Mike Huckabee is the type of politician that I would like to like. But I always had a funny feeling about the guy based on allegations made when he was governor. Subtle innuendos about influence and Big Business that I would pick up when business took me to NW Arkansas. Now it seems that Huckabee has many things in common with another former Arkansas governor…those just not quite over the legal line ethics.
Some conservatives will recoil from yet another ethical blind spot of Huckabee….he took from from the stem cell research company Nova Nordisk. Taking money from stem cell researchers isn’t that grave a crime when the cost of running a campaign means that you take just about every legal buck that comes your way. What is really at issue is the money he took from big business as a consultant while still the governor of Arkansas.
Dan Riehl has the details here.
Then there is the Mexican Consulate deal. Basically Huckabee put together a deal where business interests in Arkansas paid for the construction of a Mexican Consulate and then rented it for $1.00 per year. Huckabee claims that it was to improve Arkansas exports. But what a Consulate really does is get work permits. Mexican workers are a mainstay of construction and the poultry industries. And there is a lot of poultry in Arkansas.
Far from being an impoverished Preacher humbly serving his fellow man as Governor, Huckabee made that job pay in ways that must have Team Clinton green with envy. $400,000.00 in 2006 while still serving as governor.
The more you look the more Huckabee looks like yet another Elmer Gantry.
UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. We’d be pleased if you looked around this rather eclectic place.
UPDATE II: Welcome Crabitatians! Also see Bob Krum for more about Elmer Gantry Mike Huckabee.
[...] Just Barking Mad: Far from being an impoverished Preacher humbly serving his fellow man as Governor, Huckabee made that job pay in ways that must have Team Clinton green with envy. $400,000.00 in 2006 while still serving as governor. [...]
I agree with your assessment of the Huckster – but take a look at a good old Elia Kazan movie – A Face in the Crowd. In some ways an even better metaphor.
Yes, Lonesome Rhodes might have been better then Gantry because Gantry never does get the ending he deserves. And Rhodes does. But I think Huckabee looks at money the way Gantry looked at a well turned leg.
Besides, other than you, me and a few others how many know Andy Griffith’s best work?
[...] Mammoth over at Just Barking Mad gets an Instalanche for his post detailing some of the concerns he has about Mike Huckabee. Mike [...]
His kid killing a dog and then the Huckster persuading the State Police not to investigate it says it all for me. The latest issue of Time, of all places, has the story.
Do you know why they can’t use DNA evidence in Arkansas?
Its all the same.
You can always tell when a pickup truck is from Arkansas….there’s tobacco juice on her side too.
[...] we posted on the concerns that we had about Reverend Huckabee’s rather flexible morals. As Reverend Huckabee emerges as a front runner his past has come under closer scrutiny. As does [...]
[...] pardoned the guy wanted for executing for cops in the Tacoma suburb of Lakewood. Of course, we’ve never been a big fan of Elmer Gantry Mike [...]