Indications are that Brownback, Metsker, other Kansas Republican leaders are working against conservatives
To be upfront, the following information should be considered “unsubstantiated rumors.” Though, to be fair, it is extremely difficult to invalidate GOP-related rumors when:
That said, the primary concern among conservatives is that Senator Brownback is today working against the candidacy of 3rd District Congressional candidate Patricia Lightner, a 3-term state representative from Johnson County. Lightner is a fiscally conservative, pro-life Republican. Indeed, Lightner is currently the strongest candidate who is also a known fiscal conservative.
Recent concerns/rumors:
Cross-posted at RedCounty.com.
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Benjamin Hodge publishes the Web site KansasProgress.com, based in Johnson County, KS, in the Greater Kansas City area. Hodge is a delegate to the Kansas GOP, a former state representative, and a former trustee at Johnson County Community College. You can join Hodge’s efforts on Facebook, through his personal Web site, on Twitter, and through his PAC.
Nine years ago, Mike Huckabee signed the order granting clemency to Maurice Clemmons. Last Sunday morning, four police officers were gunned down in cold blood by a man believed to be Clemmons. The question was raised almost immediately. “What impact does this have on Huckabee’s possible 2012 run for the Presidency?”
First, hindsight is always 20/20. Looking back with last week’s shooting in mind, one can easily fault his decision, but is that fair? We were not there. We did not read what Huckabee read about Clemmons. We did not listen in on the conversations he held with people concerning the case. For myself, since I was not there, and I do not know all the facts, I am inclined to give Huckabee the benefit of the doubt here and to assume he acted in good faith.
Yes, the man to whom he gave clemency just murdered four policemen. But what was the 2000 version of Maurice Clemmons like? Was he a murderer? Do we condemn people for a crime that we think they might commit someday? If we could travel back in time, should we go back and convince Frau Hitler to abort her baby, or make sure that Adolf was killed in WWI? In the here and now, some feminists like to post lists of men under the title “Potential Rapists”. Are they right to do this?
I have difficulty faulting a decision Mike made nine years ago in the context of the circumstances when the decision was made. Nine years ago, Mike didn’t have the benefit of knowing what we learned last Sunday. Can we honestly say it was a bad decision in the context of the information and circumstances available to him back then? I cannot.
However, this tragic incident has renewed my uneasiness about Huckabee in another way. It marks the re-appearance of “Who me?” Huckabee.
Throughout the last campaign, I would watch him make mistakes. The fact he made mistakes is hardly earth-shattering. We all make them. None of us are prefect. The candidates were no exception. They all goofed more than once.
Mistakes are very useful in judging the various candidates for the office. They can be quite enlightening. By watching how they respond to mistakes, one can learn something about the candidate’s core person that is usually hidden from view.
The way Huckabee responded to his mistakes troubled me a great deal. He became known for his “Who me?” responses. He had the process down to an art form. A mistake would be made. His first response would almost always be, “Who me?”. He would deny there was a problem, and/or insist that he had nothing to do with it. If the hubbub blew over, that was the end of it. If, however, the noise didn’t die down after his initial “Who me?” response, then and only then he would admit the mistake. He did this over and over again.
Huckabee’s response to this tragedy was true to this old form of his. His first response was to issue a statement blaming the criminal justice systems in two states and particularly calling out the prosecutors and the parole boards for dropping the ball. Nowhere in this statement is there even a hint of his part in the tragedy, nothing at all. It was pure CYA — pure, “Who me?” It was only after the uproar showed no signs of letting up, and it became obvious that his CYA statement was inadequate, did he finally go on O’Reilly and admit to his role in letting Clemmons go so many years ago.
Mike “Who Me?” Huckabee. He’s baaaack. Or perhaps he never really left.
Okay, now that I have your attention…
Public Policy Polling is asking its readers in an online poll: who, besides Romney, Huckabee, and Palin, should be included in their next 2012 poll? Last time they idiotically included Ron Paul and the Paultards spammed the poll.
This time, they’re asking whether Pawlenty, Daniels, Cheney, Giuliani, Barbour, or Thune should be included.
Right now, Cheney is winning and Barbour is in last. Vote for Rudy!
Go here to vote now!
From the looks of their Action committee blog, the AFA (otherwise known as the American Family Association- who endorsed Mike Huckabee during the 2007 primaries) have changed their tune in regards to their support of Governor Huckabee:
The primary function of government, according to Romans 13, is the administration of justice, which it carries out by punishing those who deprive fellow citizens of their God-given rights to life, liberty and property. God has even authorized the use of capital punishment (“he does not bear the sword in vain”) so that the state may be “the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”
If a public servant cannot be trusted with this most basic of all moral responsibilities, how can he be trusted with any other?
We were rightly outraged when President Clinton issued an irresponsible pardon for fraudster financier Marc Rich. But at least nobody died.
The governor has tried to wash his hands of the affair by posting a statement on his website blaming it all on “a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State,” as if he had little or nothing to do with it.
It appears that Governor Huckabee could not be trusted with the power of the pardon as governor. Perhaps he should not be trusted with the power of the pardon as president.
UPDATE: MN Governor Tim Pawlenty has weighed in on the Clemmons/clemency case:
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty became the first likely GOP presidential candidate to criticize Mike Huckabee’s pardon of a suspected killer during his time as Arkansas’s governor.
Pawlenty said that he would not have granted clemency to Maurice Clemmons, who was suspected of fatally shooting four police officers in Washington state on Sunday before being shot and killed by police in Seattle Tuesday morning.
In recent days, I’ve written a lot about the trend in this country over the past fifteen years towards corporatist government, that is to say, towards government maintaining strong relationships with large corporate interests, including big business, large unions, and powerful special interests like AARP, under the assumption that what’s good for these interests is ultimately good for all. The temptation to follow this road on the part of public officials is not hard to comprehend. Big interests have big money, and it takes money to win elections. Further, large interests provided Establishment liberals and Beltway conservatives with sort of a Faustian bargain in order for both to get what they wanted out of government. The Left wanted a larger welfare state but the public refused to pay for it; the Right wanted a smaller welfare state but the public wouldn’t allow it. What better way for everyone to have their cake and eat it to than to contract out the welfare state to corporate interests, each of which then became a sort of feudal nobleman in charge of taking care of its various serfs. Want a college education? Become a serf to Sallie Mae! Want a Cadillac health plan? Lord or Lady Union will make sure your employer provides it to you. Don’t want any changes to Social Security or Medicare? Join the AARP. And so forth. And of course all of this excess just made things more expensive than they should have been, with the cost of education, medical care, etc., skyrocketing, and with entitlements becoming unsustainable, thus making it all the more essential for anyone desiring these services to enter into indentured servitude.
President Obama, far from acting as an opponent of all of this, has not only validated the new feudalism since taking office but in less than a year has tried time and time again to exacerbate it, to cement it, and to ensure that the new road to serfdom is one which we must all follow. ObamaCare is a perfect example of this sort of thing — a plan in which the Crown (the state) ensures the maintenance and protection of the Aristocracy (in this case, the insurance companies, the drug companies, and the trial lawyers) in exchange for those large interests promising to care for their serfs (the citizens). ObamaCare disallows interstate competition between insurance companies, puts no limit on non-compensatory damages in lawsuits against medical professionals, and, most importantly, uses the power of the Crown to mandate that all citizens become serfs of a nobleman, i.e., an insurance company. Gone is the ability to live as a free individual; the new corporatist feudalism is complete.
In his book Obamanomics, Timothy Carney elaborates on the way in which the president’s policies essentially amount to a society based on big government and big business. He writes:
President Barack Obama, if he gets his way, will increase government control over the U.S. economy in ways previously thought impossible. This isn’t surprising, but you may be surprised to learn who’s benefitting: the biggest and most well-connected businesses.
Just as President George W. Bush, with his bailouts, spending sprees, and new entitlements, abandoned the free market at the behest of Wall Street and drug makers, Barack Obama’s vision of bigger government is also the dream of corporate lobbyists.
Obama’s healthcare reform, stimulus spending, global warming legislation, and auto industry bailouts are ambitious packages of regulations, taxes, mandates, and spending that benefit Big Business — what corporation wouldn’t welcome more taxpayer-funded subsidies, regulation that crowds out competition, and government mandates that drive more business to them?
There are other big beneficiaries as well: Politicians, who gain more power; and lobbyists, who gain more influence.
The victims are small businesses crushed by regulations and taxes, taxpayers — especially future taxpayers who will be burdened by the debt financing today’s spending sprees — and consumers, who face higher prices and fewer choices.
What should we call this Big Business-Big Government agenda pursued by President Obama? Although robust corporate-government collusion was hardly invented by the current administration, the U.S. has not seen such a consistent practitioner of corporatism in more than half a century. It’s fitting then to name this Big Business-Big Government practice Obamanomics.
I don’t think that this sort of system is sustainable in the era of modern democracy, though, where citizens can enact a revolution with the ballot box instead of the sword and could easily elect a T.R.-style president to go to war with the robber barons and send the Aristocracy of large interests to the guillotine, only in this case the guillotine would consist of things like changing the laws to make it easier to compete with the protected corporate interests and so forth. The reason, I think, that the Houses of Clinton and Bush were able to convince the American people that serfdom was in their interest was that this sort of system works well for the average person when the economy appears to have nowhere to go but up. Bill Clinton described and defended this dynamic quite well during Hillary’s campaign when he said during a speech — and I am paraphrasing from memory — that the fact that we all essentially live in debt to banks, student loan companies, etc, is a good thing because it allows us to acquire the things we need to survive and thrive and that will lay the groundwork for continued growth, with which we will able to essentially buy ourselves back. But that framework only survives if the money keeps rolling in. And arguably it was that sort of framework — an economy based on debt relying on the assurance of presumed future growth — that led to the collapse, because, as John Derbyshire said in his new book We Are Doomed: Re-Discovering Conservative Pessimism, all of that wealth was “Faery Gold.” That is to say, it wasn’t real, it was imagined, it was assumed, and once it didn’t appear, the whole thing collapsed like any other Ponzi scheme. And that leaves the Aristocracy (the large corporate and special interests) dividing up the scraps that remain with the protection of the Crown (the government), with the serf-like citizens unable to do anything about it.
Eventually all of this will change, as either the economy will re-bound and everyone will be a happy serf again, or, more probably, things will continue to look abysmal, there will be a “Let them eat cake!” moment involving someone in government, and a revolution at the ballot box will lead to an Administration backed with the popular anger necessary to give the nation’s large interests their comeuppance. I don’t know if this will happen in the near future, but I do think the contest for the GOP nomination in 2012 will reflect national angst based on the relationship between big government and big monied and special interests, and that the nominee will ultimately be opposed to corporate-socialism.
Both mainstream and new media have falsely stated that prosecutors objected to Huckabee’s sentence reduction although I just got off the phone with Pulaski County (the county involved) prosecutor Larry Jegley who said of whether Huckabee had received an objection from him, “I am sure he didn’t receive an objection”.
He said that he would have objected but that his office does not have record of receiving a notice that Huckabee was looking for comment regarding clemency for Maurice Clemmons.
I asked him if it was common to not receive notices and he said it was, “not common”.
I asked him if he gets notified after the fact that a clemency takes place and he said that he does get notified.
I asked him why he did not object to the clemency documentation (which you can view here) showing that he had no objection and he said it would not have mattered to Huckabee whether he objected or not.
I asked him if thought there was a problem with the Arkansas notification system because he claims that he did not receive notification of the proposed clemency. He said that he did not believe there was a problem with the system and that he usually received notification.
Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley
My questions now are:
Here are some of the false media reports:
LATimes as of 9:12AM PST 12/1/2009:
Under the sympathetic questioning of commentator Bill O’Reilly, Huckabee said he granted Clemmons’ clemency request — one of 1,200 that crossed his desk annually — because of Clemmons’ young age at the time of his conviction and the severity of his sentence. He said prosecutors never contacted him, though they did lodge a protest with the state parole board.
FACT: The protest by prosecutors was in regards to giving Clemmon parole. This objection came AFTER Huckabee’s actions.
Michelle Malkin as of 9:12AM PST 12/1/2009:
The man being sought by police was granted clemency by former GOP Arkansas Mike Huckabee despite his violent history and vehement protestations from prosecutors and victims’ family members.
FACT: Prosecutors did not lodge objection to Huckabee’s actions as I have proven above. As for protests of “victims’ family members”, I see no record of that in official documents. Malkin needs to source her statement here for it to have credibility. Considering that the other part of the sentence is blatantly false, what credibility does that give her?
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Huckabee writes at NewsMax: Mike Huckabee: ‘I Take Full Responsibility’ for Granting Alleged Cop Killer Clemency
There are a lot of people here in the U.S. wondering why the “ClimateGate” isn’t having a bigger impact. Those people are too focussed the domestic scene.
Today, ClimateGate claimed it’s first victim in the political world – ending the career of one of Australia’s leading politicians. Macolm Turnbull, the moderate leader of Australia’s Liberal Party (remember, the Liberals are the conservative party in Australia) was kicked to the curb after announcing his support for the government’s cap-and-trade proposal. His support for the bill triggered an outright rebellion among Liberal parliamentarians, and today Turnbul was thrown out in favor of hard-core climate skeptic Tony Abbott.
I might also point out that Abbott entered today’s leadership vote in last place among the three contenders – trailing behind Turnbull and front-running challenger Joe Hockey. However, Hockey imploded his campaign by announcing that he would not stake out and official party position on the emissions-trading bill, but rather would allow each legislator to vote independently on the issue (Abbott wanted an official stand against, Turnbull wanted an official stand in favor). In the end, supposed front-runner Hockey came in dead last on the first ballot behind second-place Turnbull and worst-to-first Abbott. On the final ballot, the hard-line Abbott squeaked past the incumbent by a vote of 42-41.
I know can focus on obscure stories at times - but this one really should be worthy of a Drudge siren. Malcolm Turnbull was the Opposition Leader in one of the world’s leading democracies, and as a result of ClimateGate he has not only been turfed - but replaced with a hard-core conservative.
If you want to read more about this amazing development, the Australian Broadcasting Corpoartion has put up a special section entitled “Liberal Turmoil” and has lot’s of articles and video available.
ClimateGate is indeed reverberating. The tsunami hasn’t hit our shores yet – but it’s coming
Mike Flynn, the Editor in Chief of BigGovernment.com, made a startling accusation against the Obama administration last evening while appearing on Glenn Beck.
Flynn suggested that the Obama administration may have purposely created the controversy with the infamous party crashing couple (Mr. and Mrs. Salahis) to benefit a NBC subsidiary, the Bravo channel.
I am unaware if Mr. Flynn was purely speculating or if he has obtained information that points to this possibility, but what I do know is that Mike Flynn and BigGovernment.com have built themselves a strong reputation for investigating conflicts of interest within our government, where the MSM has not.
More importantly, if this tabloid event was staged and involved the Obama administration and NBC executives, a criminal justice investigation will need to be conducted. This is much more serious than Van Jones or ACORN, as it is about the subverting national security and a conspiracy involving a large private sector corporation about the most powerful bureaucrats and elected officials in our nation.
I’ll be watching closely to see if this story has legs.
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Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and Twitter/Kris_Lorelli
Remember a few months ago when there was a great hulabaloo about Glenn Beck, and how the left was going to force him off the air? Never mind.
I googled “boycott+glenn+beck” just now and got 541,000 hits. But lots of coverage (and probably donations to colorsofchange.org, the boycott organizer) seems to be all the left accomplished.
Four months after major advertisers abandoned Fox News Channel’s “Glenn Beck” show — as a result of Beck’s calling President Obama a “racist” — the network has seen little change in marketers’ media strategy toward the controversial program.
Beck’s ratings pull in hefty daytime audiences — 2.8 million viewers — and the show retains middle and small-level daytime advertisers, according to media executives.
They managed to force big name advertisers (companies who are particularly sensitive to PR pressure) off the program, but they were easily replaced by smaller advertisers. And Fox’s net income loss was tiny, because the big names just moved their ads to other programs on the FNC schedule.
