Right Wing Nut House

Foreign Affairs magazine has been running a series of essays from the presidential candidates on what their foreign policy goals would be during their administration if they were elected.

I think it significant that Mike Huckabee is one of the last candidates to make an appearance on the august pages of this highly respected magazine. No doubt, the editors were hoping that Huckabee would have seen the utter futility of trying to fool people into thinking that he had thought much about the subject let alone come to any conclusions that wouldn’t reveal himself to be, well, a former governor of Arkansas with as much business being entrusted with the fate of the planet as my pet cat Snowball.

And at least Snowball has the good sense not to stick his nose into things he knows little or nothing about.

This essay is an embarrassment. To aver that Mike Huckabee is unprepared to assume the office of president is to state the obvious. Kevin Drum referred to the Huckster’s thoughts as a combination of “barstool ignorance and internet-email-list credulity.” Indeed, the FA piece reminds me of some conversations I had in taverns when I was a kid, half in the bag, holding forth before an audience of equally soused neophytes as we sought to solve the problems of the world. It was an easy enough task as long as you didn’t know what you were talking about and your views were informed by reading Time Magazine and High Times.

I wonder what Huckabee was smoking when he came up with this:

As president, my goal in the Arab and Muslim worlds will be to calibrate a course between maintaining stability and promoting democracy. It is self-defeating to attempt too much too soon: doing so could mean holding elections that the extremists would win. But it is also self-defeating to do nothing. We must first destroy existing terrorist groups and then attack the underlying conditions that breed them: the lack of basic sanitation, health care, education, jobs, a free press, fair courts — which all translates into a lack of opportunity and hope. The United States’ strategic interests as the world’s most powerful country coincide with its moral obligations as the richest. If we do not do the right thing to improve life in the Muslim world, the terrorists will step in and do the wrong thing.

(Hat Tip: Hot Air)

Good luck and God Bless, President Huckabee. It’s one thing to propose the impossible (” calibrate a course between maintaining stability and promoting democracy”). It is quite another to forget to tell us how we’re going to accomplish it. Holding elections “too soon?” What kind of nonsense is that and what makes Huckabee think we’d have much of a say in when any country holds elections - especially if our army isn’t there to force the issue? Who’s to say it’s “too soon” to hold elections? What criteria do you use to determine such an idiotic policy?

Huckabee refers to US unilateralism in the world today as “arrogant.” What if the rest of the world has an entirely different idea of what constitutes elections held “too soon” than we do? Pretty steep price to pay for not being thought of as “arrogant.”

And I thought we had disabused ourselves of the idea that “underlying conditions” in the Middle East created terrorism. Perhaps someone should remind the candidate that the profile of your average suicide bomber who attacks the west is far from the dirt poor, uneducated rabble who make up most of the region’s citizens. The typical terrorist is most often university educated, comes from families that are relatively well off, and has probably lived for a time in the west.

We will be a long time destroying “existing terrorist groups” - especially since the more we confront them, the more recruits they seem to attract. This is true in Iraq and elsewhere such as the Philippines and Somalia. It would seem to put the Huckster’s attack on “underlying conditions” on hold since he insists on accomplishing the former before tackling the latter.

Contradictions abound in Huckabee’s scribblings. Daniel Drezner found this beaut:

American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. My administration will recognize that the United States’ main fight today does not pit us against the world but pits the world against the terrorists. At the same time, my administration will never surrender any of our sovereignty, which is why I was the first presidential candidate to oppose ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty, which would endanger both our national security and our economic interests.

Drezner pulls no punches:

Really, you just have to stand back and marvel at the contradiction of sentiments contained in that paragraph. It’s endemic to the entire essay — for someone who claims he wants to get rid of the bunker mentality, Huckabee offers no concrete ideas for how to do that, and a lot of policies (rejecting the Law of the Sea Treaty, using force in Pakistan, boosting defense spending by 50%) that will ensure anti-Americanism for years to come.

Increase defense spending by 50%? Why? What are you going to spend it on? Huckabee is talking about increasing the defense budget from roughly $500 billion to $750 billion. Did he just pull that 50% number out of thin air?

The increases the Pentagon itself wants amount to around 25% over three years. That includes the ambitious goal of increasing the size of the army by 65,000 and Marine Corps by another 27,000. Most experts believe that any further increase in the size of the army could necessitate a draft - unless standards were lowered further and incentives raised significantly. Just what does Huckabee plan to buy to justify those stupendous increases?

Drezner also points to this bit of sophomoric thinking by Huckabee:

Sun-tzu’s ancient wisdom is relevant today: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Yet we have not had diplomatic relations with Iran in almost 30 years; the U.S. government usually communicates with the Iranian government through the Swiss embassy in Tehran. When one stops talking to a parent or a friend, differences cannot be resolved and relationships cannot move forward. The same is true for countries. The reestablishment of diplomatic ties will not occur automatically or without the Iranians’ making concessions that serve to create a less hostile relationship.

Perhaps a good beginning would be to ask the Iranians not to order the chant “Death to America” at every mosque in the land after Friday prayers. Then, we could politely inquire as to whether the regime would drop their insistence on “wiping Israel off the map.” Those two “concessions” will never be forthcoming because anti-Americanism and the destruction of Israel are defining characteristics of the regime. It would be like asking the US to give up promoting freedom around the world.

And don’t you love the comparison of our little spat with Iran to that of an arguement with a friend or parent? The difference being, of course, our estranged friend is not likely to be considering the idea of building a nuclear weapon in his backyard. Nor is it likely that a dispute with a parent would end up having our mother sic a suicide bomber on us.

Simple minded sophistry.

If you take the time to read this piece, you will be struck by how much it fails to resemble anything Ronald Reagan, George Bush #41, or any other notable Republican of recent vintage would have come up with. It is a mish mash of unrealistic notions of America’s place in the world along with a cloying appeal to a moralistic international order that doesn’t exist, never existed, and will probably never be realized.

But I’ve nearly given up pointing out Huckabee’s transparent and frightening shortcomings. It’s obvious that nothing in this guy’s past, nothing he says, nothing he stands for will affect his support. He is going to have to be defeated the old fashioned way; one of the other candidates is going to have to appeal to a larger segment of the Republican party than Huckabee. And the question is, by the time that happens - by the time enough candidates have dropped out and it’s a two or three man race - will it be too late to stop Huckabee from getting the nomination?

UPDATE: FROM OUR “OH MY GOD” DEPARTMENT

See-Dubya did a little fact checking and found this gem. Apparently, Huckabee has been communing with Vito Corleone:

At first I read that and thought, Sun Tzu said that? I always thought that quote was from…

But Governor? Foreign Affairs. Policy article. Time to impress the swells. Do a little fact checking.

Time to go to the mattresses, Mikey.

It is difficult to write about religion in politics these days. Chances are, you either muck it up and offend someone or worse, you get it right and offend someone. The point being, there are many who will read into what you write whatever they please, eager to rhetorically bash your head in because you are making a point with which they violently disagree.

Simply put, the intrusion of religion into politics has gone beyond what it should in a healthy democracy and somebody, somewhere has to say so.

Thank you Charles Krauthammer:

This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it’s only going to get worse. I’d thought that the limits of professed public piety had already been achieved during the Republican CNN-YouTube debate when some squirrelly looking guy held up a Bible and asked, “Do you believe every word of this book?” — and not one candidate dared reply: None of your damn business.

Instead, Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee bent a knee and tried appeasement with various interpretations of scriptural literalism. The right answer, the only answer, is that the very question is offensive. The Constitution prohibits any religious test for office. And while that proscribes only government action, the law is also meant to be a teacher. In the same way that civil rights laws established not just the legal but also the moral norm that one simply does not discriminate on the basis of race — changing the practice of one generation and the consciousness of the next — so the constitutional injunction against religious tests is meant to make citizens understand that such tests are profoundly un-American.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with having a spirited debate on the place of religion in politics. But the candidates are confusing two arguments. The first, which conservatives are winning, is defending the legitimacy of religion in the public square. The second, which conservatives are bound to lose, is proclaiming the privileged status of religion in political life.

I’m not talking about criticizing the idea that faith animates a candidate’s position on the issues. Nor am I calling for a moratorium on talking about religion in a political context. Neither is Krauthammer. What Krauthammer is saying - and what I am agreeing with - is that a line has been crossed, most notably on the Republican side, that seeks to give religion a privileged position in policy debates - absolute moral authority with a vengeance based not on the efficacy of one’s position on the issues but rather on the strength or nature of their religious beliefs:

Imposing religion means the mandating of religious practice. It does not mean the mandating of social policy that some people may have come to support for religious reasons.

But a certain kind of conservative is not content to argue that a religious underpinning for a policy is not disqualifying. He insists that it is uniquely qualifying, indeed, that it confers some special status.

Krauthammer easily demolishes the leftist idea that posits the notion that faith based opposition to abortion or gay marriage is somehow indicative of a desire to “impose” one form of religion or another on the American populace. For the Christian right, these are moral issues they are fighting for - the same kind of moral fight carried out by the left to achieve civil rights for blacks, women, and others. No one complained when the Christian preacher Martin Luther King framed the civil rights debate in biblical terms of loving your neighbor and “doing God’s will” in holding a mirror up so that America could see the ugliness of racial bigotry. King even patterned his political campaign to change America on the Christian notion of “turning the other cheek” when confronted with the violent reaction by southern authorities.

But there is a huge difference between being inspired or animated in your politics by religion and thrusting your religious beliefs forward as “proof” of your superiority as a candidate. Or that your faith gives you a privileged position in a debate over public policy issues.

And that, boys and girls, is the problem with this GOP field. The Democrats have their own agenda when it comes to trying to appeal to Christians. Witness Barack Obama’s efforts in South Carolina where he staged a “Gospel-fest” featuring some of the country’s finest Gospel singers. But Obama seems to wear his faith like an old coat - comfortable and roomy. Candidates Romney and Huckabee wear their faith like a straitjacket, the tenets of which limit their worldview while binding them to positions on social issues that brook no opposition because they are based on holy writ.

Romney made this clear in his “Faith in America” speech. An excellent speech for the most part in which Romney made the case for religious liberty quite eloquently, it nevertheless featured some troubling omissions as well as a statement that is patently false:

Romney has been faulted for not throwing at least one bone of acknowledgment to nonbelievers in his big religion speech last week. But he couldn’t, because the theme of the speech was that there is something special about having your values drawn from religious faith. Indeed, faith is politically indispensable. “Freedom requires religion,” Romney declared, “just as religion requires freedom.”

But this is nonsense — as Romney then proceeded to demonstrate in that very same speech. He spoke of the empty cathedrals in Europe. He’s right about that: Postwar Europe has experienced the most precipitous decline in religious belief in the history of the West. Yet Europe is one of the freest precincts on the planet. It is an open, vibrant, tolerant community of more than two dozen disparate nations living in a pan-continental harmony and freedom unseen in all previous European history.

I totally reject the idea that freedom and religion are interchangeable or that one “requires” the other. Not only for the reasons Krauthammer lists but because while freedom is the natural state of man, that we were born free, religion is, for all practical purposes, a man made institution. It must be taught and so is not part of the “natural law” that makes all men free. Exercising the freedom to believe anything you wish is a natural right but not the belief itself.

I realize I’m treading on dangerous ground since most “natural rights” adherents believe that freedom is God’s gift to humans at birth. As an atheist, I reject that notion based simply on the fact that God is not necessary in this equation. Being born free is our patrimony as human beings and does not require any kind of supreme being to validate it.

Just as government is designed by man to regulate the affairs of citizens - who in an ideal situation grant the government the powers necessary to do so - religion is designed by man to regulate behavior. While some recent research shows that we have genes that give us a conscience and perhaps even a gene that grants us a propensity to believe in a higher power, the fact is cultural and moral strictures must be taught and are therefore excluded in any debate over the necessity for faith and freedom to co-exist in a democracy.

Romney was right in saying his faith shouldn’t exclude him from consideration for the presidency. But he was dead wrong in positing the notion that faith promotes freedom and vice versa:

In some times and places, religion promotes freedom. In other times and places, it does precisely the opposite, as is demonstrated in huge swaths of the Muslim world, where religion has been used to impose the worst kind of unfreedom.

In this country, there is no special political standing that one derives from being a Christian leader like Mike Huckabee or a fervent believer like Mitt Romney. Just as there should be no disability or disqualification for political views that derive from religious sensibilities, whether the subject is civil rights or stem cells.

In the past, the issue of the religious beliefs of a candidate was something discussed only in those long, Sunday edition newspaper articles that profiled a candidate’s background and upbringing. But with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter and his admission to being “born again” as a Christian, I can’t recall a campaign season where religiosity has been so visible, sprinkling the discussion of issues with biblical quotes and other outward manifestations of faith. Candidates raise it casually in the course of their stump speech or, like Mike Huckabee, when explaining his sudden rise in the polls and attributing it to a higher power.

No one ever pointed out the discrepancy in say, Nixon’s Quakerism and his fighting the Viet Nam war. Today, charges of “hypocrisy” would abound from his political opponents. And that’s the difference between a political culture that respects and appreciates faith, putting it carefully in a place where it informs a candidate’s position on issues and candidates that push faith front and center in order to gain a political advantage.

Religion as a supplement that unites us or as a wedge that divides us. Isn’t that what the debate is really about?

UPDATE

Allow me to take cover behind Ed Morrissey:

The Republican primary risks falling into a theological beauty contest. Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have actual policy positions and track records as governors, something that pundits and the media seem to have forgotten. Neither man is running for Pope — neither man qualifies, of course — and the nature of their doctrines matter little in comparison to the nature of those policies they espouse.

Let’s call off the revival, please, and get back to policy.

The 40% of Iowans who self identify as Christian conservatives evidently don’t get out much. Either that, or they’ve simply decided to take an early Christmas holiday from reality. Otherwise, I can’t understand why so many would have fallen so completely for the flim flam being perpetrated by the least knowledgeable, least prepared, and most backward thinking of all the Republican candidates in the field -and that includes candidates going back to the 1950’s.

I am talking about the walking, talking disaster-in-the-making that is Mike Huckabee - former governor of a small, impoverished state, a baptist preacher whose conservative views on social issues make him a perfect candidate for the Leave it to Beaver wing of the GOP, and a man whose thinking is so shallow a warning sign should be plastered on his forehead reading “Absolutely no diving beyond this point.”

Now one might think the best way to get our Iowa brethren to abandon this silly love affair with a silly candidate would not accuse them of being dunces. I disagree. Sometimes, you need to throw a bucket of cold water on people to call their attention to erroneous thinking. And I would think they would find that preferable to the buckets of bullsh*t Huckabee has been tossing their way for months.

Kevin Drum is a liberal Democrat but a keen political observer nevertheless. When I find myself in total agreement with someone from the other side, you’ve got to believe that either some liberal witch has cast a spell on me or we both see the same thing from the empty headed former fatty from Arkansas:

Ross Douthat has more on the fact that Mike Huckabee is basically just making stuff up as he goes along and plainly doesn’t have clue about most of the things he’s asked about. Economic policy? How about a 30% sales tax? Foreign policy? He likes Tom Friedman and Frank Gaffney, two pop commentators with almost nothing in common. Energy policy? Let’s eliminate oil imports by 2017. Immigration policy? Ship everyone back to Mexico. Etc. It’s grade school stuff.

And not to beat this into the ground, but what’s really astounding about this is that nobody actually seems to care much. But eventually somebody will, because eventually this weird combination of barstool ignorance and internet-email-list credulity is bound to produce a howler of the kind that the press likes to latch onto. There’s no telling what it will be, but it’s coming, and when it does the Huckabee boomlet will be over.

Drum didn’t mention health care. Here are the Huckster’s deep thoughts on fulfilling a promise he made yesterday in the debate where he said that by the end of his term as president, all Americans would be covered by health insurance:

I advocate policies that will encourage the private sector to seek innovative ways to bring down costs and improve the free market for health care services. We have to change a system that happily pays $30,000 for a diabetic to have his foot amputated, but won’t pay for the shoes that would save his foot.

We can make health care more affordable by reforming medical liability; adopting electronic record keeping; making health insurance more portable from one job to another; expanding health savings accounts to everyone, not just those with high deductibles; and making health insurance tax deductible for individuals and families as it now is for businesses. Low income families would get tax credits instead of deductions. We don’t need all the government controls that would inevitably come with universal health care. When I’m President, Americans will have more control of their health care options, not less.

Boilerplate mush and about as detailed as a connect-the-dots Santa drawing. Besides, you might note all those nifty tax deductions and tax credits. I wonder how he squares that with his tax policy?

I’d like you to join me at the best “Going Out of Business” sale I can imagine - one held by the Internal Revenue Service. Am I running for president to shut down the federal government? Not exactly. But I am running to completely eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes. And I do mean all - personal federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment. All our hours filling out forms, all our payments for help with those forms, all our shopping bags filled with disorganized receipts, all our headaches and heartburn from tax stress will vanish. Instead we will have the FairTax, a simple tax based on wealth. When the FairTax becomes law, it will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness.

The FairTax will replace the Internal Revenue Code with a consumption tax, like the taxes on retail sales forty-five states and the District of Columbia have now. All of us will get a monthly rebate that will reimburse us for taxes on purchases up to the poverty line, so that we’re not taxed on necessities. That means people below the poverty line won’t be taxed at all. We’ll be taxed on what we decide to buy, not what we happen to earn.

Now I’m no economist or policy wonk or anything but how are we going to give poor folk a tax credit to buy health insurance if there’s no such animal in Governor Huckabee’s brave new Fair Tax world?

Just askin’…

Drum mentioned conservative blogger Ross Douthat who interviewed Huckabee last month and was struck by his unpreparedness for national office:

But when it comes to preparedness, to the hard work of scaling up one’s understanding from state-level challenges to national issues that any aspiring candidate needs to do, Huckabee is way out of his depth. This was my sense talking to him, certainly. Set him off on health care or education or what-have-you in the context of Arkansas politics, and he’s got enough juice to make you think: Here’s a guy who might make a good President. But widen the focus to the nation as a whole, and you’re left thinking: Here’s a smart guy who hasn’t come close to doing his homework. For a charming also-ran with a chance at the Vice-Presidency, that wasn’t a problem. For someone leading in Iowa, it is.

You can’t help but compare the vapid and depthless “policy” ideas extruded from the Huckabee campaign machine with the meaty, thoughtful, and detailed “white papers” issued by the Thompson campaign.

Take Fred’s detailed tax plan that was praised by the Club for Growth and the National Review among other conservative media. In it’s 7 points, Thompson lays out a coherent, conservative plan to cut taxes on individuals and businesses. He couples that with a spending plan that envisions widespread and necessary reform of entitlements along with an end to pork barrel projects. It is a demonstration of muscular - some might even say courageous - thinking that makes Huckabee’s campaign for class president platform look silly by comparison.

By all that is right and fair in the world, Fred Thompson should have enjoyed that surge that Huckabee experienced over the last month. But then, Fred didn’t run around Iowa hinting the Mormonism isn’t really a Christian sect in order to pander to the baser instincts of Christian conservatives. Nor does Fred have the ready charm and unctuous delivery of the sermonizing Huckster. Fred is, well, Fred. He heaves his 6′5″ frame up to speak and delivers it straight from the shoulder - no gimmicks, few wasted words.

And little inspiration, I’m afraid. While yesterday’s debate showed an animated Fred Thompson, even a passionate Fred at times, his claim is on our heads, not our hearts. For some reason, he has not made that personal connection a candidate must make with the voter that marks the difference between a contender and an also-ran. Perhaps he can take these last few weeks before the Caucuses and find a way to reach beyond the intellectual and touch people’s emotions. If he can discover a way to do that, he has a chance to surprise the field.

In the meantime, Huckabee’s obvious failings as a candidate are lost on the voters in Iowa who may actually agree with a statement signed by Huckabee in 1998 contained in a full page ad in USA Today that declared:

“I affirm the statement on the family issued by the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention.” What was in the family statement from the SBC? “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”

The ad wasn’t just a blanket, “we support the SBC statement,” but rather highlighted details. The ad Huckabee signed specifically said of the SBC family statement: “You are right because you called wives to graciously submit to their husband’s sacrificial leadership.”

That’s 1998 not 1898, by the way.

Nor do many Iowa supporters of this neophyte on foreign policy care that he wants to drop the economic blockade against Cuba (Or at least he did 3 years ago. Where he’ll be on the issue next week is anyone’s guess) and talk to the Iranians (a la Obama). It also doesn’t seem to matter that the guy granted twice as many pardons and clemencies to state prisoners as his three predecessors combined.

As long as Huckabee is right on their issues, he could be revealed as an empty headed lout and still get their support.

A sad state of affairs, indeed.

For Fred Thompson, the race for the Republican nomination has just gotten extremely simple.

Do well in Iowa or fold up shop and go home:

FORMER TENNESSEE SENATOR Fred Thompson has decided to take his campaign and virtually all of its resources to Iowa in an all-or-nothing attempt to register a strong showing in the caucuses here on January 3. “We’re getting ready to make this not only our second home, but our first home,” he told a small gathering of supporters at the Polk County Convention Center on Friday night. Thompson and his wife Jeri chatted with the crowd before making their way through the exhibits at the Iowa Farm Bureau’s annual meeting in downtown Des Moines.

Beginning Monday, December 17, Thompson will launch a bus tour that will take him throughout the state. From the beginning of that trip through caucus night, Thompson will essentially live in Iowa, taking only a one-day trip out of the state to celebrate Christmas at his home in Virginia.

“Iowa is critical to our campaign, and it may in fact be everything to our campaign,” says one Thompson official. “If we don’t do what we need to do in Iowa, it will be tough to compete effectively down the road.”

Outgunned and outmanned by Mitt Romney and on the downside of the boom for Mike Huckabee who has captured much of the support the former Tennessee senator was depending on to be competitive, Thompson finds himself in a do or die position in Iowa. He has disappeared from polls in New Hampshire, garnering less than 5% and trailing Ron Paul. Most importantly, he finds himself 3rd in the vital South Carolina primary, losing to Huckabee and Mitt Romney.

In short, Thompson must find a way to reverse his fortunes or he will be forced to make a quick exit from the race.

Thompson’s troubles have been well documented by the national press (I detailed those criticisms for Pajamas Media here). But beyond the familiar litany of charges that he’s too lazy, too detached, and doesn’t want to be president bad enough, there is simply the matter that Thompson never lit a fire under conservatives in Iowa or New Hampshire.

This left an opening for Huckabee who patiently cultivated the religious right and then tapped into the enthusiasm of the Fair Tax movement. The combination has proved itself potent - up to this point. Recent revelations about Huckabee and his intervention to get a rapist paroled (who then went on to rape and murder two women) as well as a groundswell of opposition being spearheaded by The Club For Growth who see his fiscal policies as governor in a decidedly unconservative light may create doubts in voter’s minds.

So Thompson’s “all in” move to Iowa may be coming at exactly the right time. As people begin to really scrutinize Huckabee’s record, Thompson will help them along by highlighting his opponent’s total lack of experience in foreign and defense policy:

“All I’m saying is that national security and foreign affairs is the most important thing facing this country,” said Thompson. “It affects our security and the security of our children. And who has nuclear capability is the most important part of the most important issue. I think it’s best if someone has experience in that regard. I’ve spent a lot of time–I served on the Intelligence Committee in the United States Senate, I’ve traveled around and met with foreign leaders. I chaired a committee that involved oversight of nuclear proliferation issues and things of that nature. So I think it’s surprising that someone that would aspire to be president takes the position like closing Guantanamo, for example, is a good thing. And does not keep up with what’s going on in Iran.”

In addition to throwing a bucket of cold water on the boom for Huckabee, Thompson’s emphasis on national security issues may finally excite those conservatives who see foreign policy and defense issues as the most important criteria to judge a potential candidate for president.

Previously, much of Thompson’s stump speech has been devoted to his thoughtful ideas on federalism - not exactly red meat for the right but positions that have earned him praise from most GOP quarters. A switch to emphasizing his foreign policy credentials while Huckabee stumbles over Iran and other issues dealing with the War on Terror could be just what his campaign needs to win back (or get off the fence) many conservatives who may be uncomfortable with Huckabee’s inexperience.

Thompson has previously said that he must finish third in Iowa to remain viable. That prospect certainly appears within reach even if he can’t overtake Huckabee. But realistically, Thompson must exceed expectations in Iowa by finishing second in order to generate the kind of momentum that would propel his candidacy forward. And a first place finish - a remote possibility but not unimaginable - would shock the field and give the campaign a huge boost, making the candidate a contender even in states that he’s not doing well like New Hampshire and Michigan.

There is something appealing about a candidate who recognizes what needs to be done and doesn’t hesitate to try and do it. In Thompson’s case, he is putting it all on the line in Iowa in a make or break effort to achieve a breakthrough.

Not a long shot by any means but rather a recognition of the reality of a campaign that is currently in flux. And where it will settle is anyone’s guess.

I detailed my major concerns with Mike Huckabee in this post last week, dealing exclusively with the former Arkansas governor’s decidedly unconservative fiscal record.

But frankly, to a large swath of GOP voters on the Christian right, the Huckster could be the second coming of Bill Clinton but as long as all of his religious “I’s” are dotted and “T’s” crossed, he’s their guy.

Nevertheless, the Club for Growth is planning to launch a series of ads to run in Iowa and New Hampshire (as well as nationally on Fox News) that urge viewers to ask Mike Huckabee about his tax record.

Needless to say, Mr. Huckabee has a lot of explaining to do:

To emphasize Mike Huckabee’s eager support for tax increases, the ad excerpts a 2003 clip of Mike Huckabee rattling off a list of tax increases he deems acceptable. While the former governor will argue that he had no choice and was bound by state law to balance the budget, the 2003 clip is emblematic of Huckabee’s ten-year tenure in which raising taxes was his first resort. Many cities and states have balanced budget laws like Arkansas, but not all governors and mayors embrace higher taxes the way Mike Huckabee did. Some actually cut government spending and waste in order to make ends meet. But under Mike Huckabee’s tenure, the average Arkansas tax burden increased 47%. Mike Huckabee’s support for tax hikes include:

Just to let you know, Huckabee has also expressed support for an internet sales tax that would make shopping online an adventure.

I don’t believe The Huck is a closet liberal or anything. He’s just stupid:

Then tell me, what does he mean here when he asserts that Bush had the new NIE “for four years”? The whole point of the NIE is that it reversed the previous NIE from 2005 that claimed Iran had a covert weapons program. The one that just came out is brand new, compiled over the last year or so and reportedly reliant on intel that was recently obtained. He didn’t misspeak, either; he hinted that the report was four years old in an interview on MSNBC this morning too.

Between this and the “INS” gaffe yesterday, if he doesn’t watch out the narrative’s going to shift from Dumond, immigration, and religion to whether this guy has even a basic sense of what he’s talking about.

The “INS gaffe” was an eye popper. In a position paper he released on immigration, Huckabee (or some amatuer hour staffer who wrote it) referred to the “Immigration and Naturalization Service,” an agency that when folded into DHS in 2003 became the USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services).

Holy Christ! Doesn’t anyone vet these things before releasing them to the press?

And not only did Huckabee accuse Bush of having the NIE on Iran for four years, when questioned about the document on Tuesday, almost 24 hours after it became available, Huckabee hadn’t even heard about it.

Scared yet? Let’s go to Huckabee channelling Pat Robertson. The TV preacher, as I’m sure you know, conducts regular conversations with the Almighty about all sorts of things. Here’s Huckabee on his recent surge in the polls:

There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people. (Applause) That’s the only way that our campaign can be doing what it’s doing. And I’m not being facetious nor am I trying to be trite. There literally are thousands of people across this country who are praying that a little will become much, and it has. And it defies all explanation, it has confounded the pundits. And I’m enjoying every minute of them trying to figure it out, and until they look at it, from a, just experience beyond human, they’ll never figure it out.

I want to make it clear I am not complaining that the guy has faith. I think that’s just fine.

Just don’t expect me to support someone for president who explains his rise in the polls by intimating that God is on his side.

Are we really going to hand the nomination to this neophyte? This man whose knowledge of foreign and defense policy is deficient, whose grasp of large issues like immigration questionable?

And we haven’t even gotten to the “electability” issue. This guy is a walking disaster for the Republican party. In a general election against Hillary Clinton he will be lucky to take 8 states - all in the south - and make the GOP debacle of 1964 look like a walk in the park.

So go ahead, indulge yourselves my Christian right friends. Nominate the man who can quote parables from the bible but doesn’t know that the INS isn’t in business anymore. Elevate a man who is “right” on all your issues but is as unschooled in foreign policy as George Bush was when he took office in 2001. Except we weren’t at war then and didn’t think it necessary to have a president who had a broad, adult, outlook on the world.

What do you think now?

Nominate Huckabee and I won’t be the only one shopping my vote somewhere else next November.

I didn’t realize that the Associated Press had gone in to the pharmacy business. If I had, I wouldn’t have been so astonished to read this emetic about the hostage situation at Hillary’s New Hampshire office yesterday.

I can’t guarantee that you will be able to keep your breakfast down if you read this before the ham and eggs are at least partially digested:

When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis.

The image, broadcast just as the network news began, conveyed the message a thousand town hall meetings and campaign commercials strive for — namely, that the Democratic presidential contender can face disorder in a most orderly manner.

“I am very grateful that this difficult day has ended so well,” she declared as she stood alone at the microphone.

Holy Christ! “Fawning” would be an understatement here. The AP reporter Glen Johnson is literally kneeling at Hillary’s feet, looking at her with a doe-eyed worshipfulness as he pens this paean to the “regal looking” Clinton - a “picture of calm” drawn so lovingly one wonders if he doesn’t keep an autographed photo of the candidate on his nightstand - all the better to shortstroke his way to ecstasy when thinking about her.

My friend Jim Lynch is a little more prosaic in his analysis:

“Is the AP going to be charged with an in-kind contribution to the Clinton Campaign?”

If not, they should be.

Aides said Clinton was home Friday afternoon, getting ready to deliver a partisan speech in Virginia to the Democratic National Committee, when she was told three workers in her Rochester, N.H., headquarters had been taken hostage by a man claiming to have a bomb.

[snip]

Over the ensuing five hours, as a state trooper negotiated with the suspect and hostages were released one-by-one, Clinton continued to call up and down the law enforcement food chain, from local to county to state to federal officials.

“I knew I was bugging a lot of these people, it felt like on a minute-by-minute basis, trying to make sure that I knew everything that was going on so I was in a position to tell the families, to tell my campaign and to be available to do anything that they asked of me,” the New York senator said.

At the same time, the woman striving to move from former first lady to the first female president was eager to convey that she knew the traditional lines of command and control in a crisis, even if the events inside the storefront on North Main Street were far short of a world calamity.

“They were the professionals, they were in charge of this situation, whatever they asked me or my campaign to do is what we would do,” Clinton said.

Along with taking charge while giving the professionals free rein, Clinton offered up a third dimension to her crisis character: humanity. She said she felt “grave concern” when she first heard the news of the hostage-taking.

Where does one begin to dissect what could easily be Hillary’s newest campaign commercial, written for her by a reporter/flack/fan at the Associated Press? This is not a news story. It’s a campaign press release.

The image drawn is one of a take charge candidate, on the phones demanding to be kept up to date on the status of the negotiations. But that’s not all there was to her “crisis character” - a fictitious but inventive bit of idiocy by Johnson. We also discover via Mr. Johnson’s slavish, breathless “reporting” that Hillary is not a robot, that she has “humanity.”

How do we know this? Because she said she felt “grave concern” when she first heard about the hostages.

Holy Mother of God! My pet cat Aramas felt “grave concern” when he heard the news. I would suspect that half the people on the planet - Democrats and Republicans - felt “grave concern” when first hearing of the plight of her volunteers. If Johnson thinks 15 years of aloofness, cold-eyed calculation, and insensitivity can be washed away just because she felt “grave concern” for her volunteers, he obviously has more confidence in his skills as a huckstering Hillary sycophant than is warranted.

And would someone please tell me how it is possible for someone to know the “traditional lines of command and control in a crisis” while at exactly the same time ” taking charge” of the situation? Johnson was so eager to put the candidate at the center of the action (taking charge) he temporarily forgot that a paragraph earlier he had her deferring to “traditional lines of authority.”

Oh well. No hack is perfect.

The Associated Press has proven itself over the years to be the most shockingly partisan news organization on the planet - showing outright sympathy at times with the terrorists in Iraq and an animus toward Bush that defines BDS. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us that one of their reporters has gone off the deep end and doesn’t even bother to make the pretense of being objective about Hillary Clinton.

Nor would it surprise anyone if Johnson ends up Hillary’s White House spokesman. He’s already got a leg up on the competition with this article.

At last night’s CNN/YouTube Republican Debate, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee finally came into his own on the national stage. He looked relaxed, in command, and spoke well and forcefully on his issues.

This was a far cry from Huckabee’s first debate where he was seen as an asterisk in the polls and a non-entity on stage. He looked a like deer caught in Romney’s headlights, so lost and forlorn that he appeared to be leaning on Tommy Thompson’s lectern for support.

But last night, the candidate fairly oozed confidence. He was unctuous to the point of oiliness, having developed a rhythm and cadence in his speaking style that demonstrated an attractive bleeding heart compassion with the earnestness of an Eagle Scout combined with the passion of a preacher.

Flash polls afterwards in Iowa and New Hampshire confirmed that Huckabee won in both states handily. The latest Rasmussen Iowa Poll has him surging ahead of Mitt Romney into first place while the latest Florida numbers have him second behind Giuliani. This indicates that not only has the media sat up and begun to notice Huckabee, but the GOP conservatives, casting desperately about for an alternative to Romney/Giuliani may have found their champion after all.

But Mike Huckabee is not a conservative - at least not any kind of conservative that I would recognize as such. His tenure as Arkansas governor was marked by a corn pone populism - part Huey Long and part Jimmy Carter along with a massive increase in the tax burden on the individual taxpayer in his state as well as a sharp rise in spending.

Huckabee channeled the ghost of Huey Long in his funding of state road improvements - largely through a hefty gas tax increase and a controversial bond issue. He also put a $5.25 premium on nursing home patients and raised the sales tax in the state. The Club for Growth detailed his “conservative” tax policy and ideas:

* Immediately upon taking office, Governor Huckabee signed a sales tax hike in 1996 to fund the Games and Fishing Commission and the Department of Parks and Tourism (Cato Policy Analysis No. 315, 09/03/98).

* He supported an internet sales tax in 2001 (Americans for Tax Reform 01/07/07).

* He publicly opposed the repeal of a sales tax on groceries and medicine in 2002 (Arkansas News Bureau 08/30/02).

* He signed bills raising taxes on gasoline (1999), cigarettes (2003) (Americans for Tax Reform 01/07/07), and a $5.25 per day bed-tax on private nursing home patients in 2001 (Arkansas New Bureau 03/01/01).

* He proposed another sales take hike in 2002 to fund education improvements (Arkansas News Bureau 12/05/02).

* He opposed a congressional measure to ban internet taxes in 2003 (Arkansas News Bureau 11/21/03).

* In 2004, he allowed a 17% sales tax increase to become law (The Gurdon Times 03/02/04).

With conservatives like this, who needs Democrats?

In fact, Huckabee actually joined the Democratic chorus against Bush’s tax cuts, saying (he now says he supports the cuts and making them permanent) that the cuts are geared “toward the people at the top end of the economic scale.”

With populists like this, who needs John Edwards?

But it is his record on spending that should give conservatives pause.

Under Governor Huckabee’s watch, state spending increased a whopping 65.3% from 1996 to 2004, three times the rate of inflation (Americans for Tax Reform 01/07/07). The number of state government workers rose 20% during his tenure (Arkansas Leader 04/15/06), and the state’s general obligation debt shot up by almost $1 billion, according to Americans for Tax Reform. The massive increase in government spending is due in part to the number of new programs and expansion of already existing programs initiated by Governor Huckabee, including ARKids First, a multimillion-dollar government program to provide health coverage for thousands of Arkansas’ children (Arkansas News Bureau 04/13/06).

The Club for Growth isn’t the only fiscally conservative group that has looked in askance at Huckabee’s record. The Cato Institute was also unimpressed by Huckabee’s tenure as governor. They gave him an “F” in fiscal policy for 2006.

Hucksterites will point to his $80 million tax cut package he pushed through the legislature that eliminated capital gains taxes on home sales and indexed taxes to the inflation rate.

But that’s just a drop in the bucket. While Huckabee claims to have cut taxes 90 times totaling $378 million, the state’s Department of Finance and Administration says he also raised taxes 21 times that brought in a whopping $883 million. Under his “conservative” governance, the “average Arkansan’s tax burden” went “from $1,969 in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 1997, to $2,902 in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2005, including local taxes.”

A liberal couldn’t be prouder of such a record.

Huckabee has now embraced the so-called “Fair Tax” proposal that most experts see as a highly regressive tax that would hit middle income taxpayers with a monstrous increase in the cost of living. Imagine paying 30% more on the price of a new house or on medical care. Those currently paying 17% of their income to the government will find them shelling out 30% extra for every purchase they make.

I find many aspects of the Fair Tax proposal intriguing but am extremely doubtful that it could be made “revenue neutral” in that there is almost a dead certainty from everything I’ve read that there would be either massive cuts in government spending (guess where, my pro-military spending friends) and/or a larger sales tax to offset unanticipated shortfalls. I also believe that it would unfairly increase the tax burden on the lower middle class.

The Fair Taxers say they will offset this by sending a check to each taxpayer every month to even out the burden. Here’s Bruce Bartlett in the Wall Street Journal:

Since sales taxes are regressive–taking more in percentage terms from the incomes of the poor and middle class than the rich–some provision is needed to prevent a vast increase in taxation on the nonwealthy. The FairTax does this by sending monthly checks to every household based on income.

Aside from the incredible complexity and intrusiveness of tracking every American’s monthly income–and creating a de facto national welfare program–the FairTax does not include the cost of this rebate in the tax rate. As noted earlier, the FairTax is designed only to match current revenues and does not cover any increased spending that it may require. Since the rebate will cost at least $600 billion the first year, either federal discretionary spending would have to be cut by 60% or the rate would have to be five percentage points higher than advertised.

Beyond the argument of whether the Fair Tax is truly a conservative notion, there is the reason Huckabee might be supporting the idea; the fact that supporters of the Fair Tax give the Paulbots a run for their money in exhibiting passion for their cause. Huckabee is the only presidential candidate pushing the scheme and he may be riding the wave of Fair Tax supporters endorsements, especially in Iowa. They apparently made an impact for Huckabee at the Ames straw poll last summer and their support in Iowa is no doubt vital to his campaign.

Certainly no one doubts Huckabee’s conservative credentials on social issues. But when it comes to meat and potatoes fiscal issues, Huckabee is a conservative vegan, a “liberal in disguise” according to the Club for Growth.

Couple this with his total lack of military and foreign policy experience and the right might want to ask itself: “Is this the best we can do?”

Fred Thompson is head and shoulders above Mike Huckabee when it comes to having a record of votes on fiscal policy that consistently prove his conservative beliefs. He has also fleshed out his positions on a number of issues with a tax plan and social security white paper that have been praised by conservatives across the country. Get past the charm, the unctuousness, and the corn pone manner and what you have in Huckabee is a big government conservative who looks suspiciously like George Bush did in 1999.

We don’t need another George Bush. We don’t need Mike Huckabee. What we need is someone who will fight for conservative principles in government and wear out a veto pen in nixing excessive spending and any increase in taxes proposed by a Democratic Congress.

Is that man Fred Thompson? I just don’t know about Fred. But I’m sure that if the GOP goes ahead and annoints Huckabee, the conservative movement in America will be set back as our once proud heritage of fiscal responsibility and support for smaller government will be trashed by another wolf in conservative raiment.

UPDATE

Just got this email update from the Romney campaign (who I do not support).

It seems that Arkansas conservatives aren’t convinced of the Hucksters conservative credentials either.

Betsy Hagan, Arkansas Director Of The Eagle Forum: “He Was Pro-Life And Pro-Gun, But Otherwise A Liberal” “Nor am I alone. Betsy Hagan, Arkansas director of the conservative Eagle Forum and a key backer of his early runs for office, was once ‘his No. 1 fan.’ She was bitterly disappointed with his record. ‘He was pro-life and pro-gun, but otherwise a liberal,’ she says. ‘Just like Bill Clinton he will charm you, but don’t be surprised if he takes a completely different turn in office.’” (John Fund, “Another Man From Hope,” The Wall Street Journal, 10/26/07)

Former Republican State Rep. Randy Minton Said That Gov. Huckabee’s Record Will Turn Away Economic Conservatives. “Also that year, the state grappled with an economic downturn and a resulting budget shortfall. ‘Republicans that believe in limited government and lower taxes and fees, they’ll look at his record, and they won’t be satisfied with it,’ said former Republican state Rep. Randy Minton of Ward.” (Daniel Nasaw, “Home Turf Not Rock Solid For Huckabee,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 10/4/07)

Well, at least the candidates were probably all Republicans. As for the questioners, that’s a different story.

At least 4 of the questioners from last night’s CNN/YouTube Debate were Democratic party supporters and activists including one gay general who worked for John Kerry’s campaign and is on Hillary Clinton’s LGBT Steering Committee.

The information confirming these facts was ferreted out by Freepers and bloggers within minutes of the debate’s ending.

This raises several interesting questions, not the least of which is who at CNN is going to get fired over this rank stupidity? Or perhaps they plan on promoting the buggers. Here’s how they wash their hands of the gay General Kerr imbroglio:

CNN Senior Vice President and Executive Producer of the debate, David Bohrman, says, “We regret this, and apologize to the Republican candidates. We never would have used the General’s question had we known that he was connected to any presidential candidate.”

Prior to the debate, CNN had verified his military background and that he had not contributed any money to any presidential candidate.

Following the debate, Kerr told CNN that he’s done no work for the Clinton campaign. He says he is a member of the Log Cabin Republicans and was representing no one other than himself.

I would say that’s a crock. The General has lent his name and rank to the campaign of a Democrat. Are we supposed to believe that just because he hasn’t been “working” at outreach for the Clinton campaign (which is basically what steering committees do) that he hasn’t contributed anything? I would say a retired general’s name is worth a helluva lot - especially when we’re talking about gay outreach to the military and national security conscious gays.

Of course, the General is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Democratic supporters and activists who somehow managed to slip by CNN’s army of editors and fact checkers to ask questions of Republican presidential candidates.

Michelle Malkin has the whole story told best in pictures. There’s the Log Cabin Republican, David Cercone, whose YouTube page clearly identifies him as an Obama supporter, asking a question about gay marriage. There’s the petite young girl asking an abortion question whose YouTube profile shows her proudly sporting a “John Edwards ‘08″ T-shirt.

And the mother with two kids asking who’s going to protect her kids from products that contain lead is actually an American Steel Worker union activist - an aide to the union president Leo Gerard and a John Edwards booster.

We were told that there were 5,000 videos submitted for this debate. Are we supposed to believe that CNN couldn’t find actual, like, you know, REPUBLICANS TO ASK THEIR OWN GODDAMN CANDIDATES A QUESTION?

If life were fair and the press unbiased, this would become a huge media scandal - perhaps the biggest in a while. You and I both know that will not happen. So what if Republicans get short changed in a debate by having a shamefully incapable cable news network allow supporters and activists from the other party to ask questions designed not to elicit information from the candidates but to try and trap them and make them look bad?

Of course, the entire affair makes the Democratic Party’s boycott of Fox News look pretty silly - if it wasn’t pretty laughable already. They’re worried about some imagined bias at Fox while CNN provides all the evidence necessary to convict them of being either incompetent boobs or rabid partisans.

For some, it might be easier to believe CNN to have it in for Republicans. But outside of the normal bias found in any large media organization, I believe the CNN debate showed the network to be lazy, unconcerned, and in the end, spectacularly inept.

ONE GREAT BIG IN YOUR FACE, SCREW YOU UPDATE FOR MY CRITICS:

From the Executive Producer of the debate quoted in the NY Times Caucus blog last week:

With only a week to go before the Republican CNN/YouTube debate next Wednesday, voters are lighting up the video site with serious and not-so-serious questions for the eight candidates.

David Bohrman, CNN’s Washington bureau chief and executive producer of the debate, spoke to The Caucus from “an undisclosed location” where he and a team of six others were pouring over the entries.

So far, about 3,000 questions have been posted to YouTube, Mr. Bohrman said, and he expects to have about 5,000 videos at his disposal come Sunday, the contest deadline. That beats July’s Democratic YouTube debate, which pulled in about 3,000 videos.
Most questions online have been pulled from public viewing for review, but many of the remaining posts involve asking the candidates to defend their opposition to gay marriage and abortion. Those kinds of “lobbying grenades” would be disqualified by the CNN selection team, Mr. Bohrman said.

(THEY WEREN’T, OF COURSE)

“There are quite a few things you might describe as Democratic ‘gotchas,’ and we are weeding those out,” Mr. Bohrman said. CNN wants to ensure that next Wednesday’s Republican event is “a debate of their party.”

A “debate of their party.” And now the number of Democrats who asked questions is up to 6.

This was not a debate for Democrats to try and trap Republican candidates. And despite the promises of CNN one has to wonder; what are the odds of putting on a Republican debate where 20% of the questions come from the opposition party?

Most of you have the intellectual honesty of a jackal so I don’t expect you to do anything except ignore the above and pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s the way you people deal with contradictory information - you just keep mouthing your talking points mindlessly.

But I publish the above with IMMENSE satisfaction.

The Sleeper has awakened?

Well, maybe not as dramatic as that. After all, we’re talking about the mild mannered professor and senator for a quaint Midwestern state - hardly Superman material although he would probably look pretty good in tights.

But make no mistake, the times they are a-changin’. Finding himself trailing in the national polls by 2-1 against the Queen of Darkness, Senator Barack Obama - he of the “different kind of politics” school of electoral vapidity - has, not surprisingly, taken a page from the playbook of old school, bare knuckled political brawlers and begun sliming Hillary Clinton for all that she’s worth.

Well…that’s not entirely accurate. The page he’s reading is, in keeping with his citizen/scholar/politician image, the endnotes. And as for sliming Hillary, perhaps it would be more accurate to say his gums have a grip around her leg and he’s trying not to let go:

When conservative columnist Robert Novak reported on Saturday that the Clinton campaign might be sitting on “scandalous information” about Obama, close readers might have been inclined to yawn. The only sourcing was unidentified “agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton” and “word of mouth among Democrats.”

The column said the nature of the supposed scandal was unknown.

But Obama’s campaign responded as if Bob Woodward had splashed all the details on the front page, issuing a “Statement on Reports of Clinton Campaign Tactics” at 11:46 a.m., a “Response to Clinton Campaign Evasion” at 1:52 p.m., after her aides said they had “no idea” what the column was talking about, and a 4:20 p.m. broadside, “Obama Will Fight Back Fears.”

Obama’s response accused Clinton of “Swift Boat politics” — a reference to the 2004 attacks on Kerry’s military record by a group calling itself the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Kerry stayed quiet, a decision that some advisers fought at the time and that in retrospect turned out to have devastating consequences for his image in some swing states.

In Iowa on Sunday, Obama told reporters: “In the era of the blogosphere, we have seen what happened with John McCain in 2000, what happened with John Kerry in 2004. If you don’t get on this stuff quickly, then it starts drifting around, and that is not something I am going to accept.”

So there, Hillary. And there. AND THERE!

The only problem was that the “leak” almost certainly didn’t come from the Clinton camp and as John Fund revealed in the WSJ, the “scandal” appears to be nothing more than warmed over Rezko - a minor blip of a scandal here in Chicago where such sweetheart deals between developers and politicians are simply a way to “grease the wheels” and allow for poorly paid legislators to get a little extra cash. It barely raised an eyebrow in this, a city awash in graft and corruption.

As for the Clinton camp, they seemed bemused by the spectacle presented by their timid opponent trying to take the gloves off but unable to figure out how to untie them.

Give Obama an “A” for effort anyway.

But before Obama runs home and show his mother that report card with the excellent grade for trying to fight, he better look at the grade he got for this idiocy:

Barack Obama has unveiled a new line of criticism against Hillary: In speeches he’s started to point to the allegation made in Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta’s Hillary book that the Clintons secretly formulated a 20-year-plan to deliver the presidency first to Bill, and then to Hillary.

“I’m not in this race to fulfill some long-held plan or because it was owed to me,” Obama said the other day.

Asked if that were a reference to the Gerth allegation, an Obama spokesperson left virtually no doubt that it was, telling Newsday: “Barack Obama has not been mapping out his run for president from Washington for the last 20 years like some of his opponents.”

But the source that Gerth and Van Natta cited with supposed first-hand knowledge of this plan — historian Taylor Branch — has since vehemently denied that any such pact existed. “The story is preposterous,” Branch told The Washington Post, adding: “I never heard either Clinton talk about a ‘plan’ for them both to become president.”

If you are going to take a swing at someone, make sure you don’t miss and have the punch come all the way around and smack you in your own face. This, unfortunately, is what happened to Obama here. Good thing he dropped that line of attack immediately. After all, most Americans admire someone who plans out their life so far in advance. At any rate, it’s hardly a detriment to Hillary’s campaign to remind Democrats who she’s married to.

In a very large way, Obama is a victim of his own success as a “uniter not a divider.” One can hardly claim the moral high ground while accusing your opponent of all sorts of nasty things. So the Illinois Senator has been forced to temper his attacks, to pull his punches lest he turn off his younger voters who pine for his “new politics” (which is really just the old politics all gussied up and with a little makeup on).

Having now pulled even in Iowa, Obama has a chance to go for the jugular and really hurt Hillary Clinton by questioning her trustworthiness, her commitment to ending the war, her wishy-washyness, and her scandal-plagued money raising operation. This latest round of polling will renew focus on his candidacy. He is no longer the longshot. He has a credible chance to win in Iowa. And since the media likes nothing more than a horse race in an election, these next few weeks are going to be crucial.

This is why Obama must drop this pretense of being above the fray and get into the mud where he belongs. There are ways to savage an opponent without sounding mean or nasty. Hillary hasn’t quite mastered that art as yet but you could look no further than The Gipper for inspiration in that regard.

Reagan was usually pretty good natured in his criticism - jokes with an edge. Obama doesn’t have to be funny nor does he have to stray far from his own issues to highlight the stark differences between himself and Clinton. And while he’s at it, he can question her integrity and trust - attributes she has given ample evidence that they should be questioned.

What he needs is the will to carry out such attacks. And to date, I haven’t seen it. His candidacy now depends on whether he can begin to give people a reason to not only vote for him but vote against Clinton. He’s taken his positive campaign just about as far as it can go. Now he is going to have to start peeling Clinton voters away from her in order to fashion a majority of Democrats who will support his efforts to become the Democratic nominee. And he’s not going to be able to do that by talking sweetness and light.

As media scandals go, the flap over CNN’s use of Hillary-friendly Democratic questioners at last Thursday’s debate probably won’t rise to the level of full scale nuclear annihilation, where the network becomes so radioactive that it disappears from cable never to be seen again.

That might be what it deserves. And if life were fair, the next glimpse we got of Wolf Blitzer on television would be as a weatherman in Minot, North Dakota, wearing stupid hats and sponsoring contests for viewers on how much snow would fall for the month.

But life isn’t fair and multi-billion dollar corporations just don’t up and disappear no matter how seriously they transgress against the trust viewers place in their integrity as journalists. Hence, CNN will continue, albeit with a lot more scrutiny directed its way and a definite loss of credibility that it will have a hard time earning back.

To put it succinctly, CNN blew it. Everything about that Las Vegas debate - from the distribution of tickets, to the choice of moderators and commentators, to the absolute control of questions asked by audience members, to their agreement to pick Democratic operatives as “average voters” to ask questions - stinks of rank partisanship and boosterism for the Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton.

It is impossible to imagine any other network now or in the past behaving in such an arrogant manner.

Consider:

* 2000 tickets were available for the debate with 1000 going to UNLV (on whose campus the event was held) and another 1000 going to the Nevada Democratic party. It appears that the NDP packed the house with Hillary supporters while only 100 students from UNLV - younger voters more disposed to supporting Obama or Edwards - were allowed tickets while the other 900 apparently went to faculty and staff of the University.

While CNN was not directly responsible for this gaming of the audience, they might have made an effort to make the ticket distribution fairer. Especially in light of what occurred when CNN used that audience to ask questions of the candidates.

* How did a Democratic operative from Arkansas end up asking a question at a debate in Nevada? This question is especially relevant since CNN vetted and approved each question from the audience that was asked.

* Why did CNN allow an anti-war activist hardly your “average voter” - to make a statement about not attacking Iran in the thinly disguised form of a question from the audience?

* Why didn’t CNN disclose James Carville’s connections to the Clinton camp during the post debate wrap up?

And those are just the obvious questions. Among others, one could also ask about Wolf Blitzer’s choice of questions and his tone toward Clinton (a might too deferential?) considering the threats issued by Hillary staffers toward him in the lead up to the debate.

All of this raises the ultimate question; is CNN surreptitiously promoting the candidacy of Hillary Clinton? Even asking the question seriously damages CNN’s credibility. To cross the line from journalism to political advocacy is something the left accuses Fox News of doing. Will Democrats now refuse to appear on CNN as well? Will they forgo appearing in any more debates on that network?

Media bias is one thing. What CNN is accused of doing is something entirely different. Throwing the weight of a multi-billion dollar corporation with such a large political presence on the media landscape behind a candidate would be almost unprecedented. Not since the national news networks worked to bring the Nixon Administration down has there been such a blatant attempt to influence the opinion of the American people regarding a single politician.

The network may see Clinton’s candidacy as a great story - first woman president and all that. But is that any reason to cross the line and advocate her nomination and election? Given the economics of the news business, we certainly shouldn’t put it past CNN to play this kind of game. Face it; a Hillary presidency would be more interesting than a Giuliani or Romney presidency. More people will watch CNN during a Clinton tour in the White House than any other candidate running in either party, including Obama. It wouldn’t be the first time “bottom line journalism” was practiced by a network. And it probably won’t be the last.

How badly does this damage Mrs. Clinton? Watch the polls over the next 10 days or so. Even with weak opponents like Obama and Edwards, if Clinton loses any ground, it could be significant in that she will start reminding people just how the Clinton’s operate - the ruthlessness, the “win at all costs” attitude that marked her husband’s years in politics.

The American people may very well not want to relive those years when scandal after scandal rocked the White House and people got royally sick of the machinations by both parties. But until someone emerges to challenge her, Hillary Clinton will be the one to beat for both the Democratic nomination and the presidency.