One almost pities them. Every time Republicans start narrowing their choice of presidential candidates, they get the head handed to them by the vulturous press or some antagonistic, oppo-research operation. So they move on to the next Great White Savior, only to witness another beheading.
And it's starting to look like when all is said and done, they'll be left, through a savage attrition process and by sheer default, with the one candidate they largely like the least: John McCain.
The latest victim of easily scooped-up scrutiny is the Most Right Reverend Michael Dale Huckabee, the one-time Southern governor who now appears to have been but another Huey Long, without the demagogic charm.
And that's no exaggeration. Reading this morning's New York Times piece on Huckabee's executive tenure is like strolling through the Louisiana statehouse, circa 1930s. "Against the political advice of his party and his aides," reports the Times, "[Huckabee] pardoned or commuted the sentences of hundreds of convicts, including murderers, sometimes over the heated objections of prosecutors and victims’ families" ... just like Huey ... "He was cited five times by the state ethics commission for financial improprieties" ... just like Huey ... and he "unapologetically accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of clothes and other gifts while he was governor" ... just like Huey.
In 1999 alone, for instance, Rev. Mike "reported getting $112,366 in gifts," damn near twice the amount of his salary. But my favorite? He also used "a state fund meant to operate the governor’s mansion for personal family expenses like pantyhose and meals at Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken." The story does not specify for whom the pantyhose were, but at least we now know how the governor came to be the bloated hunk of trans fat he once was.
Also like Huey, he actually did some good for his state, albeit through a brutal arrogance that vastly annoyed his own political camp. For example he pushed through "a major expansion of health insurance for children of the working poor whose families did not qualify for Medicaid," which left ultraconservative neanderthals like Peggy Jeffries, "then a Republican state senator and now executive director of the Arkansas affiliate of the Eagle Forum," wouldn't you know, sputtering "None of us understood what he was trying to do." About that, Peg, I have no doubt.
Huckabee also "confounded Republicans ... when he pushed for a fuel tax increase to finance an ambitious road-building program," which, again, is reminiscent of Huey and his ruthless surcharge-taxing of Louisiana oil companies to pay for the governor's pet projects. One can quibble ideologically over Mr. Huckabee's executive desiderata -- whether, that is, they were advisable or not -- but the sticking point for Republicans, politically speaking, is that Mr. Huckabee was, it seems, exceedingly brutish about them. GOP pols prefer that graft be spread around evenly and politely, and this, Mr. Huckabee did not do. "If you don’t line up with him, Katie bar the door," is how one former Republican state rep remembered his merciless meetings with the impolitic governor.
In short, Mr. Huckabee did not at all play well with other Republican sachems he now needs, while he seems to have had a rather luxurious time doing it -- and at the ideologically opposed, taxpaying rank-and-file's expense. To be even shorter, such things will not bode well in the primary marathon.
Moving on down the thinning line, off-and-on varmint-hunter Mitt Romney is forced to spend more time these days explaining what the meaning of "saw," is, than laying out the finance-capitalist utopia he was on the verge of delivering unto us. He, too, appears to be going down, and the only thing keeping him afloat for now are the hysterically desperate voters transferring from the doomed Rudy Giuliani, who last I heard had gone from a nearly 20-point lead in Florida to third place.
Of course there is always Fred T. Who?, but he seems to be on permanent sabbatical at a rather inopportune time, and unavailable for comment or anything else of interest. And naturally there's Ron Paul, who's anti-imperialist message is about as unnatural a match for imperial Republicans as Dennis Kucinich's. So let him rake in all the cybercash he wants. I just hope he saves some of it for a nice, long vacation in the Bahamas, once this silliest of seasons is over.
Hence, through attrition and default, Republicans could likely homestead where they were supposed to from the start -- in the House of John McCain. But I doubt enthusiasm will be bubbling over.
It's true the Arizona senator has his own history of ethical lapses that could do damage; but those were so 1980s, when ethics were uniformly abandoned as unbusinesslike in Reagan's America. No, what will make the faithful cringe is the senator's present and despicably tolerant attitude on immigration. Yet, what -- literally -- choice do they have left? The rootin-tootin and utterly anonymous Duncan Hunter?
The season upon us may be silly indeed, but for those of us on the outside of the Republican circle of angst, it sure is fun.