The Mike Huckabee Show (All That)

“When a candidate for the nation’s highest office is outraged by bags of snacks, it’s probably time for a shift in focus.”

―Steve Benen

And, you know, walking into a gas station and seeing a bag of godawfully-flavored, rainbow-colored tortilla chips is the sort of thing that might make one chuckle and wonder quietly what Mike Huckabee would say. And, you know, in the moment it feels like hack comedy, the easy bit that anyone can write and everyone thinks of. First thing to mind, that sort of thing.

And then the Preacher Clown goes and picks a fight with a bag of chips.

Yes, really.

But here’s the thing:

Right Wing Watch noted yesterday that when Chick-fil-A faced criticism from the left, and some LGBT groups and their allies organized boycotts, Huckabee condemned the moves as “economic terrorism”.

He added that there are many companies that are led by executives with whom he disagrees, but Huckabee said he’d never call for a boycott of those businesses.

It is one thing to sit back and lob flaming softballs about a man’s word being his word, and all that, but Mr. Huckabee manages to show us, from time to time, what it looks like.

Still, though, perhaps it is most important to remember that the former Arkansas governor and one-time Southern Baptist pastor, is making a stand against efforts to reduce bullying in our society.

Blessed are the whozat?

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Image note: Former Arkansas Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks at the Republican Leadership Summit in Nashua, New Hampshire, 18 April 2015. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

Benen, Steve. “Huckabee picks a fight with a bag of chips”. msnbc. 6 October 2015.

The Ted Cruz Show (Epistemic Closure Loop Mix)

It would be wrong to start with, “One of the comforts of life …”. After all, that’s a low standard for comfort. Still, though, we can rest assured that in today’s political climate, time is on … uh … the side of … er … well, I guess reality, but that is so self-evident as to be anti-climactic.

Right.

Let us start, then, with Dave Weigel for Bloomberg:

After Texas Senator Ted Cruz addressed the First in the Nation summit in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Saturday, he headed to a basement conference room for a conversation with young Republicans. There was no filming of the speech, but reporters were allowed to sit in as Cruz fielded questions about Iran, millennials, and his own fitness for president. When one audience member asked Cruz what executive experience he could bring to the job, Cruz lambasted the “greybeards” in Washington for coming up with the “senator versus governor” framework in the first place.

“Obama is not a disaster because he was a senator,” said Cruz. “Obama is a disaster because he’s an unmitigated socialist, what he believes is profoundly dangerous, and he’s undermined the Constitution and the role of America in the world.”

Remember, this is Sen. Cruz’s response to a question about executive experience, and his answer was to reframe the issue as one of Republican moderates versus hardliners:

According to Cruz, the only reason that pundits were saying the GOP needed to run a governor, not a senator, was that “most of the establishment moderates” in the field were governors. “In 1980, the strong conservative running in the race was Ronald Reagan,” Cruz said. “You didn’t hear ‘we need a governor’ then, because he was a governor. So none of those voices said, ‘We need a governor.’ They said, ‘You know what? We need a former congressman, named George Herbert Walker Bush. Likewise, in 2008, the moderate choice was a senator, John McCain. Go back and look at the TV discussions to find any of these voices going on television, saying ‘we need a governor’ in 2008. Then, the choice of those voices was that candidate, so that argument didn’t get used.”

Still, in the middle of it all, Cruz needs to take a moment to beat a dead horse.

Thus, something completely different―a backstory.