Not very long ago, Huckabee was the Republican underdog that Democrats liked — the Bobos in Paradise-era David Brooks of the GOP primaries. He seemed like a nice guy, he was funny, he was something of a populist on economic issues, he refused to demagogue illegal immigration as much as the other candidates, etc. In the New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg called it a “nice change” that Huckabee “seems to regard liberalism not as a moral evil, a mental disease, or a character flaw—merely as a political point of view he mostly disagrees with.”
But in the last few weeks, Huckabee has surged in the Iowa and national polls. Now Newsweek has put him on the cover — just in time for the emerging backlash that is going to destroy his campaign. Here’s a roundup of what’s already come out:
Huckabee apparently lobbied for the release of Wayne Dumond, a rapist who allegedly raped and murdered two other women, but now denies doing so or knowing that Dumond posed a threat. Some of those lobbying Huckabee for Dumond’s release believed he had been persecuted because his first victim was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton’s.
A closely affiliated pro-Huckabee third-party group is running a push poll in Iowa.
He hadn’t heard about the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran 36 hours after its release.
He supports an absurd 23 percent national sales tax that even conservatives agree would lead to massive tax evasion. His website promises that “When the FairTax becomes law, it will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness.”
He defends creationism and says it should be taught alongside evolution in public schools.
In 1992, he wrote on a candidate questionnaire that homosexuality is “aberrant” and “sinful” and advocated quarantining AIDS patients.
He seemed to credit God for his rise in the polls.
During a 1998 speech to Southern Baptist pastors, he said he “got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives … I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”
An outside group backed by tobacco money paid him to oppose the Clinton health care plan, which included a cigarette tax, while he was lieutenant governor.
There’s something in here for everyone to hate! In all seriousness, it’s hard to imagine Huckabee and his campaign are going to be able to survive the backlash, especially when economic conservatives are also going to be hammering him for raising taxes in Arkansas.
Update 12/10 9:01 AM: You know you’re in trouble when the New York Times is fact-checking you effectively:
The sudden rise of Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who was hardly considered a factor a month ago, has shaken up the race and thrust him into the center of controversies.
He began the day defending his record on “Fox News Sunday,” where he argued that when he called in 1992 for taking steps to isolate people with AIDS, he was not advocating a quarantine…
Mr. Huckabee said that when he called for isolating AIDS patients, “we didn’t know as much as we do now about AIDS.” But as early as 1986, the United States surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, had stated that AIDS was not spread by casual contact.