderator: I’m curious, is there anybody on the stage that does not agree, believe in evolution?

At this point, three proud Christian conservatives raised their hands: Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee.

Such is the power and lure of Christian voters in the Republican presidential primary that these three brainiacs are willing to turn aside all of their education and hundreds of years of evidence to please those who want to throw Darwin into the trash heap.

Even McCain felt compelled to soften his correct answer a bit to kowtow to the Christian Right:

McCain: May I just add to that?

Moderator: Sure.

McCain: I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.