Here, then, are 10 More Moments in Mike Huckabee's Extremism:
11. Huckabee Vows to Take Nation Back for Christ
12. Huckabee Declares Culture War in 1998 Book
13. Huckabee Declares Women Should Graciously Submit to Their Husbands
14. Huckabee Predicts Victory over Islam at the End of Times
15. Huckabee Boasts About Theology Degree He Doesn't Have
16. Huckabee Destroys His State Computer Records - and Church Sermons
17. Huckabee Offers State Appointments in Exchange for Gifts
18. Huckabee Uses Wedding Registries to Furnish New Home
19. Huckabee Offers Clemency to Repeat DWI Offender (and GOP Donor)
20. Huckabee Intervenes to Save Dog-Killing Son from Legal Jeopardy

11. Huckabee Vows to Take Nation Back for Christ

While most presidential hopefuls usually vow to take back Washington for the American people, Mike Huckabee has another recipient in mind.

In 1998, Governor Huckabee explained to the National Pastors Conference why gave up his church pulpit for the bully pulpit:

"I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives...I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."

(With his recent insinuations about Mitt Romney's Mormon faith, Huckabee is clear that his gift of America is for Jesus, and not his supposed brother Satan.)

In case there was any doubt, Huckbee's campaign advertising tells the story. In Iowa, his TV spots proclaim (in all capital letters) that Mike Huckabee is a CHRISTIAN LEADER. And now in new ads, Huckabee tells voters of all faiths that at this time of year:

"What really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ and being with our family and our friends."

With Bill O'Reilly decrying a mythical "war on Christmas" and Tony Snow proclaiming a liberal "war on God," Mike Huckabee sounds more like a Fox News anchor and less like a President of the United States.

12. Huckabee Declares Culture War in 1998 Book

In advance of a White House run, most would-be presidential candidates author the obligatory book featuring a heroic biography and bland policy prescriptions. But as David Corn reports, in 1998 Mike Huckabee instead penned a declaration of culture war in his vituperative tome, Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence.

While Huckabee today claims to be a "uniter" ("We've got to be the united people of the United States"), in 1998 he was anything but. Written the wake of a Jonesboro, Arkansas school shooting, Huckabee laid virtually of all of America's ills at the feet of everyone - and everything - he hates:

"Despite all our prosperity, pomp, and power, the vaunted American experiment in liberty seems to be disintegrating before our very eyes."

"Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism have fragmented and polarized our communities."

"It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations - from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia."

Even in the aftermath of last week's tragic Colorado church shootings by one of their own, don't expect Huckabee to revisit his thesis.

13. Huckabee Declares Women Should Graciously Submit to Their Husbands

1998 was a banner year for theocratic pronouncements from Mike Huckabee. In addition to publishing his Kids Who Kill hatefest, Huckabee joined his wife as a signatory on a full page ad in USA Today defending so-called family values and traditional marriage.

Joined by 129 other religious right luminaries (including convicted Watergate felon turned prison minister Chuck Colson), Huckabee in the ad declared to the Southern Baptist Convention:

"You are right because you called husbands to sacrificially love and lead their wives.

You are right because you called wives to graciously submit to their husband's sacrificial leadership.

More importantly, you are right because your statement is based on biblical truth."

14. Huckabee Predicts Victory over Islam at the End of Times

Huckabee hasn't been content to turn to the Bible just for matters of domestic tranquility. The Good Book, it turns out, makes it clear (to Huckabee at least) that in the struggle against violent Islamic terrorism, the victory of Christianity and the West is pre-ordained.

That is the word from the former ordained minister. Last month, Huckabee told a Dallas area congregation:

"If you're with Jesus Christ, we know how it turns out in the final moment. I've read the last chapter in the book, and we do end up winning."

For Huckabee, as with John Hagee, James Dobson and others in President Bush's amen corner, fomenting conflict with Iran is apparently both biblical prophecy and inherently desirable. Think of it as Armageddon as foreign policy.

15. Huckabee Boasts About Theology Degree He Doesn't Have

As I noted in last week's Top 10, Minister Huckabee is quick to champion his degree from tiny Ouachita Baptist University as uniquely qualifying him for the White House. His faith-based presidency would fight the dual threats from Charles Darwin and Osama Bin Laden. In November, Huckabee tried to claim the mantle of the GOP's leading terror fighter, arguing:

"I think I'm stronger than most people because I truly understand the nature of the war that we are in with Islamo fascism. These are people that want to kill us. It's a theocratic war. And I don't know if anybody fully understands that. I'm the only guy on that stage with a theology degree."

As it turns out, not so much. As Huckabee staffer Joe Carter made clear, his man does not actually have a theology degree:

"Governor Huckabee doesn't have a theology degree. He only spent a year in seminary."

While Huckabee later clarified that he has "a bachelor of arts in religion and a minor in communications in my undergraduate work," he might want to think twice before taking that oath with his hand on the Bible.

16. Huckabee Destroys His State Computer Records - and Church Sermons

One lesson Huckabee has learned over the years is this: when you can't rewrite history, erase it. With a future presidential run in the cards, destroying both his gubernatorial records and his past ministerial sermons became a Huckabee trademark.

Upon leaving office, Huckabee suspiciously ordered the destruction of computer hard drives in 83 desktop and four server systems in the Governor's office. Huckabee exhausted $13,000 from an emergency fund to destroy the systems, the replacement of which then cost Arkansas taxpayers $335,000.

Huckabee now faces an ethics complaint and possible criminal probes over the felony destruction of state records. As Arkansas Senator Jimmy Jeffress, (D-Crossett) said earlier this year:

"This is typical for what we've experienced the last 10 years out of Mr. Huckabee. It sort of reminds me a lot of what [President Richard] Nixon did before he left office - trying to erase tapes."

Meanwhile, Huckabee has taken a similar scorched earth approach to his past church sermons as well. Taking Huckabee up on his invitation to search for a "YouTube moment" in his past, David Corn and Jonathan Stein asked the campaign for copies of his sermons from his days as a pastor at two Baptist churches. Unsurprisingly, they hit a brick wall:

When asked for copies of the sermons Huckabee delivered at Immanuel Church, an employee there claimed none could be found. A Beech Street Church pastor's assistant maintained that much of the archival material from Huckabee's tenure as pastor had been destroyed during a remodeling. The rest, she said, was not available to the press.

When Mother Jones contacted the Huckabee campaign and asked if it would help make his previous sermons available, the campaign replied in a one-sentence email that it had received multiple requests for such material and was "not able to accommodate" them.

Apparently, Mike Huckabee believes Americans should see no evil from either his days in church or in the Governor's mansion.

17. Huckabee Offers State Appointments in Exchange for Gifts

Huckabee's obsession with secrecy and the destruction of his past documents is no doubt tied to his long and sordid history of ethics troubles. As the AP reported in November 2006, the Arkansas' Ethics Commission admonished Huckabee for violations five times in 14 years, including one charge of taking money from an organization whose donors remain unlisted.

But as the Politico reported just days ago, Huckabee's brazen use of his Governor's office for personal and political gain even took the form of swapping paid state positions in exchange for gifts:

Mike Huckabee accepted more than 90 gifts from 21 Arkansans he appointed to state posts during his decade as governor, a Politico analysis of state public records found.

Since he set his sights on the White House, those supporters, their families and their companies have kept on giving. They contributed nearly $161,000 to a pre-presidential campaign account and Huckabee's official campaign committee since late last year, according to state and federal campaign finance records...

...his annual hauls were attention-grabbing. In one year, the value of the gifts given to Huckabee amounted to more than $112,000 - nearly double his $67,000 state salary. And he wrangled with the state Ethics Commission over gift rules, with the commission twice finding he'd broken them (one violation was later overturned).

Kevin Crass, Huckabee's personal attorney, called the apparent jobs-for-gifts scheme " a coincidence," adding " understood that you can't trade appointments for gifts and that didn't happen"

18. Huckabee Uses Wedding Registries to Furnish New Home

Speaking of crass, the Governor and his wife in 2006 even resorted to using wedding gift registries set up by friends to furnish the couple's new $525,000 home in North Little Rock. Feel free to wish them belated congratulations on their nuptuals: Mike and Janet Huckabee were married in 1974.)

It's no wonder Huckabee himself referred to his home state as a "banana republic."

19. Huckabee Offers Clemency to Repeat DWI Offender (and GOP Donor)

When necessary, Mike Huckabee is willing to show that it is better to give than receive. In addition to his unprecedented offerings of faith-based pardons for Arkansas' born-again criminals, Governor Huckabee was only too happy to help a political ally out of a jam - and out of jail - in the wake of repeat drunk driving convictions.

As MSNBC reported, in 2004 Huckabee took the unusual step of offering clemency to Eugene Fields, a four-time DWI offender. Apparently, $10,000 in contributions to the Republican Party of Arkansas and additional gifts to the Salvation Army and a Baptist church charity were sufficient to get Fields a get-out-of-jail free card from Governor Huckabee:

In August 2001, Fields, of Van Buren, Ark., was convicted of his fourth DWI charge, a felony in the state of Arkansas, was sentenced to six years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Fields reported to prison in August of 2003.

But prison records obtained by NBC News show that six weeks into that six-year sentence, Fields' application for clemency, a commutation of his sentence the governor could issue to grant Fields an early release from prison, was unanimously supported by the parole board. Within months, Huckabee issued his intent to grant executive clemency to Fields, who was released from prison soon thereafter.

20. Huckabee Intervenes to Save Dog-Killing Son from Legal Jeopardy

When it comes to tipping the scales of justice, Mike Huckabee clearly believes that charity begins at home. As I noted previously, the Huckabee clan is intimately involved in the Republican War on Dogs. As Newsweek detailed this weekend, Huckabee's son David has joined Mitt Romney and the third Mrs. Giuliani among the tormentors of man's best friend.

In 1998, then 17 year old David Huckabee was dismissed from his job as a Boy Scout counselor at Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, Arkansas for hanging a stray dog. Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee then personally intervened to protect his son from legal jeopardy:

It also prompted the local prosecuting attorney - bombarded with complaints generated by a national animal-rights group - to write a letter to the Arkansas state police seeking help investigating whether David and another teenager had violated state animal-cruelty laws. The state police never granted the request, and no charges were ever filed. But John Bailey, then the director of Arkansas's state police, tells NEWSWEEK that Governor Huckabee's chief of staff and personal lawyer both leaned on him to write a letter officially denying the local prosecutor's request. Bailey, a career officer who had been appointed chief by Huckabee's Democratic predecessor, said he viewed the lawyer's intervention as improper and terminated the conversation. Seven months later, he was called into Huckabee's office and fired.

It seems increasingly likely that the criminality of David Huckabee will be an albatross around his father's neck. In April, David was arrested at Little Rock Airport for concealing a loaded Glock pistol in his carry-on luggage. As the AP reported, a nonchalant Huckabee the Younger received a one year suspended sentence and 10 days of community service:

"I removed the bag and asked Mr. Huckabee if he knew what he had in the bag," Little Rock police officer Arthur Nugent wrote in a report after being summoned to a security checkpoint. "He replied he did now."

Epilogue

Tracking Mike Huckabee's extremist outbursts, bizarre policy prescriptions and staggering ethical lapses is like digging a hole in the sand at the water's edge. His outrages simply occur at a rate far greater than can be possibly documented.

For more background, visit People for the American Way and its disturbing report, "The Huckabee Surge: Why the Religious Right Likes Mike." PFAW catalogs Huckabee's promises to the radical right, including his support for disgraced Alabama Chief Judge Roy Moore, his opposition to the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), his call to strip schools of federal funding for exposing children to "homosexual propaganda," his plan to repeal IRS restrictions on churches endorsing candidates, his intent to impose a ban on federal funding for any U.S. group that performs or advocates for abortion, and his mind-boggling scheme to boost federal abstinence spending to match contraceptive funding.

To see numbers 1 through 10 in the Huckabee Hall of Shame, visit the "Top 10 Moments in Mike Huckabee's Extremism."

UPDATE 1: The torrent of new revelations concerning Huckabee's past and current extremism continues unabated. PFAW notes then Lt. Governor Huckabee's 1994 proclaimed "Christian Heritage Week" in Governor Jim Guy Tucker's absence. Meanwhile, Huckabee spokesman Joe Carter denies his boss' 1998 book Kids Who Kill equated homosexuality and necrophilia:

"He considers homosexuality aberrant, but that's at one end of the spectrum. Necrophilia is at the other end...No way is he saying that homosexuality is like having sex with dead people. That's not it at all."

UPDATE 2: As Pam Spaulding and PFAW detailed, Huckabee traveled to Texas for big-ticket fundraising events with radical right money-changers featuring Pastor Rick Scarborough and Steve Hotze. Meanwhile, Satirical Political has a preview of a new Huckabee Christmas ad.

UPDATE 3: The December 22 New York Times adds more background on Huckabee's role in offering clemency for repeat DWI offender and GOP contributor Eugene Fields.

UPDATE 4: For details and history on 20 more moments in the extremism of Mike Huckabee, see:

—Perrspective 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) |

10 Comments

This stuff is absolutely mind-boggling.

The press seems totally snookered. They keep talking about Huckabee's charm and authenticity, but never do any of the digging to show what an out-of-control right-wing nut job he really is.

Posted by Hal on December 18, 2007 9:22 AM

Save this stuff for the general election! This is the guy we want to run against.

Posted by Melissa on December 18, 2007 1:56 PM

sinclaire lewis said it best and its frightning facism it come wraped in a flag carring a cross

Posted by cwazycajun on December 19, 2007 5:27 AM

i bet you voted for clinton. have you checked into his past? anyone running has some "shady" junk in their past. the majority of what i read on here could very easily be spin and assumptions. for instance, do videos from his old churches exist? from what i understand, it's been a while since he was a preacher. and even if there were videos, are you sure that the people who were called have the technical know-how to get copies to you? clinton pardoned quite a few folks on his way out as well... every one of them does it, but you only point it out for the guy you don't like. i'd trust you a lot more if you would do this same type of article about your favorite candidate.

Posted by jimmy on December 22, 2007 8:44 PM

Huckabee isn't in favor of clemency for ALL felons! His first official act as Governor was to move FORWARD the execution date of Frankie Parker -- a Buddhist! (DOD: 8 AUG 1996)

Posted by katiedid on December 23, 2007 10:39 AM

The Christian right (and other fed up conservatives) are supporting Mike Huckabee, but the right’s pundits are not flocking to support him, and many of them are actually trying to derail him. Case in point:

Rush's Hit-Piece on Huckabee
(stick with it, audio of Rush)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu-ZSSaZELM

Something is very very very very wrong with this picture. Bottom line: The best candidate for the Republican nomination is Huckabee.

Huckabee - Cinderella Man
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILPcnn9Sf94

Spread this message around.

JOIN WITH US!

Posted by apacallyps on December 23, 2007 3:07 PM

Huckabee isn't just playing to the evangelicals; he believes this level of pre-rational, medieval, pre-enlightenment mythic-membership level, Daddy-in-the-sky, Bible literalist stuff. Not sure we've ever had such a pre-rational specimen in the Oval Office before; don't see how he could get elected, even though the mythic-membership level believers are what -- 30% of the electorate, or some such scary number?

Posted by racetoinfinity on December 26, 2007 12:21 AM

Christians have a right to be represented as well. Instead of hoping for a weak candidate, or bashing some religious point of view, the democrat party should be concentrating on putting out an unbeatable democratic candidate. Fear of "what will happen to our country if XXX gets elected" to motivate voters didn't work with Bush... why would it work now? Besides, Clinton's skeleton's are more numerous...

Posted by Drew on January 4, 2008 8:35 PM

Clearly, you and some of your commenters are thoroughgoing secularists. I fully well understandthat you DON'T understand what you are talking about, so you scorn it.

I would just suggest that if you genuinely care about improving American society, you should invest some time in trying to understand the perspective of those you disagree with. Evangelicals are the largest indentifiable confession in the country, probably 20-25%. And about 90% of Americans believe in God.

To sweep such people under the rug with adjectives like "irrational" is itself irrational. I am a Christian, so obviously, I believe that your thoughts are "erroneous." But, I DON'T think you are irrational, much less would I say that.

Human beings are generally rational, else they couldn't function. The major differences are dispositional. All people make pre-rational metaphysical presumptions, on which are constructed a system of thought. Within that system, constrained by those pre-rational presumptiobs, they generally opeate rationally.

Logically, either theism or atheism are false. From within one of these, to write the other off as irrational (crazy, wacky...) is socially dysfunctional.

Posted by Larry Perrault on January 17, 2008 11:19 AM

One can argue whether or not having faith in something for their is no proof is irrational, or wacky, or whatever. That notion should not be considered offensive.

However, I think the main problem people have with individuals such as Mr. Huckabee is these fundamentalists' desire to have a collection of oral myths written thousands of years ago by bronze age tribesman who knew less about the natural world than the average well educated 10th grader today TRUMP actual facts and scientific observations. It's not good enough for them to believe in these things; they wants everyone in the country to share their beliefs.

Whether people like it or not, our strength as a nation rests largely on our scientific achievements, and social advancements have often come at the expense of prevailing religious dogma. Not believing in the theory of evolution because it is incompatible with scripture; believing the Earth and/or Universe is 10,000 years old; believing gay people are making a "lifestyle choice", etc. -- even though almost all evidence and facts points to the opposite being true ... THAT is what most people consider "irrational."

Posted by Eric on November 30, 2009 2:50 PM

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