Hucksters to Watch Out For

Abandon all disgust ye who enter here!

Ladies, gentlemen, variations thereof and none of the above, I have a gift of being ahead of the curve. In middle school, I was the lame kid who listened to the Beatles instead of new bands. Later that year, the movie Across the Universe and the video game Rock Band came out, and suddenly the very people who had turned up their noses at my favorite songs earlier were gushing over the White Album and Abbey Road. During my freshman year of high school, I had a morbid fascination with the batshit crazy that is the Church of Scientology. To aid my intrepid forays into the wonderful world of Scientology, someone in a public forum recommended an obscure little website that published repressed documents. I checked the site out for a bit and promptly forgot the whole thing until a few months later, when my arcane little corner of the web, WikiLeaks, published thousands of documents about the US military. You could say I have a gift. Now I have a possible new lead that I, out of the goodness of my heart, would like to share with you. I give you the next big thing in conservative insanity: the new face of bigotry.

This is the face of a completely balanced and reasonable individual.(S)

Meet former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. A 2008 Republican presidential hopeful who did not secure the nomination, Huckabee now has a radio show, a television show, and a podcast. I thought that he would simply fade into obscurity like his fellow potential nominee peers Sam Brownback and Jim Gilmore. However, Mr. Huckabee has injected himself into just about every anti-gay and anti-woman outrage as of late. He blamed the recent shooting at anti-gay lobbying group the Family Research Council on its classification as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He defended the Boy Scouts of America's decision to ban gay troop leaders, and even set up a "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day" where he encouraged his hordes of lemming-like followers to engorge themselves upon the wares of the famously hate-group-financing restaurant. Even more recently, he defended US Senate hopeful Todd Akin's comments on pregnancy by rape (Hint: to Republicans, it does not exist, and they have the not-science to prove it). So what, you ask me. Just another hate-filled blowhard. No shortage of those in the great United States of America. You'd disregard Mr. Huckabee as part of the lunatic fringe, my dear reader, and that would be a mistake. You see, one of the great things about America is that we are built upon principles of equality, meaning that we often let even the positively rabid mental incompetents run important things. To refuse to do so would violate the populist democratic principles that this nation was founded upon. So you think that a major mainstream political party would never throw their support before such a man? Wrong!

Mr. Huckabee will be speaking just before former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice at the Republican National Convention. To our lovely non-American readers, this is the big rally where they roll out the party's nominee for the presidency. It's a red-letter day to the Party involved, so winning airtime on the Convention is a big honor. He's even nudged former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who was an actual contender for the nomination this year, out of a primetime speaking slot. Rick Santorum is no friend to the LGBT community, so much so that gay icon and advice columnist Dan Savage led a successful campaign to redefine Santorum's name to reflect his disgusting views on the rights of other human beings. It seems that even that charming linguistic adventure did not garner enough conservative cred for the erstwhile senator, for Mr. Santorum will be looking on with, no doubt, a whole lot of envy at Huckabee's rather pretty slot from his sad Monday evening time allowance.

I have been harboring a suspicion that the strategy wonks of the Republican Party are perhaps not very good at their jobs. This election will be decided by a very, very small amount of people, and while the American public may not be incredibly enlightened as to gay rights, they are certainly geological epochs beyond the Cro-Magnons that the Republican strategy wonks have picked to speak and be associated with their presidential nominee. Do they really imagine that they are going to gain any mainstream votes by making a man who entertains reparative therapy providers, and attacks LGBT outreach in schools endorse their presidential nominee? I think our straight American friends should feel deeply insulted that a major political party thinks them that bigoted.

Anyway, nobody knows exactly what the former governor will use his time to say. However, I just watched Rick Santorum's speech, and there were plenty of not-so-subtle celebrations of "traditional" marriage including exalting "married moms and dads" as the gold standard of families and hinting that any other familial structure as a broken or missing rung on the ladder of success. His analogy, not mine. Keep in mind that Santorum hasn't augmented his impressive anti-gay resume with any recent outright attacks on the queer community as Huckabee has. I'm very much looking forward to Mr. Huckabee's speech, and you should be too.

Here's a video in which Rachel Maddow puts forward the tentative theory that Mike Huckabee could very possibly be setting the stage for presidential candidacy come 2016. Yes, a man who supports adding a constitutional amendment in addition to the "Defense" of Marriage Act to limit the definition of marriage to one man and one woman, stripping states of the right to allow gay couples to marry. Yes, a man who supported another man running for public office who said that women do not get pregnant from "legitimate rape". Yes, a man who encourages (albeit indirectly) donations to groups that push sick "cures" for that which need not be fixed and cannot be even if one could. God Bless America, everyone!

If you can, watch Mike Huckabee's speech tomorrow. It may be a portal to the future of the United States. And when people ask you about your insider political knowledge and your intuition as to the pulse of the wizened, blackened, cold heart of the Republican party, do a girl a solid and point them here.