I was talking with a friend this evening. He’s a McCain supporter. Where I ended up is that I would find McCain marginally acceptable (gritting teeth now…), except that his conduct during this campaign toward Mitt, I find completely unacceptable. Tonights debate really reinforced that for me.
McCain’s outbursts often erupted when other members rebuffed his requests for support during his bid in 2000 for the Republican nomination for president. A former Senate staffer recalled what happened when McCain asked for support from a fellow Republican senator on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.
“The senator explained that he had already committed to support George Bush,” the former Senate staffer said. “McCain said ‘f— you’ and never spoke to him again.”
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“McCain used the f-word,” the former senator said. “McCain called the guy a ‘sh–head.’ The senator demanded an apology. McCain stood up and said, ‘I apologize, but you’re still a sh–head.’ That was in front of 40 to 50 Republican senators. That sort of thing happened frequently.”
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But only a few news outlets, like the Phoenix New Times in Arizona and the National Journal, that ran an Associated Press story reporting McCain’s 1998 joke suggesting that Chelsea Clinton was ugly and Janet Reno and Hillary Clinton were lesbians.
“Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?” McCain said at a GOP fund-raiser in Washington. “Because Janet Reno is her father.”
“…and the point is, with limited resources, if you look at where we are, even in the national polls, we’ve spent a nickel to the hundred dollar bill of some of these guys. It’s not that I’m depressed thinking where we are, heck, I’m pretty encouraged. If I were some of these guys who spent tens of millions of dollars and weren’t any further ahead, I’d have to be sitting in a warm tub of water with some razor blades in both hands at this point saying how much money does one have to spend uh, you know, to get on track?“
First, let’s set aside that he gets his math wrong by two orders of magnitude (he meant to say a nickel for every dollar unless he believes that Romney has spent $654M in Iowa). Those kinds of gaffes are par for the course for Huckabee.
What is he saying here? Is he saying that Romney should be depressed and commit suicide? Is he saying that if he were in Romney’s place he would be committing suicide? That seems more likely. In that case, what does it say about the moral fiber and character of Romney vs. Huckabee that Mitt is nowhere near considering suicide given that’s where Huckabee would have ended up were their situations reversed? Do we really want someone so unstable and suicidal as our next POTUS?
Huckabee fans, before you accuse me of being willfully literal in my interpretation of Huckabee’s comments, let me assure you that what I think Huck is really saying is that he feels really good about his position in Iowa and that Mitt should feel really bad.
I just object to the way he’s saying it. It is crass, mean spirited, and unbefitting a public office holder, much less a “Christian Leader.”
If you feel similarly, you can email the AAS at info@suicidology.org and the AFSP’s Public Relations Manager, Wylie Tene at wtene@afsp.org.
UPDATE: Apparently, this story first broke back in October. And, it’s not the first time he’s done it, and he’s been called on it in the past. “Razor blades in a bathtub” is a regular part of Huckabee’s repertoire.
Implication? He must actually think that this line is funny and continues to use it despite being made aware that it can be taken the wrong way!
How about when you fire the Director of State Police for not “helping” with the cover up of a grotesque act by your son?
What do you call that? (”Corrupt” comes to mind as an appropriate description)
Some people feel that this story is about David Huckabee’s freakish behavior. One can argue the extent to which that is relevant here (I personally would prefer not to have this kind of drama around the White House or representing the Republican Party).
What hopefully is clear, however, is that the real story is the cover up and firing of a senior law enforcement official for playing ball. Can you imagine what Huck might do if he gets a hold of the Justice Department?
As Mike Huckabee gains in the polls, the former Arkansas governor is finding that his record in office is getting more scrutiny. One issue likely to get attention is his handling of a sensitive family matter: allegations that one of his sons was involved in the hanging of a stray dog at a Boy Scout camp in 1998.The incident led to the dismissal of David Huckabee, then 17, from his job as a counselor at Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, Ark. It also prompted the local prosecuting attorney— bombarded with complaints generated by a national animal-rights group—to write a letter to the Arkansas state police seeking help investigating whether David and another teenager had violated state animal-cruelty laws. The state police never granted the request, and no charges were ever filed. But John Bailey, then the director of Arkansas’s state police, tells NEWSWEEK that Governor Huckabee’s chief of staff and personal lawyer both leaned on him to write a letter officially denying the local prosecutor’s request. Bailey, a career officer who had been appointed chief by Huckabee’s Democratic predecessor, said he viewed the lawyer’s intervention as improper and terminated the conversation. Seven months later, he was called into Huckabee’s office and fired. “I’ve lost confidence in your ability to do your job,” Bailey says Huckabee told him. One reason Huckabee cited was “I couldn’t get you to help me with my son when I had that problem,” according to Bailey. “Without question, [Huckabee] was making a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his son,” says I. C. Smith, the former FBI chief in Little Rock, who worked closely with Bailey and called him a “courageous” and “very solid” professional.
Huckabee called Bailey’s account “totally untrue” and described him as a “bitter” exemployee. “I asked him to resign because he had so alienated the entire state police,” he said. “It had nothing to do with my son.” Brenda Turner, Huckabee’s then chief of staff, and Kevin Crass, the Huckabee family lawyer, also disputed Bailey’s account, although both acknowledged talking to him about the dog killing. “I asked him, ‘Is it normal for the state police to … investigate something that happened at a Boy Scout camp?’ ” Turner says. “We wanted the same treatment that anybody else would get.” (Animal cruelty in Arkansas is a misdemeanor, not a felony.)
The details of the incident remain murky. The Animal Legal Defense Fund got an anonymous fax that summer alleging that David Huckabee and another youth had been involved in the hanging of a stray dog at the camp on July 11. A local animal-rights activist, Joyce Hillard, later contacted the camp director. Notes of Hillard’s report to the defense fund read, “Boys confessed & were fired. Dir. is making excuses, saying dog was sic & boys were putting him out of his misery.” (The director told NEWSWEEK only that a stray dog was “put down” and that the counselors were fired for violating the Scout credo to be “kind.”) The father of the other counselor was quoted by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette in August 1998 as saying that his son found the dog “hung over a limb and choking.” David Huckabee did not respond to requests for comment. (In April of this year, he was arrested—and paid a fine—when he forgot to remove a loaded gun from his carry-on luggage at Little Rock airport.) His father told NEWSWEEK that his son did not engage in “intentional torture.” “There was a dog that apparently had mange and was absolutely, I guess, emaciated.” A campaign official says David “regrets” the incident and notes that he later made Eagle Scout.
I’ve said it about Rudy, and I’ll also say it about Huckabee. Do we really want this kind of drama representing our party and potentially in the White House?
There is quite a bit of information in this one; but it’s definately worth reading; and it is definately what we have come to expect from the Huckster. Hotair has put together a great post.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could “pose a dangerous public health risk.” MORE
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, surging in Iowa polls in the Republican presidential race, wrote on a questionnaire while running for U.S. Senate in 1992 that homosexuality is “aberrant” and “sinful.”
“I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk,” Huckabee wrote in the questionnaire for The Associated Press, which reported the answer on Saturday.
In another answer that could damage his standing in the presidential race, Huckabee wrote on the questionnaire that AIDS research was receiving an unfair amount of federal money. Instead, he said celebrities should pay for the research themselves.
“In light of the extraordinary funds already being given for AIDS research, it does not seem that additional federal spending can be justified,” Huckabee wrote, according to the AP.