Akin To Like Him

Mike Huckabee speaks up for the GOP's unmentionable man.

Pressed Chicken

Every Aug. 1, Christians who have lashed themselves to the liturgical calendar commemorate a member of the Sanhedrin, Jerusalem's council of Jewish elders, who issued a minority opinion on whether to persecute Jesus to death. Joseph of Arimathaea is famous not only for his defiance of majority rule but for giving up his own tomb to make sure that Jesus would get a proper burial.

Joseph is a patron saint of doing the right thing. What can his diligent discernment teach us on his feast day, when one of the questions before the American people was whether to feast at Chick-fil-A?

If the Foster Imposters really had their feathers set on giving their lives to be boneless breasts, this may have been their chance. At some Chicks-fil-A, white meat and tempers were sizzling. In the wake of CEO Dan Cathy's proclamations about biblical marriage, gay marriage advocates called for a boycott. The mayors of Boston and Chicago are trying to use the hammer of state power to ban new franchises. In response, Gov. Mike Huckabee and other boycott opponents called on friends of the company to get a tasty sandwich today. Even the ailing Billy Graham ordered in.

Here's how I serve up the issue.

If you don't like chicken hash, don't open the can. If my employees and franchisees depended, as Cathy's do, on selling as much chicken, fries, and ranch dressing as possible, I would confine my expression of my views about potential customers' race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, political party, and positions on the Afghan war to Bible study, the dining room table, and Al-Anon meetings. That would be especially wise when it came to a flash point issue like gay marriage, which has split the American people almost exactly in half.

Boycotters should also count the chickens after they're deep-fried. I agree with Andrew Sullivan, who argues that marriage equity should be won at the ballot box and believes that the best response to Cathy's contributions to anti-gay marriage groups was Jeff Bezos' $2.5 million gift to the other side (chicken may by the only thing Amazon doesn't sell):

There is no contradiction between marriage equality and a robust defense of the rights of those who oppose marriage equality - including maximal religious freedom and maximal free speech. In fact, it is vital that we eschew such tactics, as they distract from a positive argument that has been solidly winning converts for two decades.

We may never learn whether boycotters are hurting the company more than Huckabee and Graham helped. Given the social and cultural demographics of those who are still eating a lot of fried chicken, not an especially enlightened food, Cathy may actually net out with even more eggs to pass along to his pet causes. The photo above, which I took tonight, doesn't do justice to the hundreds of cars and customers descending on the Yorba Linda store. Most probably don't like gay marriage. Some just may not like being told where to eat.

Chick-fil-A has a bone to pick with New Gingrich and Sarah Palin. Messing with the First Amendment is a treacherous business. When Gingrich was planning his presidential run, he found it politically expedient to stigmatize Muslim U.S. citizens who wanted to add a cultural center to an existing worship space near the World Trade Center. Palin and others joined in, doing considerable damage to our social and cultural consensus about bedrock constitutional principles. No one should complain about the infringement of Chick-fil-A's freedom of speech by the mayors of Boston and Chicago who didn't oppose the wannabe presidents who tried to deny freedom of religion to millions of Americans.

So call me chicken, but neither the boycott nor Chick-fil-A Day was for me. I voted against Prop. 8 and preached in the south Orange County, California parish that I serve in support of The Episcopal Church's recent decisions to permit the blessing of same-gender unions and prohibit discrimination against transgender persons who want to be deacons, priests, and bishops. As one might imagine from a glance at public opinion polls, not everyone at our church agrees. We remain together in community anyway. That may be just a little harder to do now that activists have labeled loyal Chick-fil-A customers as bigots.

Ross Douthat argues that, as with many wrenching social issues, the case for gay marriage is being made by appeals to reason as well as other means:

The cause of gay marriage has indeed advanced because many millions of people have been persuaded of its merits: No cause could move so swiftly from the margins to the mainstream if it didn’t have appealing arguments supporting it and powerful winds at its back. But it has also advanced, and will probably continue to advance, through social pressure, ideological enforcement, and legal restriction. Indeed, the very language of the movement is explicitly designed to exert this kind of pressure: By redefining yesterday’s consensus view of marriage as “bigotry,” and expanding the term “homophobia” to cover support for that older consensus as well as personal discomfort with/animus toward gays, the gay marriage movement isn’t just arguing with its opponents; it’s pathologizing them, raising the personal and professional costs of being associated with traditional views on marriage, and creating the space for exactly the kind of legal sanctions that figures like [Boston and Chicago mayors] Thomas Menino and Rahm Emanuel spent last week flirting with.

Boycott supporters are probably more interested in hurting Cathy's bottom line than pathologizing his customers. But now that the chicken wire has gone up, once again dividing us against one another, my junk food choices are complicated by political as well as nutritional considerations. I've had no chicken sandwiches and one hamburger since resolving to give up 30 pounds for Lent. But the next time I want one, I'll probably give Cathy and his local franchisee my business, because they make the best chicken sandwich in town. It's like the scene in "Broadcast News" in which a TV producer played by Holly Hunter tells a Nicaraguan contra to put on his boots if he wants to, not because her camera is recording the moment. I'll choose my chicken strictly based on what tastes best when I'm hungry. You can hold the secret semiotic sauce.

Is that what Joseph of Aramathea would have done? It depends on what he thought about the ethics of the marketplace, where he evidently had thrived. As long as businesspeople obey the letter and spirit of the law, they deserve to profit from hard work and reliable products. Boycotters should also think about the franchises' employees, who don't deserve to lose their jobs in this chicken-feed economy because of their big bird's big mouth. When it comes to politics, the same rule applies to Cathy and his critics. They belong in the voting booth, not the drive-through.

An American Classic Begins Today

Talk about burying the lead. Here's how Zach Beauchamp put it at The Dish: "So Santorum up and left, taking with him the last vestiges of interest in the GOP primary." The other way to describe today's events is that Mitt Romney has just won a dazzling victory and set the stage for an American classic.

After the tea party-driven GOP surge in the 2010 elections, it was a foregone conclusion that the far right would dominate the 2012 cycle. Yet all its champions left the arena or were defeated by the establishment choice, the so-called Massachusetts moderate: Palin, Huckabee, Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and now Santorum. If the GOP has a "fundamental problem" with dominance by the right, as Beauchamp says and so many pundits have been insisting for months, why has the candidate conservatives liked the least been able to wrap up the nomination by early April?

Continuing to devalue Romney's achievement, Beauchamp writes:

The obvious conclusion is that, assuming Romney loses in 2012, the candidate best positioned to win the GOP nod next time around will be someone with Santorum-esque views with an extra dollop of political talent.

But lack of charisma was never the GOP's problem. It had many talented conservative candidates. Romney demolished them all. Assuming that Romney will lose is also premature, not only because it's April 10 but because Real Clear Politics' composite poll shows him running only 5.3% behind Barack Obama, another stunning achievement given how bruising the primaries have been.

But who's congratulating Romney tonight? Not Democrats, who know he's Obama's least desired opponent. Not conservatives, who never wanted a moderate standard bearer nor even, I suspect, a Romney presidency to the extent that he would reposition his party closer to the center by forging new center-right coalitions in the country and especially on Capitol Hill. While moderates who think he's just been pretending to be conservative are happy, we don't know for sure if their optimism is warranted.

So is Romney moderate or conservative? To me he seems relentlessly opportunistic (which helped him beat all those conservatives) and non-ideological, a throwback to the days of the country club Republican. His cool temperament and refusal to be pigeonholed remind me of the other pragmatic Republican in the race: Barack Obama.

In the fall election (which began today), party propagandists will spend millions calling Romney a wealthy, far-right wing nut and Obama a socialist. But little if any of that mud will stick, and not only because Romney can't very well run against Obama's big-government health care bill (which was patterned on Romney's) nor Obama against Romney's coziness with fat cats (which isn't that much cozier than Obama's). Voters are smart enough to know that both candidates are steely, smart pragmatists. Obama and Romney are primed to give us the hardest fought, most substantive, and possibly closest presidential race since 1960 -- and that's worth celebrating.

BTO Watch

Huckabee, Daniels, and Trump are all out. Gingrich? As if. Palin has done little if anything to build an organization. So why isn't Michele Bachmann the top dark horse contender for the GOP nomination in 2012? Dan Rather thinks so.

Trump Plays The Birther Card

Donald Trump, on The View today, said that the president's "probably" a U.S. citizen, then added:

There's something on that birth certificate he doesn't like.

Trump's absolutely right. Barack Obama's birth certificate contains irrefutable evidence that he was born in Honolulu. That's why we'll never see it. Refusing to provide additional proof that Trig Palin is Sarah's son (Oops! Wrong conspiracy) he's a citizen is Obama's smartest move, guaranteeing that some likely Republican candidates (such as Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee and now, it appears, Trump) will continue to maneuver for the birther majority among likely GOP voters. Listening to a birther nominee try to defend (or back away from) the broadly unpopular birther position during the first presidential debate in the fall of 2012 would be the Obama campaign's happiest moment.

Nixon political confidante Roger Stone (above right) has been advising Trump for 25 years, so it's safe to assume he's helping with the talking points. Adding a dollop of birther cred to Trump's good-natured, tolerant populism is the kind of move that enabled Stone to outmaneuver Nixon in-law Ed Cox and engineer the GOP nomination of another plain-spoken loose cannon of a tycoon, Carl Paladino, to run for governor of New York in 2008.

Semifinal Five

Filling out his brackets on behalf of thinking and probably overly optimistic center-right conservatives everywhere, my Nixon brother Hugh Hewitt picks five 2012 GOP frontrunners without including a placeholder for the likes of Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee, whose prospects seem to have improved now that they've coyly arched their eyebrows in the direction of the Obama birthers. Perhaps Hugh thinks that he's got the fringe covered by including Newt Gingrich, whose love gift is of the Muslims-as-Nazis variety.

And where's Sarah Palin in Hugh's morning line? Maybe if no one mentions her, she'll go away.

Con law professor Hewitt even has a talking point for the leader of the pack (Hugh's pick in 2008 as well):

[Mitt] Romney remains the front runner, with strength in staff and fundraising and the experience of having been around this track once before. The "MassCare is Obamacare" trope is old already, though it will be used by his GOP competitors and by the president again and again. The best response remains the true one: An attack on an experiment in Massachusetts is an attack on federalism -- dangerous in the era of the Tea Party -- and that which is allowed to the states -- individual mandates -- is not constitutional when attempted by the federal government.

Haley Mary

As his potential rivals for the 2012 GOP nomination, Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee, jockey for advantage by playing nudge-nudge-wink-wink with the Obama birthers, Gov. Haley Barbour commands the attention of serious people by asking tough questions about Afghanistan.

The GOP's Birther Millstone

The latest likely GOP candidates to take steps to burnish their credibility with the Obama birthers? Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee. They're also now the candidates with the strongest "positive intensity" among Republican voters.

For The Love Of Mike

Alarmed by Mike Huckabee's supergaffe about Barack Obama and his reckless parole policies when he was Arkansas governor, Timothy Egan suggests he keep his job at Fox News and skip running for president in 2012. Andrew Sullivan doesn't like Huckabee's recent statements, either, but he's afraid that if he doesn't run, he'll leaves the far-right (aka the GOP nomination) to Sarah Palin.

Fundamentally Flawed

Shame on Mike Huckabee for not slapping down a question about whether he thought the president was guilty of "some fundamental anti-Americanism."

Huck Spin

In a radio interview on Tuesday, Mike Huckabee presented a detailed fantasy about a Kenyan boyhood of Barack Obama that never occurred. His spokesman quickly said that he'd meant to say that Obama was raised in Indonesia. With Andrew Sullivan, I can't understand how Huckabee could claim just to have made an error about the country, since his full statement doesn't track if you substitute Indonesia for Kenya:

One thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American ... his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British are a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

Obama never lived in Kenya, and his father essentially abandoned him.

Tonight Huckabee went on Fox News (which employs him) to defend himself. He told Bill O'Reilly that he'd made a verbal gaffe after participating in 40 interviews in a row and that he'd written in the book he was promoting that Obama had grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia. Without even the hint of an apology to Obama, he quickly went on the offensive, blaming the "left-wing media" for covering the story. He made a Palinesque reference to one of Obama's own microgaffes (the "57 states" one). He said that growing up in a foreign country meant that Obama had a "different world view," the result of not being a Boy Scout or playing Little League, a point which enabled Huckabee to minimize Obama's Hawaii years to the point of insignificance, just as his enormogaffe had done. (Obama, who plays basketball, lived in Indonesia between ages six and 10.) Huckabee concluded by saying that refusing to say that Obama hates America "makes me persona non grata with some conservatives."

Huckabee's performance on Fox added some credence to the idea that he said just what he meant to say during his radio interview -- or, at the very least, that he doesn't especially regret it. As he continues to ponder whether to announce for president later this year, he candidly admitted to O'Reilly that he's mindful of those members of the conservative base who think Obama is disloyal (what other construction can one put on "hates America")? Now he's got a twofer. His Kenyan kilogaffe gave him a little boost with the fringe right. His denial gave him a chance to claim victimization by the left (as though conservatives wouldn't have howled with rage at a leading Democrat's internally coherent, 15-second-long supergaffe about the upbringing of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush). Without being a Birther, he's won himself some Birther cred, an ambiguity that might help a candidate win the nomination and then actually contend in November.

When half of likely GOP voters believe Obama is a Muslim and liar, most candidates probably assume they have to go around the bend to be nominated. That's what Huckabee's doing, whether with his gigantogaffe or his Fox News defense of it. But thinking you have to do it doesn't make it right. You can choose not run. You can switch parties. You can even boldly denounce all toxic, paranoid fantasies, say, "I know the president loves our country no less than I do," and then disagree with him on every single issue. That's the way it used to be done.

Real Americans Read "The Economist"

Sarah Palin -- who thanks to John McCain was, theoretically, close at one time to holding executive power in the United States government -- breaks her silence and makes a statement on the crisis in Egypt:

It's a difficult situation, this is that 3 a.m. White House phone call and it seems for many of us trying to get that information from our leader in the White House it it seems that that call went right to um the answering machine. And nobody yet has, no body yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the place of Mubarak and I'm not real enthused about what it is that that's being done on a national level and from DC in regards to understanding all the situation there in Egypt. And in these areas that are so volatile right now because obviously it's not just Egypt but the other countries too where we are seeing uprisings, we know that now more than ever, we need strength and sound mind there in the White House. We need to know what it is that America stands for so we know who it is that America will stand with. And we do not have all that information yet.

I imagine Palin's supporters think that another of her unstudied, sophomoric attacks on the president is all the situation requires. But why not make it a twofer: Hammer the president while at the same time conveying the impression that you've picked up a newspaper or briefing memo and can can find Egypt on a map?

While I think Barack Obama has done a great job in a situation in which he has relatively few options, some critics say he should've pushed Mubarak harder, others that he's a failure if he doesn't figure out how to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of a post-Mubarak government. I don't agree with either view. But each deserves to be fleshed out and debated. Besides, shouldn't Palin be expected to stake out some substantive ground on a leading foreign policy issue (or any issue)? Unless she does, she'll fade quickly in a field that includes wonks like Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty.

But I don't think she will. If she were going to, she would have by now. That's why I think she's jumped the shark. The sliver of the U.S. populace who evidently believe relentless, proudly proclaimed ignorance qualifies you for the presidency isn't enough to get you nominated, even in today's Republican party.
Hat tip to Jeffrey Goldberg

Don't Touch Her Baked Alaska

Another liberal Beltway elitist conservative Republican criticizes Sarah Palin, this time for her bizarre criticism of the first lady's anti-obesity campaign. Says Mike Huckabee:

With all due respect to my colleague and friend Sarah Palin, I think she's misunderstood what Michelle Obama is trying to do....Michelle Obama's not trying to tell people what to eat or not trying to force the government's desires on people. She's stating the obvious, that we do have an obesity problem in this country.

Julian Assange's Nonlinear Thinking

Julian Assange's cloudy, self-satisfied prose reminds me of the Unibomber's:

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption.

Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.

In opposing the decisions of a self-appointed know-it-all about what secrets should remain as such, I'm not expressing fear and paranoia. I'm worried about the rational conduct of the government's business and the safety of those who live under tyrannical governments and yet are willing to provide U.S. contacts with valuable information.

In view of Assange's implied desire to nonlinearly hit less open or unjust systems, I'll be looking forward to reading more news from Beijing and the Kremlin. But does Wikileaks even have sources in those governments who are willing to take the risk of nonlinearly hitting their bosses? That's why Assange's whole argument is bogus. Logic as well as Wikileaks' pattern make clear that the governments of free nations are far more likely to be the victims of leaks, which means that it's those regimes, and not authoritarian or totalitarian ones, that will experience "minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms."

Besides, if Assange got the secret Moscow and Beijing papers, would he have the guts to publish them? Palin and Huckabee talked about hunting him down. Putin and Hu might actually do it, and once they caught him, extradition probably wouldn't be an issue.

It's Scozzafava's Fault!

Thanks, Gov. Huckabee! That rounds out my four GOP talking points for why everyone except Sarah Palin is responsible for losing the New York 23rd to the Democrats for the first time in a century.

Pat Matt

More offensive generalizations from self-described progressive Matthew Yglesias:

I think Josh Marshall is to some extent overthinking his analysis of Mike Huckabee’s claim that “generally Evangelicals are so much more supportive of Israel than the American Jewish community.” Everything he writes about Christian Zionist eschatology, the apocalypse, and Revisionist Zionism is true. But the larger truth is just that Evangelicals, on average, despite the fact that an intuitive reading of the Gospels points in a different direction, are just generally inclined toward an affection for violence, brutality, and authoritarianism.

I guess that's why so many Christian evangelicals are supporters of China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and Iran.

Rhetorical Genocide

Matthew Yglesias accuses Gov. Huckabee of favoring ethnic cleansing because he opposes a Palestinian state on the West Bank.

Healing Comes With Patience

Talking about his new book and his brother, Ed Nixon covers some contemporary ground:

He said Richard Nixon was a booster of energy independence way back in 1971. He's convinced the answers to the nation's problems lie in private investment. And he sees Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney, rather than "entertainer" Rush Limbaugh, as true leaders of today's Republican Party.

No fan of the media's treatment of his brother, he nevertheless believes Richard Nixon's accomplishments are being recognized.

"Healing has come with patience," Ed Nixon said. "You see the total life of the man."