Posted on 08/11/2010 10:44:41 AM PDT by grassboots.org
The headline could have read "Deal, Huckabee and Gingrich beat Handel, Palin, and Romney in Georgia GOP Governor Run-Off."
Of course only Deal and Handel were running. Each candidate rises and falls on his or her own merits. As I posted earlier, endorsements may actually do more for or against the candidate doing the endorsing rather than the one being endorsed.
But in Georgia Tuesday, Nathan Deal upset conventional wisdom and Karen Handel with a come-from-behind win in Tuesday’s run-off election. Handel lsot to Deal by only about 2500 votes after beating him handily in the primary race. Deal had a rally with backer Governor Mike Huckabee on the Sunday before the vote while Handel got a boost from her own supporter Monday, Governor Sarah Palin. This is just the latest state race that may have implications for the national presidential candidates. Will there be fallout from Palin’s support of a candidate who, a few years ago, joined the homosexual rights group, the Log Cabin Republicans, and then denied it during her campaign (Handel, that is)? Handel also supports abortion in the so-called “special cases” of rape and incest.
Huckabee, on the other hand, has pledged to only support candidates who are 100% pro-life and pro-marriage. If there is a political advantage to this it would quickly dissipate if he reneges on this promise. I am not claiming that Huckabee’s reasons for this are political. (As a supporter of his campaign in 2008 I believe they are based on principle, instead.)
Romney supported Handel, too, but he has already backed at least two candidates that are decidedly pro-abortion (Governor candidates Meg Whitman of California, and Bob Ehrlich of Maryland). Newt Gingrich sided with Deal in this race but had previously endorsed Whitman and DeDe Scozzafava, the liberal Republican chosen by "the establishment" in the famous NY-23 House race eventually won by the Democrat. Conservatives, including Palin, had rallied around Doug Hoffman.
2012 is a long way off, but...
I doubt that the Huckster’s endorsement made much, if any, difference in this contest.
I conceded that point at the very beginning. The thrust of the argument is whether endorsements tell us anything about the endorser, and whether they make a difference to the political aspirations of the endorser.
The only folks in Arkansas who criticize Huckabee's tenure as Governor come in two varieties ~ (1) Those who oppose paved roads, and (2) Those who don't believe convicted felons should ever get commutation of sentence, or pardons ~ EVER!
He clean done fergot about the part of "it's a tough world, carry a big stick".
As far as mistreating children is concerned if their parents are illegal aliens then they should be caught and shipped back home to familiar circumstances. It's not like Mexico (for 90% of them) is a third-world hellhole. The place is actually one of the better places to live in this world.
I strongly suspect that the endorser generally doesn’t dig that deeply into a candidate’s resume, unless they happen to know them personally. For the candidate, the most obvious benefit of an endorsement is to get the public to pay attention to them. At that point, the candidate has to stand on their own merits. The endorser gains a future political ally, if the endorsee wins, or at least remains on the political scene.
Huckabee is a loser idiot now.
Huckabee is for rewarding illegality with government benefits. Spin it all you want.
The guy is as dumb as a box of rocks, and his thinking is no more developed than the “Soggy Bottom Boy's” of “O Brother Where Art Thou?” who think that because God forgives your sin, the State has lost its claim upon your ass belonging in prison.
Weren’t you among the ones against paving the roads? I think I recall that name ~
Why are you trying to change the subject to roads?
You too find his idiocy indefensible?
Frankly I don't think we should allow pardons or parole ~ stick 'em in jail and keep 'em there come what may! Concerning roads, they are exceedingly useful and their design dates back many hundreds of millions of years to the first animals.
Paved roads are better.
It is you who are fixated on roads, no doubt because you want to move the subject away from his indefensible stance on giving government benefits to illegal aliens.
I do NOT oppose Huckabee for anything he ever did regarding roads, get that through your skull.
I oppose Huckabee because he is a moron who attempts to hide his socialism pro-illegal and soft headed soft of crime stance behind his religion.
He does? We’ll need to go through that chapter and verse.
No big deal, if you take the endorsement of a 2 time accomplice to murder.
You failed to come to grips with my proposal for NO PAROLE NO PARDONS. So, who’s soft on crime? From my perspective it likes you and the Huck are in the same trick bag eh!
Good thinking, Sons.
Nice name calling. Brilliant arguments.
No, for my position to be the same as the Huckster I would have to support pardons based upon religious repentance; and I do not.
Remind me again who is the Huckabee defender here? From my perspective it likes you who be that.
Seems to me that Huckabee called me un-Christian, long before I called him an imbecile.
I am not sure why I address name-callers, but I guess it is for the other readers.
Huckabee enforced federal court rulings which required certain benefits to be given to illegals and their children, including a government school eduamacation (what good that’ll do ‘em!) and treatment in emergency rooms. The only bill he supported (but lost) was a bill that would have allowed children of illegal immigrants who completed their entire high school years in the government schools to get the in-state tuition rate.
Your view of his record on commutations is distorted.
“whose pardon of murderers”
He pardoned no murderers, as far as I know. The two most prominent cases involved murders after they had their sentences commuted.
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