Recently in Mike Huckabee Category

In Mafia parlance a "button man" is a hit-man or mafia soldier. In The Godfather movies, Luca Brazzi was a button man, as was Willie Cicci:

Chairman: ...you were a member of the Corleone crime organization.
Cicci: No. We called it the Corleone Family, Senator. We called it the Family.
Chairman: What was your position?
Cicci: At first, like everybody else I...I was a soldier.
Chairman: What is that?
Cicci: A button, you know, Senator, come on.
Chairman: No, I don't know. Tell me.
Cicci: Well, when the boss says push a button on a guy, I push a button. See, Senator?

I think Ed Rollins pushed the button on the McCain campaign. And whether it was Huck (or someone else) who gave the order remains to be seen.

Hear me out...

"Suggestions" that McCain once had intimate relations with a telco lobbyist are just the beginning of the story. As Digby succinctly puts it, "It's not about the sex it's about the favors."

Demosthenes is all over the story:

This scandal couldn't be worse. It's not that it raises the question of Gary Hart-style philandering, though it certainly does. It's that he was philandering with a lobbyist, a telco lobbyist no less. He's not just receptive to corporate lobbyists, he's intimate with them.

It destroys that "Maverick" image and makes him worse than other Republicans [and jaysus, that's saying a lot]. It puts him right back into the mold of the Keating 5. It's not going to go away, either; Republicans won't cut him enough slack [has Rush weighed in yet?], and Democrats will gleefully feast on what remains of his reputation [although Hillary's campaign probably won't -- too close for comfort]. If there's anything to this, it could destroy his candidacy. There's no way he can win.

Oh but it gets better, much better. When a story like this breaks you have to ask yourself two questions: "Why did the story break now and who benefits from it?" So here we go:

Let's say McCain drops out. That leaves Mike Huckabee as the frontrunner by default. In fact, it goes further than that, because Huckabee's staying in the race is what has maintained it as a race. All that CNN/MSNBC/Fox primary coverage has been predicated on Huckabee continuing to provide a challenger.

If McCain had dropped out with everybody else out, it would have simply progressed to a brokered convention and someone like Romney would have probably taken it. If there were no race, so there would be no objections.

Instead, the presumption is going to be that Huckabee will have "won" the race.

Yes, the Republican powers that be could try to nominate someone else, but then they'd have to go up against the social conservatives (egged on by the Huckster) yelling that Huckabee won fair and square, and should get the nomination.

The Republicans will be between a rock and a hard place: either nominate Huck, or those small cracks in the Republican coalition are blasted wide open.

So...you can believe this was a fortunate coincidence for the Huckabee campaign. You can also believe in the Tooth Fairy. But you and I know that the Huckabee campaign has on its payroll one of the most brutal streetfighters in the business: Ed Rollins.

Rollins came on board in December (coincidentally the same month the NYT held back the McCain story to begin with) and then Huckabee called Bush arrogant and having an bunker mentality; shortly after that, Huckabee vowed he wouldn't run the negative ad on Romney and then showed the ad to the assembled press (P.S. Huckabee beat Romney shortly thereafter); and now this.

• Michael Moore is in the middle of making a movie now, but he'd rather not talk about the details of it for obvious reasons.

  "If I can just say in the broad strokes of it, in the last eight years, a lot of things happened in this country that we didn't pay a lot of attention to because we were so focused on Bush and the war. While we were so focused on that and distracted, corporate America and others got away with a lot, a lot of stuff that we're going to have a hard time getting our democracy back. The theme of it is 'While America Slept.' But it's a comedy."

• John Williams, on the, ahem, uniqueness of Janet Huckabee -- someone we might be seeing more of before this thing is over:

  The night of the New Hampshire primary, I watched the various victory and concession speeches of the Republicans. Of their wives, only Janet Huckabee caught my interest. Everyone else stood by supportively, without much expression. Cindy McCain, as usual, looked like she had come straight from a L'Oréal testing lab. But Janet looked feisty and fun. Her laughs seemed genuinely spontaneous. She nodded along vigorously, sometimes looking like she wanted to grab the microphone.

  I also suspected she could crack her husband in half over her knee.

• Two of my favorite people -- Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach -- recently debated the existence of God. Why Boteach would do this, I have no idea. The outcome was a surprise (to me, anyway).
• Hillary has to lend her own campaign $5 million? And her key staff is working without pay? And Obama raised $7 million in the 36 hours after the polls closed on Super Tuesday? And Hillary is begging for more debates? And the traditional media says Hillary is the front-runner? What's wrong with this picture?
• Joe Lieberman is stripped of super-delegate status under "The Zell Miller Rule." I'll bet you a nickel that, before this is over, Lieberman will make an appearance at the Republican National Convention.
• Speaking of Lieberman, a lot has been said about the importance of the Independent vote -- how McCain/Lieberman and Obama "get it." Allow me to point out, however, that Obama widens the Democratic base when he does it; McCain/Lieberman simply moves his base when he does it. As a result, Obama is a transformational candidate; McCain/Lieberman is a "zero-sum game" candidate.
• Gore voted...but for who?
• So Romney's out. If McCain were smart (and not a hot-head) he'd lock Romney into the VP slot -- in fact, maybe he's already done that. Of course, Romney would have to finesse his dislike for McCain, e.g., "Senator McCain has proven that he will say anything to win this election." On the other hand, Romney has proven that he can change positions on a dime. So maybe this is perfect for both of them. On the other hand, SC Gov. Mark Sanford is young, from the South and conservatives like him. So maybe that's your Republican ticket right there.

By Mark Adams

The Recession Is Here! The Recession Is Here!

Now maybe instead of endlessly listening to the doom-sayers predicting the imminent collapse of our financial institutions and discussing how deep and how long the coming catastrophic economic downturn will be as we teeter on the brink of ruin -- they can start with the happy talk of Teh Awesome recovery and how much better things will be ... reeeeel soon.

A growing number of top economists believe that the U.S. economy has now toppled into recession. Alarm bells were set off Tuesday by a grim report on service businesses, which make up the majority of the U.S. economy.

The Institute of Supply Management said that activity in the service sector declined for the first time in nearly five years. This report also indicated that employers are cutting staff.

Now they push the panic button?!? Now that all the decent jobs have been outsourced and the unions are a shadow of their former selves, you know that we're in trouble when cash flow has ground down to the point where we can't afford to wait on each other.

Come on, the Service Employee's Union is now the largest and most influential Union when it comes to endorsement headlines? WTF happened to the clout of the manufacturing guys, the Steel and Iron Workers, the UAB, the frickin' Teamsters? They were the forces to be appeased not that long ago. Now it's "big" news that the Painters endorsed the Huckster. Not to disparage the Painters Union, good folks all. But seriously, am I supposed to be impressed?

Ya gotta make stuff. That's the economic engine of an industrialized nation. What this current episode of chickens coming home to roost indicates is that the era of post-ndustrialized America is now fully in play. Everybody is servicing everybody else and nobody is making anything of value that originates the wealth we pass around to each other for doing stuff for the next guy.

In fact, all that we're witnessing is the perpetual motion machine wearing down through inertia -- a machine that was switched off in the late 70's and early 80's with the American steel industry disintegration and has slowly worked it's agony throughout the economy as manufacturing jobs have been outsourced over the last decade.

Finally, deregulation and indifference by a ruling class that treats globalization and the free market as a religion instead of an economic theory has trickled it's malignant magic right down though to the folk who clean up everybody else's messes, drive the buses, care for the sick and disabled, sell shoes, build, finance and sell houses, and flip burgers.

The survey covers the retail, transportation and health care industries as well as hard hit areas such as finance, real estate and construction.

Some economists argued that the normally low-profile ISM services reading, coupled with the government's report Friday showing the first monthly net loss in jobs in more than four years, is proof that recession is now a reality.

Of course, the cure for this is the same thing we saw when the economy was humming and the Club For Greed insisted that starving the beast was only "fair" -- that you should get "your money" back. Huzzah! Tax cuts for the wealthy, naturally. The elixir that treats all ailments -- just like snake-oil and a stiff shot of scotch (preferably Johnny Walker Blue -- the choice of Enron executives everywhere).

Say what you want about Mike Huckabee and his goofy ideas, but his break with supply-sider doctrine is outstanding. The Fed is still in the grip of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman mythology that tinkering with the money supply and playing with the Laffer Curve is the extent of proper government interference with the private sector.

Rand's "Objectivism" is merely raw selfish greed and hedonistic misogyny supercharged with a thesaurus yet this delusion of a failed screenwriter is the basis of the dominant fiscal policy of our nation -- supply-side (voodoo) economics. The fact that John McCain counts Trickle Down Guru Jack Kemp as an adviser tells you all you need to know about his fiscal conservative orthodoxy. McCain is just as nutty as the rest of them, The Blimpster included.

Put people to work. That'll fix a lot that's wrong. Adding some lanes to I-95 is a great thing to do -- lousy idea to campaign on, however. But Huck is a hick, after all.

More of the same is why we're in this mess.

Dang.

This is why I try so hard (yet fail so often) to not predict the outcome of political campaigns.

So, let's recap. Hillary Clinton wins this year's "Comeback Kid Award," doing something the original Comeback Kid never did: win the New Hampshire primary. Barack Obama gets the culinary workers union endorsement in Nevada, which I'm told "ensures his victory" in the caucuses there. In Michigan, Hillary is looking pretty smart now for leaving her name -- virtually unopposed -- on the ballot, so she'll get some positive press after her win there --and they'll count those delegates even if the DNC doesn't. And South Carolina? Wait and see. Same for Florida. And as for Super-duper Tuesday, it might as well take place in a galaxy far, far away.

[UPDATE: Cynics will point out that this is two elections in a row where the Clinton team was shocked by the results -- not exactly inspiring confidence in whoever is running that campaign.]

In other news:

John Edwards, who slammed Hillary for crying (and then blew off the question as to whether he himself had ever cried in a campaign setting) must feel kind of ... silly this morning. He'll be reading stories about how women voted for Hillary out of sympathy and solidarity, as evidenced by numbers showing that one-third of voters had not decided on their choice until the final three days of the campaign.

In other words, look for plenty of stories about how Edwards got trumped by the gender card ... again. Paging Rick Lazio!

[Actually, and in all fairness to Edwards, Clinton's win may have owed much more to the wave of Independent voters who voted for McCain and not Obama. Similarly, how'd the youth vote do -- did they turn out for Obama this time? I haven't seen any final results on that.]

Would it have killed John McCain to read his victory speech off a teleprompter? I got tired of looking at the top of his head while he read his dreadful victory speech word-for-word in that inconguous sing-song voice last night.

Mitt Romney: If you get a chance, watch any video of Romney's speech last night. Actually, watch Ann Romney, who was standing behind and to Mitt's left. When he says, "Well, we won another silver medal," Ann Romney briefly touches the side of her nose. In poker parlance, this is called "the tell." In other words, she's tired of hearing about the damn silver medals already and probably told him that when all the volunteers and campaign officials finally left them alone. Bet you a nickel!

Mike Huckabee: Anything is possible for him at this point.

Rudy Ghouliani: The traditional media has dubbed him the "real winner" last night, apparently because all his opponents are in disarray. That might be, but at some point the dude has to put some points on the board. That said, he did beat Ron Paul.

UPDATE: Fred Thompson: Yes, he got smoked by Dennis Kucinich AND Ron Paul.

by shep

Hi Mark,

On the News Hour New Hampshire Extravaganza, I thought your answer on Hillary’s "comeback" was brilliant (also a nice point on the "is blowing 20-point lead a great victory" question). At least, I agreed with it: roughly, female sympathy and backlash at the treatment Hillary has received from the press and her rivals over that last few days (why it wasn’t reflected even in late polling) turned the female vote out for her big time.

Wish I could say the same for your answer on McCain: “the anti-Bush”. Other than finally turning on Rumsfeld, and an all-too-tepid resistance to US sanctioned torture, he’s barely been off his knees before Bush since 2000.

I think the real Republican story is that rank-and-file Republicans, particularly Evangelicals, simply reject Romney (the Mormon) and Gulianni (the philandering New Yorker) and are choosing one of their own in Huckabee. Regardless of their automaton-like fealty to the Republican Party, they have been trained to despise (any) government (pretty shrewd of Huck to play the populist) and to do (and believe) what their preachers tell them.

Oh, and the (conspicuously unspoken) story with Edwards is that the corporate media ignored, marginalized or outright ridiculed him – because, obviously, they hate his anti-corporate, populist rhetoric – so his message never reached the voters who would be energized by it. Others simply bought into the media-framed “no chance against the frontrunners” status (breathtaking chutzpa considering that he came in second in Iowa).

IMHO, for what it's worth.

Best,
[shep]

[Cross-posted at Dispassionate Liberal]

by Mark Adams
Cross Posted at The American Street where I'll be every Friday, and where I usually rant.

I watched Huckabee on Leno Wednesday night, and can tell you why he outperformed expectations in the Iowa caucus. If this guy manages to do the impossible, buck the GOP moneyed elite and withstand the onslaught of the entrenched conservative noise machine led by Limbaugh and Hannity, get outspent 25 to one, and still win the Republican nomination -- we're fucked.

He can take Edwards' populist message to a more authentic level with one story about his wife and him living in a double-wide trailer, and call out the same corporate lobbyists on their crap without the fighting words all the Broderites tell us liberals will always doom our cause.

He's soft-spoken, natural, and speaks of unity and ending our divides between right and left (moving up, vertically instead of horizontally) in a way captures the essence of Obama's recurrent uniter theme without sounding like a college professor, but a father-confessor.

And he not only was born in Hope, Arkansas, but was raised there, lived there most of his life -- unlike Hillary's hubby whose family moved to Hot Springs when Bubba was seven. And the dude can jam, but wisely forgoes the Blues Brothers' shades when he straps on his guitar. And while he embodies the "everyman" qualities Bill Clinton personified, he lacks that calculated guile Hillary Clinton oozes, which is both her strongest quality and her perpetual curse. (It's great that she has it, lousy that we know about it.)

Yep, Huckabee is stupid, dangerously so, but doesn't come off that way. He doesn't know squat about foreign policy and claims he didn't think he was crossing any picket lines by appearing on the Leno show. He's got a seriously flawed tax scheme, is one dumb joke short of being a gay basher, and is willing to hold up major disaster relief legislation because he doesn't think his boss should be blamed for Acts of God.

However, you never see him hesitate as he talks. He avoids those annoying vocal segregates you use when thinking of what you're going to say next (“aah”, “um” “uh-huh”) that even a crisp litigator slips into -- like John Edwards does habitually which makes him sound hesitant and uncertain when he interjects the word, "aahhnd" every other sentence. I guess this is where the communication degree balances my political science studies.

Style does matter. It sucks, but it's true. Wearing a goofy helmet or baby-blue bunny smock leaves an impression, even more so in a YouTube world. Speaking style, a graceful natural intonation has taken Barack Obama far indeed, which makes the substance of his message resonate in a way that Hillary tries, but fails, because it always seems like she's trying and not just doing. She needs to learn to just ... be. Barack does that, so does Huckabee. Edwards could if he wasn't trying to cover up a stutter.

Most of what any speaker communicates is non-verbal, and leaves an inarticulable impression on the listener/viewer. Often this impression is completely wrong, as people who stutter learn to use these vocal segregate devices as a way to control an even worse delivery -- yet they sometimes sound like they are trying to convince themselves as well as you. It's what got me through my college speech and debate team competitions as a former stutterer, so I know. It's the lessor of two evils.

You gotta dress the part too, look like a president, which Mitt Romney has spent about eight million bucks doing from the looks of him. Giuliani is running a campaign strictly on some tough-guy cred. He has to, the guy walks and talks like a thug. That's all he's got. The days when John McCain and Fred Thompson could pull off the illusion of inspirational leader have passed them by. Think Ronald Reagan in his second term, without an entourage of image-consultants to keep them looking the part.

Huckabee doesn't give the great, inspirational sermons Obama can crank out, but he can engage in conversation and not just parrot talking points, string two sentences together and make sense, tell a joke that gets laughs and not just a wince and nod, and comes across (as he says) more like the guy you work with than the one who laid you off. Already that makes him more than qualified for the position than the current resident, even after seven years of on-the-job training.

The more I learn about Mike Huckabee and what he stands for, the more I don't like him -- that he would be a disastrously impossible follow-up to the current fiasco. He stands for crackpot solutions to the very real problems his party has created. The more I see and hear him however, the more I know we're in for yet another fight for our lives come next fall if he's the GOP nominee.

He comes across "genuine." A genuine "what" is irrelevant, at least to the likes of Russert, Blitzer, Scarborough and Chris Matthews. The professional courtiers known as the Washington Press Corps live for those moments they can find a rich, unbelievably ambitious, narcissistic empty suit and tell us "He's one of you!"

You see, those of us who quest for information have a desire to learn. But there are more people who value action over knowledge, impressions over information, and are unconsciously more moved by style over substance in our American culture. The proof of this is that someone as utterly incompetent as George W. Bush got to the point where he is (thankfully) term limited, having fooled the voters enough to even make it close enough to steal, twice.

Mike Huckabee has a natural, comfortable ability to deliver more bad ideas than Bush ever dreamed.

The intrade.com prediction market has pegged the outcome of the Iowa caucuses for the Republicans (click the image for a larger view):

...and the Democrats (click the image for a larger view):

Intrade contracts trade between 0 and 100 so you can think of the price at any time to be the percentage probability of that event occurring. If the Obama Iowa caucus contract is trading at 61, it means that traders gave him a 61% chance of winning the caucus. Holders of those contracts will make a 39 cent profit per share if that happens.

On the other hand, if Edwards' Iowa caucus contract is trading at 16, it means that traders gave him a 16% chance of winning the caucus. And/But holders of those contracts will make a 84 cent profit per share if that happens.

UPDATE: First it was Kucinich throwing his support behind Obama in Iowa; now there are rumors that Richardson and Biden want their supporters to do the same if they cannot reach the magic 15% threshhold of viability.

(Cross posted at Daily Kos, with poll)

"Those who live by the crystal ball eat broken glass."

---- Michael Swanson, Wells Fargo Bank economist, 2004.

I'm not much of one to make predictions, but I do like looking at every possible angle. So with that in mind, I thought I'd collect a couple of the better pieces of electoral analysis for you today. They're pretty brief, but they take a look at the field the same way I might.

For the Democrats:

You don't need me to tell you that Iowa is close. It could be taken by any of the top tier Dems. Blitz boy, in an excellent diary that I'm summarizing here, has the Democratic race looking like this:

• IF Edwards wins Iowa AND IF Clinton comes in second, Obama is wounded. Clinton probably takes NH, MI and NV. Super Tuesday spells the end of the race: Clinton wins.
• IF Edwards wins Iowa, AND IF Hillary comes in third, then NH is a three-way race.

  Here's where it gets complicated:

  • IF Hillary then wins in NH, THEN she's the nominee.
  • However, IF Edwards is the NH winner AND IF Clinton is second, THEN Obama is toast. Clinton probably wins NV, SC and the nomination.
  • Lastly, IF Obama wins in NH AND IF Clinton is second, THEN she will still win MI and recover in NV. She's looking good on Super Tuesday.
  • Regardless, IF Clinton is third in NH, THEN she's toast and the race is between Edwards and Obama. Advantage: Obama.
• IF Obama wins Iowa AND NH, THEN he wins the nomination.


• IF Clinton wins Iowa, THEN it's over. She wins the nomination.

On the Republican side, Pat Buchanan has it this way:

• First off, IF Romney wins Iowa, THEN he'll win NH and MI and will probably be the nominee.
• However, IF Huckabee wins Iowa AND IF McCain's recent progress in NH is for real and he wins there, THEN Romney is on life-support. At that point, McCain has a real chance at the nomination by becoming the anti-Huckabee, especially if Thompson drops out and endorses him before SC. However, IF Huckabee wins SC, THEN Huckabee has the inside track.
• In fact, IF Huck wins Iowa AND IF Romney wins NH, THEN its curtains for everyone else and it will be a two man sprint to the finish: Mitt vs. Huck.

Summary observations on the rest of the field:

• Giuliani is close to toast. He'll lose Iowa and NH, then MI and SC. Even now, his firewall in Florida is crumbling. By Super Tuesday, IF he is 0-5, THEN it's over for him.
• Same for Thompson. He might have a good showing in Iowa (IF Romney and Huckabee rip each other apart), but he probably won't win there. He will also not win NH (where he is polling behind Ron Paul). Nor will he win in MI. After all that, he may not even make it to SC (where he is polling #3 behind Romney and Huckabee), let alone win it. In fact, IF he flops in Iowa, THEN he'll drop out and endorse McCain (see above).

So, two weeks out from Iowa, here are the odds, according to Pat Buchanan:

• Giuliani: 20-1
• Thompson: 20-1
• McCain: 6-1
• Romney: 3-2
• Huckabee: ?? Buchanan isn't taking bets on Huck, although he does see him likely finishing in the top two.

What do you think?

Mike Huckabee's support is soaring ... and why not? He's not a corrupt, cross-dressing sex addict from pushy New York City. No! Mike is not 178 years old and didn't sponsor a bill to send millions of Mexicans into Iowa to steal your job and do the Lambada with your daughter. No! Mike isn't made of plastic; he doesn't have the soul of a gameshow host from the 1970s and there's nothing magic about Mike Huckabees underwear.

If I was having more fun, I'd have to be twins.

Fun:
Huck: “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan were brothers?”

Funner:
Christopher Hitchens on Huck: “[He’s a] moon-faced true believer and anti-Darwin pulpit-puncher from Arkansas who doesn’t seem to know the difference between being born again and born yesterday.”

Funnest:
The thought bubble above Benito Giuliani’s head: “w00t! I’m the moderate in this race!”