Yucks from the Huck

I have a confession to make: I’ve been secretly rooting since October for Mike Huckabee to pull off an upset and take the Republican nomination. I admit it’s perverse, but there’s a twisted logic to it. First of all, his positions on a lot of domestic issues have been remarkably sane compared to the rest of the australopithecus-heavy field. He says reasonable things about prisons and the war on drugs and other nuts-and-bolts state government issues.

Second and most importantly, I am convinced Huckabee would be annihilated by any credible Democrat, especially when people hear his hard-line wacko religious beliefs, which are not as slicked up as Bush’s were. Huckabee is a true believer and capable of saying shrill, punitive things through which he imprudently shows the true face of the theocrats.

Huckabee would run on what the religious right actually thinks and believes, rather than a prettified version of it, and that would be extremely inconvenient for the Republicans because I think the great American middle is pretty much fed up with their fanatical, holier-than-thou shit and ready to give them a licking they won’t forget.

But the limelight hasn’t been kind to ol’ Mike. One of the things that first attracted my attention was his entirely decent comments about the immigration issue in which he focused on the real human beings who have poured into his own state rather than the abstract Illegal Alien [organ chords!]

But the sudden pressure of being a frontrunner has pushed Huckabee over the edge. Friday, he picked up on the Bhutto assassination to say that it showed how we need a solid wall on the Mexican frontier and an ‘immediate, very clear monitoring to make sure if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into this country.’ Huh?

We periocially see those stories about how most Americans can’t find Canada on a map, but I’d have thought a presidential candidate would know that Pakistan doesn’t lie in South America.

But aside from the dubious geography lesson, here’s the Huck’s new religion on the topic:

The fact is that the immigration issue is not so much about people coming to pick lettuce or make beds, it’s about someone coming with a shoulder-fired missile.

Um, no, Mike, it’s actually about coming to pick lettuce and make beds, which you know perfectly well because you grow lettuce in Arkansas, along with psilocybin mushrooms, apparently.

And I recommend strict limits on the hours you’re spending on the Book of Revelations, my man. Time to stick to Third John and Habbakuk.

Once upon a time, Huckabee was grounded in reality on immigration. The fact that he could so suddenly lift off into the ionosphere is a good measure of the utter irrationality that the issue stirs in the hearts of his fellow fantasists.