Is sly ole' Huckster Clintonizing the GOP?

By James Lewis

Why is Mike Huckabee such a mean-seeming guy? All my neck hairs are rising, like a growling puppy.

Well, look at Huckabee's media bombs -- just the headlines stories he's dropped "by accident." According to a long New York Times interview with Zev Chafets, Huck wrote in one of his books that "He considers liberalism to be a cancer on Christianity." So why is the liberal press suddenly talking up his candidacy? It's obviously not because they want him in the White House.

Writes Chafetz,

"I asked Huckabee, who describes himself as the only Republican candidate with a degree in theology, if he considered Mormonism a cult or a religion. ‘'I think it's a religion,' he said. ‘I really don't know much about it. ...Don't Mormons,' he asked in an innocent voice, 'believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?'

We don't know if Governor Huckabee went wink, wink, nudge, nudge, hint, hint to the New York Times reporter, speaking in his "innocent voice," but he sure got his message across.

Then a few days later the Governor dropped another stink bomb, guaranteed to set liberals cheering. In a candidate's article in the liberal magazine Foreign Affairs, he wrote that "The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad."

Wow! "Arrogant!" "Bunker mentality!" Now you know that the hate-Bush Left is going to pick that one sentence out of a long article. It's going to make headlines in the Washington Post. And it did.

These are not an accidental Molotov cocktails Governor Huckabee keeps hurling. The Left loves them because they can open a split in the GOP and keep reminding people of the Mormon issue, just when Romney was hoping it would fade away. If Huck wins and Romney loses in Iowa, it would confirm for the Left that the GOP is full of bigots.

In fact, in September it was Bill Clinton himself who talked up Huckabee's chances to the media. According to the New York Times, Clinton told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News that Huckabee was the only Republican ‘‘dark horse that's got any kind of chance.'' Bill Clinton and Stepanopoulos have a long relationship, remember? And now the media are just falling all over themselves, trying to make Huckabee famous as fast as possible.

Charles Krauthammer points out that Huckabee's commercials have been making a sly slam at Romney's Mormon faith. Krauthammer is outraged because of the way religious splits can poison American politics. We thought John F. Kennedy put all that behind us. But the press and Left are stirring up religious differences again, for their own benefit.

What Bill Clinton, ABC, the New York Times and the Wapo seem to think is that in the end, Huck can only help the Left. Americans don't vote for preachers for president. We have too many different creeds to build a voting majority on just one denomination.

In the presidential election Hillary would easily beat Huckabee, but she would have a much harder time against Fred, Rudy, McCain or Mitt. The Democrats and media might be talking up Huck's chances of knocking Mitt out of the race by appealing to religious ... differences. Then Hillary would only face Fred or Rudy or McCain.

I don't know if Mike Huckabee is playing to the big media deliberately. But it doesn't really matter.

All I can say is, Iowa Caucusers, please don't cut off your nose to spite your face.

James Lewis blogs at dangeroustimes.wordpress.com/