Search Results for ‘mike huckabee’
Former Speaker Pro Tem Danny Carroll is running for Iowa House of Representatives again. Carroll, once labeled a rising star in Republican circle was decisively trounced by State Rep Eric Palmer in 2006. This was despite Carroll running a dirty campaign that included push polls and libelous mailings. Carroll was also discredited when it was revealed that he had taken part in a scheme to defraud an elderly widow.
Although Carroll may have some added credibility due to his support of Mike Huckabee in the Iowa Caucuses, it still doesn’t change the fact that he’s a sleazeball and a swindler. If the best candidate the Republicans find for any race down to dogcatcher is someone with as little moral character as Danny Carroll, it shows the desperate straits that the GOP is now in.
March 12th, 2008
Rudy Giuliani is running a new advertisement in New Hampshire that the campiagn has named “Ready” and is proudly touting on its websites. The ad, which uses a voiceover fresh out of a “300″ preview, shows images of angry crowds burning flags, shouting in other languages, and protesting. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is suggested to be a madman, Bhutto represents democracy under attack, and an explosion rocks a busy intersection. To top it off, an image of Bin Laden fades into the silhouette of the World Trade Center rubble.
This is supposed to scare you into voting for Rudy. The ad claims that he is tested and ready. But it gives no reasons as to why he is ready. It also neglects to mention that part of the budget to defend the people of New York went to having police officers walk his mistress’s dog. There is a problem with priorities here that the American people may not (and if Iowa was any evidence, do not) like.
The ad also mentions nothing about why Rudy would be the best candidate for fighting terrorism. The only reason this blogger can imagine is that his reckless foreign policies will cause more terrorism, leading to more time spent fighting terrorism.
The politics of fear won in 2002 and 2004 (when Dean ran with a more hopeful message), and the Republicans benefited from it. But if the success of Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama are any indication, hope will be the winning message in 2008. Could we see an end to the politics of fear? Probably not entirely, but polls are showing the Republican national security advantage over Democrats is going away. Voting through fear may loose traction to hope and vision this cycle.
January 6th, 2008
For those who have followed the polls over the course of this election, it may be a relief to know the final numbers on January 3rd. Many dozens of polls have been taken, often showing results ten percentage points or more away from the poll taken next. Pollsters call voters in Iowa and NH three or four times a day. Campaigns add to the telephone traffic. The Obama campaign has made 1.6 million phone calls in New Hampshire, which has a total population of 1.3 million people.
But as the election has gotten closer and the media coverage become more intense, the polls have swung even more wildly. Governor Mike Huckabee was a media darling with low poll numbers until his numbers inched up in a couple of polls; then talk of a Huckabee surge brought the spotlight to him, and he was suddenly up by 22 points in Iowa. But the increased attention brought increased scrutiny. In fact, it was just enough scrutiny to bring Huckabee’s numbers to the level of former Governor Mitt Romney’s, effectively creating a “horserace.”
The same thing happened with McCain in New Hampshire, and to a lesser extent, Obama and now Edwards in Iowa. Remember the pre-Thompson buzz, too?
It all smacks of the rise and fall of Howard Dean. The Media brought him increased attention, and his poll numbers went up. But then they kept going up, and the media went into full-scrutiny mode (remember “Doubts About Dean” for weeks on end?). It was a big story when his numbers finally topped off, and the moment the media was waiting for came on the night of the Iowa Caucuses. The media flexed its muscles, and the ‘default-nominee’ faltered.
Did the media buzz create high poll numbers, or vise versa? Whether the powers-that-be artificially engineered these contests or not, these multi-way horseraces are nothing but good for the political press.
January 1st, 2008
The Politico is reporting that Sam Brownback is expected to end his bid for the Republican nomination for President tomorrow. Brownback never recovered from finishing third, behind fellow social conservative Mike Huckabee, in the Iowa Straw Poll in August. Brownback’s withdrawal from the field helps consolidate Huckabee’s position as the leading social conservative amongst the Republican field.
Brownback’s withdrawal leaves several key Iowa Republican activists up for grabs. Chuck Hurley, one of Iowa’s leading social conservatives, was a Brownback backer and will be courted by Presidential candidates seeking support amongst caucusgoers from the religious right. Another major Brownback supporter was convenience store millionaire Don Lamberti. Lamberti’s son, former Republican State Senator and Congressional candidate Jeff Lamberti, is a leading John McCain supporter. Given their family relationship, not to mention the close ties between McCain and Brownback, it’s quite possible that Lamberti will switch his support to McCain.
Brownback joins Tommy Thompson as the second Republican candidate to drop out directly or indirectly because of the straw poll. (Jim Gilmore also had a short-lived and rather pathetic bid for the Presidency but dropped out to focus his energies on trying to lose a U.S. Senate seat to former Democratic candidate Mark Warner). The Straw Poll will have once again have significantly winnowed the Republican field, depriving Republican caucusgoers of choices in order so that the Republican Party of Iowa can make a few extra bucks.
October 18th, 2007
An article in The New Republic this week chronicles how Mike Huckabee sold out his belief in balanced budgets and fiscal conservatism to gain the support of anti-tax fanatics like Grover Norquist. This meant embracing the “fair tax” which is a highly regressive economic program that puts a disproportionate burden on working Americans and puts more money in the pockets of the wealthy by replacing our tax system with a sales of at least 30%. This marriage of convenience has already benefited Huckabee at the Ames Straw Poll. However, on most issues, Mike Huckabee doesn’t need to sell out to embracing fringe ideas. Most of the time, he already is embracing strange and extremist views on his own.
Although Huckabee’s opposition to evolution is well known, his embrace of the intellectual and scientific fringes is far more wide ranging. Huckabee just announced that State Rep Dwayne Alons will be one of his Iowa campaign legislative co-chairs. (Alons joins former State Rep and conman Danny Carroll in taking a leadership role on the campaign.) Alons has publicly advocated his theory that the ancient Maya were a race of giants and that global warming will enable modern man to be as gigantic as the ancient Maya.
So to sum up Mike Huckabee’s view of the universe, the Maya were giants, the world was created 6,000 years ago and the best way to help poor people is have a 30% sales tax. It seems like Huckabee’s more fit to run for President of the Flat Earth Society than the United States.
October 3rd, 2007
Cross posted at Iowa Independent
Jerry Falwell died two days ago. Will the Christian Right soon follow? That is certainly one of the questions being debated amidst the 2008 presidential contest. The front-runner for the GOP nomination, Rudy Giuliani, is pro-choice. But he has come under fire; recently for these views and his lead is shrinking nationwide and in Iowa.
Will the Christian Right try to stop Giuliani from winning the nomination? Could they if they tried? In this sense, perhaps the real legacy of Jerry Falwell won’t be known until the GOP has its nominee.
The cover story of the New Republic’s current issue is a lengthy (and intriguing) tribute to the idea that Giuliani can win the GOP nomination. Nestled within, however, is this paragraph:
Then, of course, there is the religious right. Though their power is on the wane, Christian conservatives are not going to allow Giuliani to have the nomination without a bitter fight… Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, put it this way: “If he wins, he’ll do so without social conservatives.” Then he added that a Republican presidential candidate can “no more win without conservative voters than a Democrat can without overwhelming support from blacks.”
Earlier today, James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, and one of the leaders of today’s Christian conservative movement announced he would not support Giuliani if he were the Republican nominee:
Speaking as a private citizen and not on behalf of any organization or party, I cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008. It is an irrevocable decision. If given a Hobson’s – Dobson’s? – choice between him and Sens. Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, I will either cast my ballot for an also-ran – or if worse comes to worst – not vote in a presidential election for the first time in my adult life.
On the other hand, Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, urged social conservatives to give Giuliani a chance. According to the Hotline, Reed told viewers of the Christian Broadcasting Network that Giuliani “can still potentially win over pro-family voters” if he focuses on issues where they agree. Giuliani had campaigned for Reed last May when Reed was running in Georgia’s lieutenant governor primary; Reed went on to lose the election, but has maintained an affinity for Giuliani, apparently talking him up in January at the National Review Institute.
Here in Iowa, Giuliani has the support of former Congressman and failed gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle, who was conservative on social issues while in Congress. However, Nussle’s running mate, the more conservative Bob Vanderplaats, in addition to the very conservative Danny Carroll, has endorsed former Arkansas governor and pastor Mike Huckabee. Iowa Republicans–especially the grassroots–are well known conservatives. Two polls taken in 2000 showed that about 60 percent of likely GOP caucusers thought abortion should be illegal, according to the Des Moines Register. The Register reported in the same article that Giuliani hasn’t decided yet whether to participate in the Ames Straw Poll, a crucial test of Republican support in Iowa.
Whether Giuliani will win the Iowa caucuses or the nomination remains to be seen. But what is clear is that a Giuliani victory would be a crushing blow, perhaps a fitting epitaph, for the movement that Jerry Falwell helped create.
May 17th, 2007
There are starting to be whispers that Mike Huckabee might drop out of the Republican Presidential Primary to run for Senate back in Arkansas. Huckabee is a right wing Republican who has done better in the “liberal media” than among the Republican faithful. However, if Huckabee ends his Presidential bid, it would have major ramifications on the Republican primary. It builds up Sam Brownback as the default candidate of social conservatives and allows more room for an underdog like Brownback (or Duncan Hunter or Tom Tancredo) to emerge on the right of the Republican field.
It also has big ramifications in Iowa. Why? Because recently Huckabee received endorsements from two of Iowa’s major social conservatives, Bob Vander Plaats, who earned his conservative street cred by undercutting Doug Gross in the 2002 Republican Gubernatorial Primary and Danny Carroll, who defrauds the elderly and runs dirty campaigns. (However, in Carroll’s defense, he doesn’t smoke, drink, or make graven images). With Huckabee out of the race, the endorsements of these highly moral members of the Moral Majority would be up for grabs. If they both endorsed someone like Brownback, Brownback would automatically become a credible challenger to the “Big Three” of McCain, Giuliani and Romney in Iowa. However, if their endorsement went to a “Big Three” candidate, most probably Romney, it further starves the remaining second tier candidates of media attention and increases expectations for the endorsed candidate. Although Huckabee probably will not make any final decision until after the Ames straw poll in August, it seems increasingly likely that he may be Tom Vilsack’s counterpart as the first to be culled from the Republican field.
March 5th, 2007
I suppose the “hearts Huckabee” line is going to catch on soon and then become very, very uncool, so I’m sorry about that.
Today, though, Republican Presidential Candidate and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee announced endorsements from Blue Bunny Bob Vanderplaats, best known for losing a statewide election a few months back, and Danny Carroll, former President Pro Tem of the Iowa House representing Grinnell. He lost last November, too.
But more importantly, recall the story we broke last October, detailing how Danny Carroll is implicated in a scandal that made its way to the Iowa Supreme Court and resulted in the suspension of a lawyer’s license to practice. Basically, he helped the lawyer steal over $40,000 (and a free trip to Vegas) from a struggling old lady in Grinnell.
Well, I guess we can always trust Danny Carroll to “stick to his principles,” eh? We can if you believe Mike Huckabee himself:
Danny Carroll earned great respect during 12 years in the General Assembly as a conservative leader who always held true and firm true to his principles yet worked so successfully with people from across the political spectrum to accomplish meaningful results in health care, tax policy, education and economic development. Iowa ’s social conservatives know that Danny Carroll has always been a clear, strong voice on the issues that matter most to them.
It sounds like, not only is Mike Huckabee talking out of the side of his mouth, but Crooked Danny Carroll might be positioning himself to run for something again. We will be watching him.
January 31st, 2007
