Huckabee's "Authenticity"

Mike Huckabee is intoxicated.

He's strutting around with a sleazy confidence reminiscent of fellow Arkansas governor and boy from Hope Bill Clinton. Huckabee is Clinton without the saxophone. Instead, his instrument of choice is a guitar.

I can picture him in an Elvis-style jumpsuit.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- As former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee entered the Elks Lodge in this city in Eastern Iowa, loudspeakers were playing the song "Holy is the Lord."

But after Huckabee took to the stage, to the strains of "How Great is Our God," the music took a shift. He grabbed a guitar and joined a local band that had come for the event -- and together they played "Blue Suede Shoes" to the applause of a crowd of more than 200.

For the guitar-playing Baptist minister, it was all part of a campaign that was unconventional even before the headline-making press conference where he announced he would not air a negative ad against his top rival Mitt Romney -- while showing it to more several dozen reporters, virtually guaranteeing it would be played for free. Two days before the caucuses, as the cash-strapped candidate began flying around the state, he not only took the stage with his guitar, but waited for more than 40 minutes on his campaign bus between his events to watch the bowlgame of the University of Arkansas, inviting groups of reporters on board to film him watching the game with his wife and three dogs.

Huckabee has decided to stick with his decision to stop bashing Romney, not using his opponent's name or calling him "dishonest" on the stump. The candidate admitted he was "pleasantly surprised" by a Des Moines Register poll released last night that showed him still leading the race here, as his campaign had openly worried ads Romney was running against Huckabee were working. That concerned inspired the production of the new negative ad in the first place.

"I'll tell you what, I just decided that, if that's what it takes to get elected, that's a lousy way to run the country...If a man gains the whole world and loses his own soul, what does it profit him," he told a crowd in Sergeant Bluffs this morning, showing his preaching roots, "And I decided even the presidency, as important as it is, if I can't do it with self-respect and can't do it with decency, it isn't worth doing if it's not worth doing right."

This is BS, staged crap.

Posturing as the principled man, rejecting the negative ad he made about Mitt Romney, is so sleazy.

From a Mike Huckabee e-mail to supporters, dated January 1:

I am very grateful for the avalanche of comments we received on our blog about the negative attack ad we decided not to run. I can tell you here in Sergeant Bluff almost every person I meet wants to thank me for making that decision. Iowa wants to hear about our ideas. They want to see conviction. They are tired of the negative attacks.

What a guy!

He makes an attack ad, then he wants a medal for pulling it.

From an e-mail he sent out on December 31:

Yesterday, I flew to Little Rock to cut three new television ads with our campaign team. The first "Our Values" will air in Iowa and discusses my unwavering commitment towards a Human Life Amendment. The second ad which will air exclusively in New Hampshire called "Tax Cuts Matter" discusses the first broad based tax cut that I passed in Arkansas' history. You can view both ads here.

The third ad was a negative attack against Governor Romney. We prepared it, sent the ad to the television stations here in Iowa, and it was supposed to start running at noon today. This morning, I ordered my staff to pull the ad; I told them I do not want it to be run. If it was run at all, it would be until the stations pulled it off their schedules. And we are now committed, from now through the rest of the caucuses, that we will run only the ads that talk about why I should be president, and not why Mitt Romney should not.

In other words, Huckabee was for airing the ad before he was against it.

It was a slimy stunt.

It should cost him, but it doesn't seem to be slowing Huckabee's momentum.

From the New York Times:

About three weeks ago, Mike Huckabee received an unexpected e-mail message from the veteran political consultant and television commentator Ed Rollins offering help with his unexpectedly surging dark-horse Republican primary campaign. Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Huckabee had signed him up, Mr. Rollins recently recalled.

They were an unlikely match from the start: Mr. Huckabee was a Southern Baptist pastor before he became governor of Arkansas, Mr. Rollins is a cheerfully profane operative who once said he had bribed African-American ministers to surpress black voting. (He later said he misspoke.)

Now, just days before the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Huckabee’s reliance on — and then rejection of — Mr. Rollins’s advice to go after his opponent has threatened to throw his campaign into a tailspin, potentially jeopardizing the image of unvarnished “authenticity” that Mr. Huckabee is now making the centerpiece of his closing appeal to Iowa voters.

Mr. Huckabee had pledged for months not to stoop to negative politics or attack advertisements. He drew an obvious contrast with his better-financed rival Mitt Romney, who battered Mr. Huckabee with critical commercials and mail.

Mr. Rollins, however, was impatient with Mr. Huckabee’s nice-guy approach, telling a reporter just the day after Christmas that if Mr. Romney’s attacks continued the Huckabee campaign would soon throw some punches of its own. “I’m an old boxer,” he said.

Finally, over the weekend, Mr. Huckabee acceded to his new adviser’s counsel, using a stump speech to begin an escalating series of attacks on Mr. Romney’s credibility and calling his tactics “dishonest.” On Sunday, Mr. Huckabee flew to Little Rock and spent some of his scarce campaign dollars filming a new commercial driving home his attacks on Mr. Romney.

The next day, Mr. Huckabee overruled Mr. Rollins by renouncing his four-day-old attack strategy. He pledged at a news conference that he would stop going after Mr. Romney, but — to the incredulous guffaws of a roomful of reporters, convinced Mr. Huckabee wanted it both ways — he nonetheless screened the attack commercial before live television cameras to prove that it existed. “If you gain the whole world but lose your own soul, what does it profit you?” he said, quoting the Bible to explain his last-minute decision to reverse himself again.

He took full responsibility for the commercial and its cancellation. But he also tossed a gentle jab at Mr. Rollins. Asked if he had fired anyone for advocating the attacks, Mr. Huckabee said no. “Ed is awfully happy about that,” he added, glancing toward his new adviser in the corner of the room.

...“The pundits think I am crazy, and they may be right,” he told an enthusiastic crowd of about 200 in Sergeant Bluff, Iowa, urging them “to prove the pundits wrong” and send a message about “the influence of money and the spirit and the tone of presidential politics.”

Later, in Cedar Rapids, he decried the “Wall Street to Washington axis of power” and likened his shoestring campaign to hard-pressed working Iowans. “Well, I know I have been outspent in this state 20 to 1,” he said, adding, “Just like some of you understand that your whole life you feel like you have been outspent 20 to 1 in about everything you have ever tried to do.”

While Mr. Romney has a small army of operatives to help turn his supporters out to caucus, Mr. Huckabee has just about 20 paid staff in Iowa, with organized phone banks of about 75 volunteers in Des Moines and about 75 more around the state making calls on his behalf. He is counting on the pre-existing networks of home-schooling parents, gun club members, and conservative Christian churchgoers to help turn out his vote.

In closing, he urged voters to pick a candidate with “authenticity,” whose values and honesty they could trust in office. He appeared to be alluding to Mr. Romney, who has changed his position on abortion rights and his tone on other social issues over the years. But Mr. Huckabee asked a rhetorical question that may have been at odds with his recent changes in strategy as well. “If I am saying and doing something today different than I was doing or saying before, how do you have any confidence about what I will do in the future?”

Still, when reporters pressed him about the attack commercial he screened while renouncing it, Mr. Huckabee said Iowa voters applauded his decision to pull back from such attacks.

Mr. Rollins, for his part, shrugged. “Sometimes the candidate makes the decision,” he added. “And that is a good thing.”

Huckabee isn't exactly Mr. Clean.

He doesn't strike me as the underdog suddenly taking over the role of front-runner, trying to find his footing. He seems to be very sure of himself. His moves are calculated, not haphazard. He chose Ed Rollins and his negative knockdown political choreography.

Huckabee guy is shrewd, but not quite shrewd enough; like Bill Clinton.

It's not good when a day before the caucus he reveals how inauthentic his supposed authenticity is.

Huckabee is as authentic as an Elvis impersonator.
___________________

When Jay Leno returns with a new show tonight after a two month absence due to the Writers' strike, Mike Huckabee will be his guest.

That's sort of a sticky situation. Huckabee will be crossing a picket line.

Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) -- David Letterman's ``Late Show'' returns to CBS television tonight with fresh material and his team of comedy writers, as rival Jay Leno likely faces picketers outside the NBC studio for his unscripted performance.

...Letterman, a guild member for more than 30 years, will be able to use scripted monologues and his customary ``Top Ten'' lists. His first guest will be actor Robin Williams.

The writers will target NBC Studios and the ``Tonight Show'' taping for their first picketing of the new year today.

``It's time for NBC Universal to step up to the plate and negotiate a companywide deal that will put Jay Leno, who has supported our cause from the beginning, back on the air with his writers,'' the Writers Guild said in a statement.

Leno, whose show airs at the same time as Letterman's, won't be able to write or perform any work that would normally be done by writers, leaving the guild member to improvise and interview guests willing to cross picket lines.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is scheduled to appear on Leno's ``Tonight Show,'' according to his campaign Web site.

Watch Huckabee comment on crossing the picket line here.

He's a bit confused.