Questioning the Existence of Mike Huckabee

Although not by design, the ampersand (@) in my blog’s name puts me at the very top of several blogrolls, the most prominent being the official website of Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Thus, I’ve been getting about a hundred hits a day from the Governor’s visitors ever since I joined his list a couple of months ago. That’s the primary reason I chose to leave my fundraising article showing for the past couple of weeks. I thought our progress here—I live in an ultra-liberal enclave in north Florida—might inspire others. But now it’s time to write.

On Super Tuesday evening I sat, like millions of other Americans, watching election returns and listening to pundits on Fox and CNN (mostly Fox). Weeks of predictions turned to hours of analysis, with some bewilderment and little repentance, of course. These guys and guy-ettes don’t get paid to apologize.

My predilection for watching Fox News Channel comes not so much because I believe they are fair and balanced, but because I think they are a bit less unfair and imbalanced than the competition. The fact that they’re watched more than all the other cable news channels combined says I’m not alone.

Lately, however, I’ve been utterly dismayed at Fox’s attempted hatchet job on Governor Huckabee. I expected as much from CNN, when they blatantly ignored both Huck and Ron Paul during the last debate a few evenings back. But Huckabee’s winning performance, all the more sterling in light of the pathetic jabs exchanged by John McCain and Mitt Romney, should have made headlines the next morning on any “fair and balanced” broadcast. Instead, Fox followed everyone else’s lead, ignoring the Governor's existence so steadfastly that their fear of him stood out all the more.

One particularly egregious moment came on Tuesday night, as the Beltway Boys, Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke, weighed in with anchor Brit Hume. One of the two—who can tell, since they’re both bespectacled, stuttering white pundits in striped ties—marginalized Huckabee’s core of evangelical Christians with an arrogant chuckle, calling us a “narrow sliver” of the Republican Party.

Since when is 30 percent (or more) of the party a sliver? My friend Cain Davis is right: the GOP treats evangelical voters the same way the Democrat Party treats black voters. They expect that we’re in their hip pocket, and they get upset when we don’t chew on the bone (in this case a Mitt Bone) they occasionally throw our way.

Why don’t the party wonks get it? A vote for Huckabee is a vote for Huckabee. Period.