In response to a load noise, Mike Huckabee made a rather tastless and sick joke about Barack Obama trying to evade a gunman. If that wasn't sick enough the people at the NRA meeting laughed about it.

"That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak," said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. "Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/200 8/05/16/huckabee-jokes-about-obama-ducki ng-a-gunman/

A man who has every reason to unload on Obama comes to the defense of a liberal Democrat. This is taken from http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3 /19/72716/0494/229/479797 . The original diarist is LizzyPop.  

HUCKABEE: [Obama] made the point, and I think it's a valid one, that you can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can't. Whether it's me, whether it's Obama...anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.

   Now, the second story. It's interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say "Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that."

   JOE SCARBOROUGH: But, but, you never came close to saying five days after September 11th, that America deserved what it got. Or that the American government invented AIDs...

   HUCKABEE: Not defending his statements.

   JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I know you're not. I know you're not. I'm just wondering though, for a lot of people...Would you not guess that there are a lot of Independent voters in Arkansas that vote for Democrats sometimes, and vote for Republicans sometimes, that are sitting here wondering how Barack Obama's spiritual mentor would call the United States the USKKK?

   HUCKABEE: I mean, those were outrageous statements, and nobody can defend the content of them.

   JOE SCARBOROUGH: But what's the impact on voters in Arkansas? Swing voters.

   HUCKABEE: I don't think we know. If this were October, I think it would have a dramatic impact. But it's not October. It's March. And I don't believe that by the time we get to October, this is gonna be the defining issue of the campaign, and the reason that people vote.

   And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

   MIKA: I agree with that. I really do.

   JOE SCARBOROUGH: It's the Atticus Finch line about walking a mile in somebody else's shoes. I remember when Ronald Reagan got shot in 1981. There were some black students in my school that started applauding and said they hoped that he died. And you just sat there and of course you were angry at first, and then you walked out and started scratching your head going "boy, there is some deep resentment there."

Meanwhile we have so called "progressives" on MyDD calling for his head. It's amazing to see what has happened to this place over the course of just a few weeks. Not sure how this will play out in the larger context of the race, but if this gets too ugly I think it will lead many AA voters to reassess their unbending loyalty to the Democratic Party.

I'm worried about this general election.  Sure, the Bush administration has created the same favorable conditions for a Democratic victory that his father did, but that is not enough to launch either of our candidates into the White House.  McCain is the deadliest threat the Republicans could field, and now that Romney is gone, his nomination is almost certain.  Could our worst fears be realized though: can McCain coalesce the Reagan coalition?

The Reagan Coalition had been the cornerstone of Republican philosophy since his first election in 1980 bringing together neocons, the religious right, war-hawks and blue collar workers - the deadliest faction to the Democrats.  Granted, Reagan had a degree of luck in assembling all of these - he used Bush Sr. to appeal to moderates and capitalized on fatigue with LBJ's Great Society's costs for blue collar workers.  It was a masterstroke that built Reagan, but the fact that he only transfered money from social programs to the military did not hurt him at all.  Indeed, Reagan crushed Mondale in 1984 with his coalition.

Granted, comparing Reagan and McCain is a rather difficult task: they are a study in rather odd similarities and differences.  Both failed to capture the the Republican Party's nomination in their first campaigns for it; both took heavy criticism for certain ideas ("voodoo economics" and immigration reform).  But the stark difference is that McCain ran to the left of his competitors (as to contrast with Bush) while Reagan ran to the right of Bush Sr.  Fundamentally, they should be considered as members of different wings of the Republican Party - McCain's the less popular of the two.  Oddly enough, though, McCain has built a rather strange, winning coalition; CNN accurately points out that there is no typical McCain supporter.  But we do know this: hard line conservatives don't necessarily like him.

I don't really think that's a major problem for McCain though if takes Huckabee as his VP; combined they represent over 34 years of high-level government experience and can pull moderates, war-hawks, the religious right and independents together.  What about neocons and blue collar workers?

Huckabee will unsuccessfully attempt to pull neocons, and he might get a few but not the numbers Bush could pull.  I'm most worried about blue collar workers: if Obama or Clinton threaten to raise taxes back from where Bush put them, it might cause a backlash that heavily favors McCain, despite his flip-flopping on the Bush tax cuts.

Combine McCain's building strength with the sheer embarrassment that the DNC is going through and the small but vocal presence of hardcore Clinton and Obama supporters who will not vote for any Democrat but their candidate, McCain might manage a new Reagan Coalition.  We should all be worried now; if McCain builds momentum in office and turns the economy around combining his plans and Huckabee's, we might have another eight years of a Republican president.

So now there are two.  Strange as that sounds Romney is done.  You will probably look at national polls and say that Romney is doing well, but the truth is that he is no Natural Constituency on Super Tuesday, none at all.

I will explain:  For the Republicans, there are two regions, McCainworld and Huckabeeland.  McCainworld consists of New York, California, other NE states and probably all of the Southwest.  Huckabeeland consists of the southern Atlantic and deep south, with pockets of the middle of the nation thrown in.

This race is not over, but the edge has to go towards McCain.  However, Huckabee will win as many as eight states, maybe more, and collect many delegates, ensuring McCain will have to keep fighting, and if it becomes a one on one with Huckabee, The Governor's personality has a chance, a small one, to put him over the top.  On the whole though,  I am sticking with my prediction that I made that caused many of you to chuckle at me, John McCain will win the Republican nomination.

Warning: Dumbest Diary Ever

I didn't think there was a way for Huckabee to top the Chuck Norris endorsement. Norris now enjoys a kind of mythical status, thanks to Conan O'brien and the internet. But, the Huck-man has really done it this time. As he proved with his fried-squirrel story, Huckabee really "gets" South Carolina (I'm from South Carolina--still here, too--and all my older relatives wax nostalgic about eating squirrel, rabbit, and anything else running around the yard.) And, lest there be any doubt, I love South Carolina (some of it, at least; there are some tricky areas.)

Now, Rev. Huckabee is trotting out Ric Flair (aka the "Nature Boy") on the campaign trail as he delivers his final pitch to South Carolina voters. For the unlucky few who don't know the pleasure that is Flair, some videos of the man--in words and action--below the fold.

I know it isn't too serious, but I thought some of you might be amused by this quiz to find out which candidate you line up with most closely. It is a bit simplistic, but still fun and amusing...
For my part, I am sad to report that I apparently line up most closely with Mike Gravel. shudders

http://www.gotoquiz.com/candidates/2008- quiz.html

Joshua Hoyt, Executive Director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, points out that scary brown people aren't nearly as scary as immigrant bashers would like you to think:

 The results are in. In a state where voters had a clear choice to vote for Romney's tough stance on illegal immigration in the Republican caucuses, they instead turned out in historic numbers to vote Democratic. There they picked Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who has unabashedly advocated an earned path to citizenship for the undocumented.

   On the Republican side, Romney, despite his overwhelming funding advantage, came up short. University of Iowa polls showed that 57 percent of Iowa voters favored earned citizenship for the undocumented and only 23 percent favored deportation.

   This is consistent with national polling. In 20 of 22 separate public opinion polls conducted between March and December, somewhere between 55 percent and 83 percent of the respondents favored some form of earned legal status. In the remaining two polls, the majority favored this option.

   Immigrant bashing just does not move votes. The 2006 elections were a disaster for anti-immigrant demagoguery. Not only did the issue fail to stave off the Republican loss of the House and Senate, but leading Republican anti-immigrant campaigners such as Reps. J.D. Hayworth of Arizona and John Hostettler of Indiana and Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania all lost their races. And in a telling portent of the future, Latino support for the GOP dropped to 26 percent from 44 percent.

While addressing immigration is necessary given the utter incompetence carried over from the INS to Homeland Security, it's not an issue that is going to deliver a national election or take a good lead and turn it into a loss. It does matter on the periphery of elections and certainly if you are in a close election, it can hurt a candidate who isn't bashing. At some point you have to stand up and do the right thing though and there are a lot of positive ways to address the issue and still win.

More than anything, the Democratic Party's future is going to rely on building a base for constructive immigration reform.

But even in the party where the issue is hot, the guy who is relatively moderate took a greater percentage of the vote for those who thought the issue was important than did Romney.

After the jump, an e-mail from the Americans for Legal Immigration--a fine example of hysteria about brown people

Friends of ALIPAC,

   We did the best we could in Iowa to warn GOP voters about Huckabee's hidden amnesty.

   Tonight the results are showing a clear win for the Huckster in Iowa.

   While many Iowans heard our message by automated call and about 15 minutes of radio ads, they were very likely puzzled.

   How could it be that if Mike Huckabee really said he had a plan for theillegals to leave and be back in days, that it wouldn't be in thenewspapers? Wouldn't it have been reported on Fox news and CNN? Wouldn't that information be in the candidate commercials?

   The truth, to our knowledge, is that no major network covered the story and no newspaper in Iowa covered the story. The only newspaper in the nation to cover it was the Washington Times. Even the Lou Dobbs Show failed to warn Iowa voters about the Huckabee 'back in a day' amnesty.

   So, as we spent our few thousand dollars amongst the millions of dollars being spent to influence the campaigns and unfortunately the failure of the Main Stream Media to do their job as the guardian of our Republic was to much for us overcome.

   We were able to get the word out in certain places, however, the corporate media shielded the Huckster on this one.

   We know the truth. We have watched the Fox video from Dec 9 with Huckabee's comments and we know the Pence Plan and the Cornyn & Kyle bill which contained the same thing Huckabee wants.

   Another conflicting factor is that GOP voters did not have many directions to take their votes to a perceived front runner, since McCain and Guiliani are known amnesty supporters. Both of these candidates did not fare well in Iowa.

   We want everyone to keep in mind that we are fighting our elite adversaries on their turf. We have pushed this issue and this cause right up on the doorstep of the most expensive office on the planet!

   We are eating them alive in the states and towns! We defeated them in the Senate, where they thought they could not be beat! Now they have most of their cards in the Presidential races, where their extreme wealth has the best chance of influencing the outcome of the races. So many of you gave generously and worked very hard on this effort in Iowa and we want to thank you from our hearts.

   While ALIPAC has enjoyed a great success rate with many other campaigns before now, this one did not go our way. There are so many things which influence the outcome of campaigns that are simply beyond anyones control.

   The truth is that our supporters did an excellent job on this effort. We fought smart and efficiently. We fought very well as a team. Most importantly, we fought on behalf of the truth against anopposition strong hold deep in enemy territory.

   The Open Borders Lobby is not happy that this issue is on fire and they are having to go to such elaborate measures to try and securetheir agenda.

   We will take what we learned from this effort and use it to become even stronger.

   We have picked up many new supporters during the course of this effort.
    Each week we get stronger and our numbers grow.

   We will stay the course and many battles will be won and lost.

   We will have future victories, perhaps in the states, Congressional Campaigns, and campaigns for US Senate.

   Win or lose, we will trudge forward with resolve and absolute determination.

   Let us pray for guidance and lose a round with the same grace we would display in victory.

   Our eyes remain fixed on the objective we share to save this nation, reverse illegal immigration, restore the Rule of Law, and restore the American Republic.

   Thank you all for your hard work and sacrifice.

   William Gheen

   &

   The ALIPAC Team

These clowns are going to keep hitting this issue all cycle. And they are going to continue to look like Wile E. Coyote after running off the cliff.

I just ended a long phone call with a very intelligent friend who is not particularly active in politics. He remains aware of whats going on, but he is nowhere near as tuned in as many of us are and he is not particularly partisan (although he tends to vote democrat these days.)

We were discussing tonights results because he often calls to get my take on things. After discussing the results of both the Republican and the Democratic primary we started talking about Obama and Huckabee respectively. While we were talking he began to look things up on the internet about both men, and Huck in particular. After about twenty minutes of round and round he offered the following thought.

"They both seem like people who are unlikely to feel hatred and anger at others simply for disagreeing with them. They also both seem to think that we can change, as a country, for the better. Am I wrong in thinking this was a good night for our country?"