Politics and religion don’t mix. Really, they shouldn’t mix. Actually, they’re not meant to mix, especially in the United States, where our Constitution calls for a separation of Church and State.
Now, that doesn’t mean that men of the cloth can’t dabble in politics. We’ve had clergymen serve in Congress before, including two Catholic priests. But that doesn’t mean political clergymen can bring their faith to the floor of Congress, and conversely, it shouldn’t mean that professional clergymen should bring politics to the pulpit.
Religious politicos are no different to the usual corrupt variety in having feet of clay – after all, look at all the sexual shenanigans which occurred in that poor excuse of a “church” on C Street which doubles as a home for wayward Christian congressmen. However, I have to say, until this week, I’d actually thought Mike Huckabee above all that stuff.
Huckabee, to me, actually seemed an anomaly, because he looked and sounded like a nice Republican – a dying breed and a bit of an oxymoron these days, I know; but he did seem, politics apart, to be a genuinely nice man.
Being a genuinely nice man is no real qualifier. He is a Republican, an ordained clergyman who believes that religion and politics are indelibly intertwined, a social and fiscal conservative. He would never get my vote, but he impressed me simply because he wouldn’t rise to the vicious and nasty bait others in his party doled out regarding demonisation of the Left.
But like everyone else in the GOP at the moment, it seems Huck’s not immune from suffering from their particular and current brand of meanness which just amounts to nothing more than not-so-cleverly disguised racism.
Until recently, Huck’s been one of a handful of Republicans whom I thought had balls enough to give the President credit from time to time. When the President made the unannounced visit to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to meet and salute the returning coffins of servicemen killed in Afghanistan, Huckabee praised this, saying he was proud, at that moment, that Obama was his President. He even made a soft-pedaled criticism of the current Republican mean girls, Palin and Bachmann, and Rush Limbaugh, in their persistent bitchery about the First Lady’s campaign against childhood obesity. And I believe in his past as a clergyman, he’s encouraged and even opened his own churches up in welcoming African Americans into his Southern Baptist congregations.
Currently, Huckabee’s leading in most of the polls regarding potential GOP Presidential candidates for 2012. He’s running ahead of Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty and Newt Gingrich; and I guess life at the top of the poll got to him this week. The previous week saw him pasting political rival Romney regarding the prototypical healthcare package he initiated in Massachusetts, which eventually became Obamacare.
However, this week, Huckabee let his political ambitions belie the Christianity he wears on his sleeve, and he succumbed to the temptation of The Big Lie mentality, in order to firm his roots with the teabagging base of the Republican Party. In an interview on a conservative talk radio station, Huckabee sought to smear the President of the United States as rabidly anti-American and sought to explain this perceived “anti-Americanism” as a result of Obama’s having been raised in Kenya, with his father and his grandfather, the latter imbuing him with a virulent strain of anti-colonialism acquired as a result of his having been incarcerated during the Mau Mau Rebellion of the 1950s.
The interview was lengthy, in depth and repeated the meme of Obama’s “Kenyan” upbringing, which was a base lie. Anyone who’s read the President’s autobiography Dreams of My Father, knows that Barack Obama Jr didn’t meet his old man until he was ten years old. That was the first and last time. He actually didn’t visit Kenya until he was a grown man.
A day later, Huckabee tried to walk back the lie as a misspoken irrelevance. He wasn’t actually referring to Kenya, you see; he was referring to Indonesia (where the President did, indeed, spend a great deal of his childhood, living with his mother and stepfather). If that were the case, then why didn’t Huckabee’s interviewer attempt to correct him, rather than letting him vent about the President being anti-American as a result of his Kenyan uppringing?
Oh, it was to promote the lie that’s currently found, if not on most Republicans’ lips, then most certainly at the backs of their tiny minds. The President’s not one of us. He’s different. His name is foreign in a way ours have never been foreign before, and he certainly looks different.
The most extreme of the Republican base openly doubt the fact that the President is even American, maintaining the birthers’ mantra that he was born in Kenya – something which if John Boehner and Eric Cantor won’t correct amongst their voters, then Huckabee has always been at pains to disdain; but in his interview, the foremer Arkansas governor and ordained Baptist minister merely changed tack and altered the goalposts around the birther theory: Obama may have been born in the United States, but let’s get the message out that he was raised in Kenya and absorbed anti-colonial opinions from his father and grandfather, which formed the basis of his political ideals which he hopes to foist on the United States.
As a well-known Republican sage might snark, that’s kinda oxymoronic.
It’s oxymoronic because, as Americans, we’re all supposed to be anti-colonialists. That’s why we revolted against the old country. We were second class colonials, and we wanted to be their equals. That’s part of our American identity. I don’t get it. Is Huckabee coming down on the side of the Brit in the Mau Mau Rebellion, because if it does, it says an awful lot about Mike Huckabee.
Yes, the rebellion was a reaction by native Kenyans against British rule, and it resulted in the British instituting concentration camps and torturing various rebels. Is Huckabee endorsing that sort of behaviour engendered by the white British rulers against their black indigneous subjects? If so, what does that say about Mike Huckabee?
Because, really, that’s what this whole Kenyan thing is about – the whole Kenyan, birther, secret Muslim dynamic. It’s simply a euphemism for the fact that the Republican base, and many of its elected officials, don’t like the fact that the President is black.
In the 21st Century, it’s all about race. The President is black. He’s not like us. He has African roots, from the country of Kenya, his father was an atheist, he was given a Muslim name and his grandfather opposed a colonial authority. Therefore, he’s a Manchurian candidate, dumped in the White House by the subversive Left in order to lead us all down the unrighteous path of socialism, communisim, fascism, whateverism happens to be worrying the Teabaggers on a particular day of a particular month at a particular time of day.
It’s racism, and Huckabee, ordained man of God and gentle Christian pastor, is pushing a lie, in order to consolidate his pre-eminence as a viable Presidential candidate amongst the Republican base. This other man from Hope, Arkansas, is dispelling the man who offered us the audacity of hope solely because the colour of his skin is not the type they would hope to be seeing sitting in the White House, unless it were in a servile capacity.
Never mind the fact, as Joan Walsh recently pointed out, that the President was raised by a Caucasian mother from Kansas and his Caucasian, middle-class grandparents in Hawaii. As she reiterated, no one wants to speak of them. Why emphasize Obama’s American roots at all, when his Kenyan heritage serves the ulterior purpose of delegitimising him so effectively?
Well, if the Kenyan heritage is all that matters for these people, perhaps they need to address these “Kenyans” who happen to be relatives of our President: Brad Pitt, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis.
If Obama’s mother’s heritage doesn’t count, then that must mean that all of the above are Kenyans, surely, because they are lateral relations of the President, and in the case of Davis, the President is directly descended from him.
Pitt apart, knowing that the President claimed real kinship with any of the others would be a plus factor in the South and parts of the rural Midwest. It would make him a fully paid-up member of the club, eligible to be included as part of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a bubba.
Just imagine how that would play in the Red States.
And, maybe, if Mike Huckabee just scratched the surface enough, he’d find that he might be Kenyan too.
Marion – very good post! Yes, Huck is the scariest of the Dominionists out there because he’s so genial. On the surface.
I’ve never recovered from his joke that when he went duck hunting he spared those with “Huckabee for President” stickers on their butts, and he killed only those without them. Then he laughed and said he should do that for people, too.
And he’s a “man of the cloth”?????? I think NOT. He’s a creepy, scary dude. Thank you for outing his hypocrisy and inherent racism. He does reveal himself, but lots of people fail to pay attention ’cause of that engaging smile while he twists the knife.
You’ve done a HUGE service, Marion. It’s important!
More from Huck The Hypocrite;
“You know Michael, one of the things that’s troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, ‘Hey look, you know, we’re having children, we’re not married, but we’re having these children, and they’re doing just fine.’ But there aren’t really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie. And I think it gives a distorted image that yes, not everybody hires nannies, and caretakers, and nurses. Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock.
You know, right now, 75 percent of black kids in this country are born out of wedlock. 61 percent of Hispanic kids — across the board, 41 percent of all live births in America are out of wedlock births. And the cost of that is simply staggering.”
I call him a hypocrite for several reasons, but this time it’s because he never said a single word about Bristol Palin, the unwed mother of Sarah Palin. And Sarah trotted out Bristol and baby on the political stage, more than once.
Oh I think he actually said a lot about Bristol, just subbed in another name. I’m sure the queen has her nose out of joint over it. Can’t wait to see how she reacts. She won’t be able to keep her or her daughters mouth shut
jdm, I mean he has never attacked Bristol, by name like he just did with Natalie Portman.
Another thing that bothers me about Huckabee’s criticism of unwed mothers, is his total contradiction in regards to a woman’s right to choose.
He says abortion is a sin, yet he rails against the cost of unwed mothers having children. WTF? And I believe he is also against Planned Parenthood.
In Huck’s perfect world, no one has sex unless it’s with the person to whom they’re heterosexually married. (And the babies he doesn’t want to pay for are specifically babies of color.)
Huck’s a peach. Not. :b
No one has sex outside of marriage – unless they’re born again at which point, oh well. Then, as with Newt, God forgives them, and they start over again. I don’t think Huck is an adulterer (don’t know that for sure) but he sure doesn’t care if others of his ilk are. They support him financially, so obviously God approves of them and him. End of story.
Must be nice.
Choicelady, I agree with all…only, I didn’t mean “outside of marriage” to mean “adultry”; rather, I meant that, on his view, people wouldn’t have sex unless married. (Amphibolies-r-us. ;0)
He’s a real peach all right….rotten peach!
KT, just so you don’t miss any of his “deep thoughts.”
http://www.huckpac.com/?Fuseaction=Home.Home
Gee thanks Bito, now I have to go bleach my eyes! 🙁
What is the separation of Church and State? Is it that no one’s politics should be influenced by religion? That no policy should appear to favor or elevate any particular religion(s)? How can they not “bring their faith to the floor of Congress”, if their faith defines everything they are about? How many more rhetorical questions can I possibly ask?
Also, if Presidential elections were only held for the Republican base,I’d worry about Mike Huckabee. Sarah Plain too. But they’re not. So, go get’em Huck! Goddamn sinners!
Hi Adonai – here is the difference. You may of course bring your faith values to advocate for democratic principles. You may not bring your faith principles to the floor to impose them on democracy. Being motivated by issues such as justice, universal inclusiveness, peace, etc. to discuss and work for democracy is something that is irrespective of religion – atheists are strongly motivated by many of the same concerns. Imposing religion ON democratic issues is having rules that you wish to impose that are not at all in keeping with democracy such as controlling other people’s lives, loves, and choices; mandating prayer in schools,etc.
If one were conservative BUT dedicated to democracy, it could work. YOu’d work against abortion NOT by outlawing it or making it almost impossible to obtain but would help women financially and with services that allowed her the freedom to make a choice that was actually made without economic hardship pressures. (And you’d respect other people’s different choices). If you don’t like marriage equality, you’d protect churches’ rights not to perform wedding, but you’d not tamper with the civil institutions to which we all pay taxes and thus from which we deserve equal rights.
Do you see religious conservatives DOING that? Rarely (I do know some I like a lot because we do agree on this.)
Coming from even a conservative point of view is NOT necessarily inimical to democracy under the above conditions. But let’s just say that a principled conservative is something of an endangered species. Not quite the dodo, but kind of rare. Too bad the visible people of faith today are intent on creating a theocracy where their rules must be our rules.
It’s the capacity to leave others alone to follow their own hearts and minds that makes the difference, and that as a principle is equally in short supply among the religious conservatives. They will not be happy until we all live under their thumb and Biblical cherry picked verses. Not that THEY will. But we will. C Street is alive and well with its hypocrisy, so they’ll be fine. We won’t.
Marion, I never trusted Huckleberry from day one, I’ve met his type, smiles and is sickenly sweet to your face, but will stab you in the back the moment you turn around. I don’t trust his kind and consider him more dangerous than the other Republicans running.
Hi BDM – I would definitely agree! Many, if not most, of the Tea Party folks in Congress though are closet Dominionists. I’d say they ALL bear watching! The move to create a theocracy is evident in no small part by the work of the ultra right in WI, OH and other states – it bears out their disgusing personal interpretation of the Bible that the Apostles were “businessmen” (as if THAT makes any sense 2000 years ago) and that everyone other than businessmen are scum who need to kowtow to this elite. It is SUCH a perversion of religion!!!! But killing the unions was what created “The Family” (aka “The Fellowship”) in 1935, and they’ve honed their desire to rid America of uppity ordinary people ever since. They see it as an essential step toward the takeover of the world.
So Huck is the most visible. He is NOT the only one.
Very nice post Marion, especially your conclusion.
David Anderson about events in 1950s Kenya, when the Mau Mau rebellion occurred:
To portray the Obama family as being part of Mau Mau is stir-fry crazy. Let me explain why: The Obama family come from western Kenya, which is about as different from Nairobi and the Kikuyu area as Utah is from New York City. And it’s almost as far way. They come from an area where there was no rebellion, there was no Mau Mau. So while his father and his grandmother may well have been nationalists — I’m sure they were — they weren’t directly involved in the Mau Mau rebellion.
The other thing is, if you’ve read anything about Churchill, you’d know that, although he was the head of the government at the time of the Mau Mau rebellion, he was trying as best he could to get the British in Kenya to negotiate and to end the fighting. Churchill was not supporting or condoning the violence. He is actually one of the few British politicians who comes out of this smelling of roses.
Elliott sums up Huckabee’s apparent views on the issue:
So a fleshed-out version of Huckabee’s theory would go like this: Obama’s grandfather hated the British because he was (supposedly) tortured in prison under the colonial regime a few years before the Mau Mau uprising. Therefore, President Obama must take a different view of the Mau Mau uprising — in which his family played no part — than Huckabee, who apparently supports the brutal measures used by the British to defeat the rebellion. And because of all that, Obama replaced a bust of Winston Churchill — who himself wanted a peaceful solution to Mau Mau — with a bust of Abraham Lincoln.
But all that analysis aside, the ONLY reason to mention Mau Mau is: ALERT! Savage scary black man is President!!
Cher,
The truth is not necessary anymore.
He sure has learned a few things from the fox gig.
How many of those viewers ever stayed up at night
worrying about the Mau Mau revolt before he mentions it.
Even now, if you tell them where it is and what it meant they will be
staring at their cupboards and wondering what is in the cat food?
Those evil meow meows do look rather rebellious.
We ought to at least expect that any credible candidate know a bit of geography and history
even if their followers do not.
Patsy, of all the disgusting things about the Right that I have recently learned, the fact that truth is disposable is the MOST upsetting!
Remember all through the Clinton administration that when their lies were exposed, the reaction was ” well it COULD be true!”
Yeah. The moon could really be made of green cheese, too.
The earth could be flat. Maps are!
And on and on and on….
C’Lady:
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
What – you disputing the TRUTH???
No Ma’am! But we all know that the earth looks like this from Heaven:
[img]http://jclahr.com/alaska/aeic/taurho/globe.jpg[/img]
Cher – awesome background that gives even MORE evidence of how Huck LIES! This rabid anti-Black meme in the rants of the right is just appalling. Why doesn’t Hucl just step out with Glenn Beck and say Obama hates white people (though half his family IS white and are the people he loved who raised him.)
I believe in re-visiting history and revising what we ignored. I do NOT believe in making it up. Big freaking difference.
Dear Mr. Huckabee,
Just a few questions.
When you spoke on the radio show about Mr. Obama and his “Kenyan upbringing” and then claimed you “miss spoke” and you meant Indonesia, how did the Mau Mau revolt get in the discussion about Indonesia? Did you think that revolt take place in Indonsia or was that another “misstatement?”
Does this lack of knowledge bode well for a presidential run, to speak before you have researched the facts? Is this how intend to lead, govern the country, by making decisions/policy without all the facts?
If ignorance is your excuse, is that a path that voters should accept, that you speak out of ignorance?
In the interview you said “I do know this”as if you are quite sure of yourself and the history of Mr. Obama’s childhood so you think you must not be ignorant, yes? If you knew it to untrue, did you lie?
Which is a better quality in a president? Unknowledgeable, ignorant or someone prone to lies?
One more question sir, have you stopped beating your wife?
Mr Huckabee, in order to keep his identity concealed,
registered with the name of
Mr and Miss Spoke at the TGIF.
@Patsy – Nice! 🙂
Hey BDM It works at Applebees too!
Better then Donner party of 8
LOL!!!!! That’s right up there with naming the U. of Colorado Dining Hall the “Albert Packer Memorial Dining Hall”. It got so named, at student suggestions, until someone in the administration FINALLY looked it up.
Choicelady… LOLOL 🙂
Oh – and here I thought he was hiding under the name Ms.Information. Well – that COULD be true!
IMHO, this quote from Huckabee is what completely disqualifies him for the Presidency:
http://crooksandliars.com/2008/01/15/huckabee-wants-a-faith-based-constitution
Cosigned.
cher, I remember reading about this. I firmly agree. I was dumbfounded when I first read about it, that a candidate for the presidency of the United States would say such a thing, and actually mean it.
I guess he never heard of religious freedom. The right for people to worship the god of their choice.
The phrase, “The American Taliban,” is not just some cutesy play on words. It is very real, and very dangerous.
Hi, KT. Did you ever read the book, “The Handmaid’s Tale”? That’s our dystopian future if any of these Talibangelicals win the presidency.
cher, I have not, but I have heard it mentioned several times. I’ll have to set aside time to read it.
I think if we continue giving more and more power to the corporations, we could actually see something similar to Aldous Huxley’s, “Brave New World.”
Escaping to Canada already sounds good. ;0)
I think about it daily {sigh}
Why would Huckabee bring up Boy Scouts after this incident?
From snopes.com
http://www.snopes.com/politics/huckabee/dog.asp
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/lawrence-odonnell-dismisses-huckabees-boy-scout-talk-as-culturally-detached-lying/
Just so we know, according to Mike Huckabee,
In order to be President you have to have been a member of boy scouts.
Did you also have to kill dogs as a scout to be eligible ?
Patsy,
I wonder if there is a merit badge for that activity and what is the name for it?
“Semper Fido”?
Excellent!
😉
😆
Not to Dog the Boy Scouts, but I’ll ask Ralph.
Seriously the Boy Scouts can be wonderful I know several local Den Moms.
But that should not be a prerequisite to running for office
What happens when you goggle….
Republicans that were boy scouts
Patsy– fabulous research! WOW–what a story!
I’m gonna use the Teabagger argument they always use on Barack Obama.
Huckabee is just trying to distract us all from the fact that he pardoned a cop killer.
I’m going to use the Faux snooze strategy:
“This just in. Huckabee killed a cop.”
Four cops, actually.
Four pregnant Jewish cops.
Don’t go in there little polecat, it’s a trap!
Huckabee is not an anomoly. There have been men of God just like him through out the centuries. Get your attention by talking your everlasting life and then using your blind obedience to twirl you through the political forest. The Emporer Constantine played the same game before rewriting the Bible. Hence the Nicaen Council and the creed. Write your religion to suit your political purposes.
He must belong to the same sect as Newt Gingrich. Belief in an all forgiving God that allows you to lie , cheat, steal and fornicate at will and then that all forgiving God will wash your sins away. No requirement that you act in good faith. Apparently there is nothing that won’t be forgiven. God deliver me from his followers and his organized religions.
Huckster is proving that he has no problem pushing that crazy button
and he did not quit his term as governor, bad combo.
I am concerned about the cat population of some of his listeners,
especially if the cat is black or “mixed” and look out if the cat was not a boy scout!
Nice post, Marion.
Huck has also on a recent rampage of late against unwed mothers a la public condemnation of Natalie Portman tying in, while he’s at it, swipes against African American and Latina women. (Let’s see…he tossed substantial portions of the black, Latino and youth vote all in an appeal for an admittedly vocal yet small “base”. Not very bright–or very “nice”–that one.)
See _Vanity Fair’s_ “Unwinnable Battles”:
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/03/unwinnable-battles-mike-huckabee-accuses-natalie-portman-of-glamorizing-out-of-wedlock-children.html
Redemption, I read several “pundints” today say that the mention of Portman’s “illegitimate” pregnancy was a sneaky way to talk about Bristol Palin–he just didn’t have the balls to do it directly.
Cher, I’ve not had time to read much, but thus far the only thing I’ve read is people calling Huck out on his hypocrisy. (It’s difficult to believe the man is *really* this stupid…of all the no-need-to-go-there’s he could have picked, this is one of the worse.)
Actually Huckster like all humans had ancestors in East Africa.
But then again I’m sure he wants schools to teach that our species is only 6,000 years old.
Given that he seems to keep his head in the sand on this one, I suspect he is a descendant from the ostriches!
Heh! I had him pegged as from the Do-Do ‘s and on his way to becoming extinct.
That’s his mothers side.
😆 you both have me in stitches.
I always thought Huckabee was the nicest man I did agree about anything with. (and why like everyone else here I did fear him the most — but for his fiscal weaknesses on the GOP litmus test)
I also always thought he was smart.
So, either he really is stupid enough to have never heard of the, oh, I dunno, BRITISH EMPIRE, or this is all cynical race baiting.
Sadly, I think it is clearly the latter. It is clearly crafted to push along the narratives and is catered to white, racist anxiety.
It is the foundation of US foreign policy, imperialism is bad unless we do it, then it is soooo good. Racisism is only half of the pitch, Kenya = Africa and we all know how those fricans operate.