So Huck’s got Chuck Norris, Ted Nugent, and the WWE’s Ric Flair on his side, now he’s getting a thumbs up from “Left Behind” fundie author Tim LaHaye. Mike Huckabee claims to be a big fan of the apocalypse novels.
“America and our Judeo-Christian heritage are under attack by a force that is more destructive than any America has faced” since Hitler, Dr. LaHaye and his wife, Beverly, wrote in letters sent to lists of conservative Christians in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. “Defeating the radical jihadists will require renewed resolve and spiritual rearmament by the evangelical pastors in America.”Progressive pastor Dan Schultz over at Street Prophets had this to say about LaHaye’s move, as well as a withering assessment of Concerned Women for America, run by his wife Beverly.The letters were distributed in part through an e-mail list maintained by Mrs. LaHaye’s organization, Concerned Women for America, to encourage pastors to attend two-day conferences held in each state (free, including meals and a hotel room). Mr. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, is the only candidate speaking.
This can hardly be described as a positive development, though I’m not sure how much direct effect the LaHayes will have. Voters don’t typically look to novelists for political guidance (even if LaHaye’s been a conservative activist for decades), and the CWA is one of those aging, increasingly irrelevant groups of social conservatives.But there’s even more interesting Huck news floating out there. Salon has a bit of an expose on the former governor of Arkansas and Baptist minister who is rising in the polls. A snippet after the jump.In fact, given that local pastors are considered to be the next wave of leaders for the conservative evangelical movement, you might read this as CWA’s attempt to buy some relevance with the up-and-coming generation. We’ll just have to see how it works out and assume that if Huckabee does well, the LaHayes will claim the credit.
One other thing: accepting a free conference stay to hear a single candidate speak is a violation of pastoral ethics, imho. It’s one thing for a pastor to be a political activist in private life. But to take gratuities from an organization that wants the pastor’s help in organizing the congregation for a candidate is no different in principle than attending an Amway convention to hear their sales pitch. That betrays the gospel and the people who have put their trust in a shepherd. If I were a member of a congregation whose pastor pulled a stunt like that, I’d head for the Board of Elders, letter of complaint in hand.
The piece by Arkansan Max Brantley, “The dark side of Mike Huckabee,” is sure to raise a few eyebrows of his holy rolling fanbase as it chronicles the questionable ethical behavior of Huck when he was governor.
Huckabee seems to love loot and has a dismissive attitude toward ethics, campaign finance rules and propriety in general. Since that first, failed campaign, the ethical questions have multiplied.This article goes on at length on these dubious kinds of shenanigans by the Arkansas Baptist minister-in-chief. I’m certain that his fellow Clown Car occupants will be loading up with this ammo for future debates.In the 1992 contest with Bumpers, Huckabee used campaign funds to pay himself as his own media consultant. Other payments went to the family babysitter.
In his successful 1994 run for lieutenant governor, he set up a nonprofit curtain known as Action America so he could give speeches for money without having to disclose the names of his benefactors. He failed to report that campaign travel payments were for the use of his own personal plane.
After he became governor in 1996, he raked in tens of thousands of dollars in gifts, including gifts from people he later appointed to prestigious state commissions.
…In the governor’s office, his grasp never exceeded his reach. Furniture he’d received to doll up his office was carted out with him when he left, after he’d crushed computer hard drives so nobody could ever get a peek behind the curtain of the Huckabee administration. < Until my paper, the Arkansas Times, blew the whistle, he converted a governor's mansion operating account into a personal expense account, claiming public money for a doghouse, dry-cleaning bills, panty hose and meals at Taco Bell. He tried to claim $70,000 in furnishings provided by a wealthy cotton grower for the private part of the residence as his own, until he learned ethics rules prevented it. When a disgruntled former employee disclosed memos revealing all this, the Huckabee camp shut her up by repeatedly suggesting she might be vulnerable to prosecution for theft because she'd shared documents generated by the state's highest official.
Classic Huck: “We’ve seen our country go from ‘Leave It to Beaver’ to ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ from Barney Fife to Barney Frank.”
17 Responses to “‘Left Behind’ author, Concerned Women for America suck up to Huck”
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“We’ve seen our country go from ‘Leave It to Beaver’ to ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’
I wonder if he realizes the point of B&B was to mock stupidity, not celebrate it.
Pantyhose?
“Defeating the radical jihadists will require renewed resolve and spiritual rearmament by the evangelical pastors in America.”
Because the answer to religious zealotry is more religious zealotry, of course.
“Because the answer to religious zealotry is more religious zealotry, of course.”
Correct. But it has to be OUR religious zealotry…
On the plus side, a Huck GOP nomination would allow me to print up a campaign bumper sticker I’ve been waiting 10 years for: “It’s the Crazy, Stupid!” (also applies to Rudy, of course).
I’m not following the employee harassment charge. If the disgruntled employee had already released the memos, how could the Huckabee campaign shut her up? Wasn’t the damage already done? The issue would be how recipients of that information used those documents.
Why do Americans keep giving control over nuclear weapons to evangelicals? You’d think the more the person welcomed the end of the world the less willing we’d be to give them the means to make that happen. Populist rhetoric means shit when Armageddon’s come, right? It amazes me how so many “moderate” Republicans support this freak.
You have to fight fire with fire. The only way you can defeat terrorists who want to destroy America is by becoming terrorists who want to destroy America. Duh.
This might be a little off-topic, but does anyone have the link to the excllent review/debunking that a blogger was doing of Left Behind ? It was a chapter-by chapter takedown, and wonderfully written by someone who understands how utterly unChristian these “Christians” are.
If anyone has that link, I’d appreciate it. I feel like a moron for losing it (and the author’s name) in the first place.
Even disregarding his positions on the issues, I wouldn’t want a president whose idea of splurging is spending illicit expense account money at Taco Bell. Here in Illinois, our corrupt pols eat in the finest steakhouses. We may be led by crooks, but they’re crooks with style.
Other Orange:
Try Slacktivist for your reading pleasure. Scroll down; his Left Behind category has a link from his right sidebar. It’s got a scan of a LB book cover.
orange, you want Slacktivist.com. He’s still going on the LB thing (it’s been 4+ years, I think. Almost to the end of book 1.)
Both of you: thanks so very much ! I would never have found it on my own. Hours of reading pleasure.
Look, as liberal Democrats a Huckabee nomination is the best possible thing that could happen for you guys. Even I would be voting for a Democratic President against this tax-raising, free-spending, interventionist social reactionary hillbilly.
Seriously, the rate at which he taxed and spent in Arkansas really make him look like a Democrat on fiscal policy. Add to that his religious fanaticism, and in my humble opinion this makes him the worst of both worlds.
Doesn’t.
Believe.
In.
Evolution.
–Clearly, because he hasn’t yet participated in it….
My fundie father was already beginning to lean towards Huckabee, and since he “witnesses” by handing around copies of Left Behind rather than actual Bibles, Tim LaHaye’s Huck endorsement is only going to convince him further. I’m actually glad about this, for it means at some point, I can reveal Huckabee’s support for carbon cap-and-trade to deal with the “moral issue” of global warming. It will be worth the risk of injury from head shrapnel.
For that matter, how do all these particular fundie groups feel about this, given how they beat up on the National Association of Evangelicals over their concern about anthropogenic climate change? Oh, wait, they all had their cognitive dissonance glands removed upon gaining their leadership positions.
This man was my governor.
I’m beginning to hate him, and not just for the whole mandatory BMI testing in schools bullshit.
STOP MAKING MY HOME STATE LOOK STUPID!
The Clintons came from here, the Clintons came from here…
No matter how much you come to take these folks for granted, every once in a while one of them will say some little thing which makes you wonder anew at their way of seeing the world. Mike Huckabee thinks that going “from Barney Fife to Barney Frank” is going in the wrong direction. Jeebus.
I guess that’s why the wingnuts have shown such devotion to W. He follows the proud intellectual and public service tradition of Fife, not Frank.