http://counterpunch.com/Libs Fume Over Taco Bell and Target Vouchers
Mike Huckabee's Ascending Chariot
Suddenly it's Huckabee. The surge of the former Arkansas governor in the race for the Republican nomination has the pell-mell excitement of one of Napoleon's victorious rampages across Europe in his heyday. In this case the long faces belong not to the crowned heads of the Grand Alliance, but to the Republican establishment, quivering with terror at the thought of their doughty standard bearer in 2008 being a former Baptist minister, a fellow who thinks God created the world 6000 years ago more or less in its current form.
The great dread of American political establishments down the decades has been that a wild man will suddenly sneak past all obstructions cunningly devised to repel uncomfortable surprises and upset the apple cart. Democrats even today shiver at the memory of William Jennings Bryan, another implacable foe of Charles Darwin, who ran on a silver platform in the late nineteenth century. George Wallace, a redneck governor out of Alabama, ran as an independent presidential candidate in 1968 and Richard Nixon was terrified that he would steal enough votes to throw the race to the Democrat, Hubert Humphrey. A would-be assassin's bullet put paid to that threat.
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So Huckabee will probably survive these charges, as he should the whines of New York Times columnists that he is unversed in foreign affairs. Both Ronald Reagan and George Bush demonstrated conclusively that a passing glance at a stamp album is the only education required for dealing with the rest of the world.
Huckabee's single rival as a genuinely interesting candidate is another Republican, Ron Paul, who set a record a few days ago, by raising $6 million in a single day. Unlike Huckabee, Paul's core issues are opposition to the war and to George Bush's abuse of civil liberties inscribed in the U.S. Constitution. His appeal, far more than Huckabee, is to the redneck rebel strain in American political life the populist beast that the US two-party system is designed to suppress. On Monday night Paul was asked on Fox News about Huckabee's Christmas ad, which shows the governor backed by a shining cross. Actually it's the mullions of the window behind him, but the illusion is perfect. Paul said the ad reminded him of Sinclair Lewis's line, that "when fascism comes to this country it will be wrapped in a flag and bearing a cross." In the unlikely event they had read Lewis, no other candidate would dare quote that line.
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