More Rush v. Huckabee

"I fear we have woken a sleepng giant..." (With audio.)

For the anti-Hucksters, alas, the woken giant is going back to sleep, as Limbaugh goes on vacation today and won't return until Jan 2nd, the day before the Iowa caucuses.

More quotes via Geraghty:

"He's been endorsed by the New Hampshire NEA. They endorsed Huckabee on the Republican side, and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side. The NEA is not interested in conservatives getting any power anywhere. Huckabee's record is a better record for the Wall Street D.C. Axis than anything."

"How is questioning that record an attack on Christians or evangelicals? That's a deplorable tactic."

...

A caller asks if Huckabee is any less conservative than Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney. Rush: "In Rudy and Romney's case you can cite two things - gay marriage and abortion. In Huckabee's case, you can cite four or five things. There's more than two deviations in the Huckabee governing record."

And, on Huckabee's invocation of "The Spirit of Christmas" as a shield against attacks on his record:

"That's what the libs do. They do that because they don't want to discuss the issues. I'm getting the sense that Mike Huckabee doesn't want to debate the issues. He uses this as a firewall to prevent the issues from coming up."

It was the Christmas ad that unhinged me, personally, as to his use of religion. Previously he'd used religion as a sword ("Christian leader," "Do Mormons believe Jesus and Satan are brothers?"). That was low enough.

But then to suggest that no one was allowed to examine his record and fight back against his push-polls and underhanded attacks because it's the time of the Birth of Christ was disgusting.

Jesus doesn't want us to examine the records of our presidential candidates just prior to the first-in-the-nation-caucuses, Mike?

Really? Jesus doesn't want that? Jesus finds that offensive? That's contrary to the spirit of Christmas? One's not a good Christian if one dares to criticize your political record before a major political contest?

For a guy who claims to be doing this all for Jesus, he sure seems to have Jesus working overtime for himself.

The liberals have a threadworn gag: Don't vote against the Republicans, or else the Baby Jesus cries. But Mike Huckabee is basically really saying that.

I am not a religious guy so perhaps my opinion doesn't count. But you can take this "at least he's sincere and nice" crap and chuck it. Invoking Jesus as a reason to not discuss one's political record while running for office seems to me to be borderline blasphemous, a rather presumptuous inversion of who, precisely, is supposed to be in the service of Whom.

And I don't know if a real, believing, reverent Christian would dare to do that. Has any Christian out there ever gone into an employee evaluation around Easter and Christmas and told his boss, "I hope, out of respect for this blessed season, you refrain from commenting negatively on my performance this quarter. Otherwise you're not giving proper respect to our Lord and Savior."

If anyone has tried that, let me know 1) if it worked and 2) how you're dealing with your current unemployment and 3) whether you feel the outpatient treatment delivered by your mental health professionals is up to snuff.

The sort of person who does something like that is, to my mind, more likely to be a huckster who found himself blessed with a silver tongue and few other talents and so has insincerely used a religion he doesn't quite believe in to cadge a dishonest living off of people he's managed to deceive.

Correction: I wrote he'd be back January 3rd. Mack says January 2nd. Since I'm a moron, I'll go with his version.

More: It just never ends. But it's the "anti-Christian chattering classes" that keep brining religion into this, huh?

Eh, it's not like there are a lot of Catholics in the country anyway. Not like they're an important part of the Reagan coalition, or just basically people who deserve the respect of not having their faith attacked. No big deal.

Thanks to someone.

posted by Ace at 04:41 PM

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