Posted on 12/15/2007 9:20:42 PM PST by raccoonradio
Gov. Mike Huckabee has the soul of a Massachusetts state rep. Not to mention the ethics.
What other conclusion can you draw after studying the squalid career of the current front-runner for the GOP nomination for president?
The Huckster is from the same town as Bill Clinton - Hope, Ark. - and at the risk of engaging in geographic profiling, what more do you really need to know? From what I can tell, if Huckabee had been raised around here, he would now be known as either “Mr. Speaker” or “the defendant.”
This barefoot boy with cheek is lucky he came up in the hookworm capital of America, because even here in Boston, where political corruption is seldom prosecuted anymore, he would have been in deep doo-doo a long time ago.
In his years in politics, Huckabee has combined the veracity of Felon Finneran with the dextrous accounting of Good Time Charlie Flaherty, not to mention a law-abiding family not unlike Billy Bulger’s, the spot-on character judgment of M. Stanley Dukakis and, finally, a worse addiction to state aircraft than Jane Swift.
After studying a 34-page printout of Huckabee’s record, thoughtfully provided by a Concerned Citizen, my nomination for most innovative Huckabee money-grubbing scam is the “wedding registry” he and Mrs. Huckabee set up last year as he was leaving office. This came 32 years after their first marriage and just a year after they entered into a “covenant marriage,” whatever that is.
Told of Huckleberry’s “wedding registry,” a Republican legislator quipped, “Maybe I should do a registry for a car.”
Then there was his political action committee, Hope for America, supposedly to help other candidates. By September it raised $800,000, of which it disbursed to pols not named Huckabee . . . $3,900.
Sounds a little like those “golf charities” our solons set up and then neglect to incorporate, let alone dole out any money from - except to pay off their bar tabs.
In the ’90s, Huckabee got $70,000 from a convicted stock swindler who did 14 months in prison for forging a $1 million stock certificate. The money from the con man went to buy furniture at the governor’s mansion.
Leaving office early this year, Huckabee spent $13,000 in state funds to destroy the hard drives on the computers in the governor’s office. While he was governor, the state bought a $1.4 million Beechcraft turboprop - the Huckster and/or his wife flew on it 80 times in 2005 and 55 times last year.
He and his family used something called the Governor’s Mansion Account for their own private needs, including gourmet meals at Taco Bell [YUM] and Papa John’s Pizza, and nine pairs of pantyhose for the missus from J.C. Penney. His chief of staff told the press, “As long as the first family feels it’s proper, they can do it.” She then thought a moment and added, “That doesn’t sound very good, does it?”
It’s safe to say that when Mike Huckabee became a preacher, he didn’t take any vows of poverty.
He paid his wife $14,000 for her alleged work as the “treasurer” of his Senate campaign in 1992. He paid himself $43,500 for use of a plane he bought for that same campaign. He was the subject of 14 investigations by the State Ethics Commission.
He commuted the prison sentence of the stepson of one of his staffers. He commuted the murder sentences of any number of depraved killers, including at least one who had been turned down for release a total of three times by Gov. Bill Clinton, who himself should have gone to prison, and Clinton successor Jim Guy Tucker, who did (go to prison, that is).
Huckabee ran his wife for secretary of state in 2002 against a guy named Charlie Daniels - I’m not making this up! His name was Charlie Daniels. Welcome to Arkansas.
His son David was arrested last April for taking a handgun through security at the airport in Little Rock. Who does he think he is: an NBA player?
In the next debate, there’s only one thing Mitt, Rudy et al. need to say to this faker: “You have the right to remain silent. . .”
Howie Carr column ping. We’ll do this week’s show ping
on Monday.
It’s not the ghosts he should worry about, it’s the dead bodies - all the ones the Clintons left behind.
Oh, thought they meant real ghosts from Arkancides.
Now...about Ted Kennedy...
Howie BUMP
The media is behind Huck’s candidacy. That’s all you need
to know. (They feel Hillary or Barack can easily beat him.)
Sounds like a typical political sleazeball. Most of official Washington surely has done likewise and more or whatever greater-dollar sleaze is technically legal. I know that Guiliani used his oversized share of official funds for “personal” purposes. I haven’t heard about Mitt Romney. But if the legislature gives you a slush fund and tells you to spend it, what else do you expect? I never did understand the wedding registry, but it’s apparently legal, no matter how ridiculous.
You knew the new “man from Hope” was dirty by his political provenance. If you’re running for any office higher than dog catcher in Arkansas, you going to have to either tolerate, or participate in, some graft and corruption. Sadly, there are some folks in these quarters who’d rather have a disgraced Elmer Gantry/Jimmy Swaggart than someone who professes that he’s not the most regular church goer (you know, like those un-Christian souls, Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan).
The supporters of the Huckster aren’t delivering the money to him and I have trouble believing they’ll deliver the vote.
Huckster and Precious Willard, two turds of a feather.
I think that Fred Thompson still can pull this out. He’s in a similar situation that John Kerry was in at this time in 2003. He just needs to pull together conservatives worried about electability and supporters of other candidates who have serious qualms about them.
Anybody check with the missus about them pantyhose?
Personal attacks? I am not so sure this comes under personal attacks as it does out his ethics. Pahlease...a wedding registry? Do you know why a Wedding Registry? Because it escapes the gift clause. He can accept wedding gifts. Now come on ...dont you think thats a bit stretching it?
Good to see them using the appropriate title for the Huckster.
Howie nails it. The sooner Slickabee slides into well-deserved oblivion, the better for the party and the country.
*PING* to Dano!
Dano my FRiend, we need your Mick Huckabee graphic for this thread, it’s just not the same without it, and hey: *good news* this morning, the mods haven’t tampered with the headline!
Yet. ;)
Just kidding with ya pal, hope you’re having a good weekend!
Squalid. The perfect word to describe Huckabee’s time as governor of AK.
I haven’t been around FR much lately. As the media kept reporting on the HuckaBoom, I assumed-—when I came back to FR-—I would find Freepers jumping all over his bandwagon. But over the last few days that’s not what I’m seeing. There’s a lot of skepticism on these boards.
Freepers tend to be an arbiter of conservative preferences, but in this case they don’t seem to be on board.
So, the question is: If he hasn’t brought Freepers on board, where is all this support coming from?!
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