Stop misnaming Republican Lincoln Day dinners

While viewing Steven Spielberg's compelling film, "Lincoln",  I couldn't avoid  thinking of the wide gulf between the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln's age and the impostors that have kidnapped the GOP of today. In the 1860s, Republicans were the good guys who supported their president's efforts to preserve the Union and free the slaves.  Lincoln had little hope that he would be reelected.   The Democrats were the bad guys clinging to slavery while engaged in a war of secession.

But in a dramatic reversal of roles,  the capture of the Republican Party by the Tea Partyers and their wealthy enablers has openly abused the Lincoln of wisdom, courage and patriotism (so sensitively  revealed by Daniel Day-Lewis).  There is still silly talk of secession within wacko groups.
And few will deny that racism kept Barack Obama's victory closer than it might have been.  For confirmation, simply check the figures of white-guy voters.

In February, or a little later,  Republicans will stage their traditional Lincoln Day Dinners, often showing preference for right-wing GOP speakers.   The trend by the Summit County GOP, for example,  has featured   such conservative icons  as Mike Huckabee (whom, it says in the invitation, is a "leading favorite to top"  the 2012 presidential ticket;  Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the party's very very conservative Study Committee;  and Rick Santorum, who needs no further introduction.  I have occasionally referred to these misnamed "Lincoln" events as identity  thefts.

 Although I don't expect happier results, may I suggest that now that they have lost the election, the  sponsors of these political stage shows find a new name for the dinners .  The  Norquist Day Dinner?  The LaPierre Day Dinner?  At least this would be a more honest approach and not slander Lincoln in his grave.

Huckabee plays God card in school massacre

How delusional!

While the nation searched into the deep night for answers to the numbing tragedy that murderously claimed 20 children and seven adults, a prominent preacher who once aspired to the presidency insisted that he can explain it.

Speaking from his favorite pulpit at Fox News, Mike Huckabee unhesitantly played the God card.

By his reasoning, a young man went into an elementary school in Newtown, Conn, armed to the teeth because America has banned God from public schools.

The former Republican presidential candidate put it this way:  "We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools.  Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

As the Huffington Post noted, Huckabee has debased rational discourse in the past when such massacres occurred.  "We don't have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem,"  the preacher said. "What we have is a sin problem" by denying God in our daily lives.

Legitimate rape, Akin's moronic non-sequitur

Problem solved.

When Rep. Todd Akin ,  the Missouri Republican authority on something he called "legitimate rape,"  he  turned his senate race against Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill upside down and inside out.  To the hysterical boos from the clubhouse of his terrified GOP brethren for his rock-headedness, he retreated to his cave to declare that he "misspoke."

Listen up:  If I referred to my sister-in-law as Patricia instead of Mary, I misspoke in a senior moment.

If I innocently told a visitor to turn right and not left at the next traffic light, I misspoke.

If I told someone that palm trees couldn't possibly grow in Ireland, I misspoke.

But in Akin's case, he went and  and on about the "legitimate rape" fantasy.

In a TV interview, the Republican nominee said it was rare for women who have been legitimately raped to get pregnant.

"From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," he said.  'If it's a legitimate rape the female body has ways to shut the whole thing down. But let's assume maybe that didn't work or something.  I think there should be punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist."

There was enough comment there to indicate he really believed what he was saying when he said it.  He's the full Right-to-Life and Tea Party package, who  didn't back off from their  support of the six-term congressman.

I heard he was back on the Mike Huckabee show. Back in the Republican primary, Preacher Mike described Akin as a "courageous conservative" and "Bible-based Christian".

Meantime, I still haven't figured out the legitimacy of rape.  Folks, take care.    The swamp on the right is spreading.

Prayerful exits and the lure of personal TV security

NEWS FROM THE post-Huckabee/Trump era:

Rick Santorum, the presidential candidate on the Piety Ticket, has praised Huckabee for praying before deciding not to seek the GOP nomination. But as long as he attributes heavenly guidance to Huckabee's decision, could it have also been influenced by prosperity theology, which holds that God believes the faithful should be rewarded with riches. That said, it's only fair to report that Huck stood to lose his $500,000 job on the Fox payroll if he declared his candidacy.

MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell took a deserved bow for nailing the exact date that The Donald would drop out of speculated contention. It was the day that NBC would announce its new program lineup, which included Trump's fanciful show. O'Donnell had seen how Trump was gaming the process for months as a pretender to the throne in order to create still more interest in his TV program. Not that everyone of the national pundits caught on to the travesty. Among those who predicted a Trump candidacy were Charles Krauthammer, Time Magazine's Mark Halperin and some other ga-gas on the right.

UNDETERRED BY a few miscues, the national pundits push on to more undiscovered land, raising questions to fill air time and newsprint with ill-authorittive guesses on the likely beneficiaries of the Huckabee/Trump exodus. Michelle Bachmann? Tim Pawlenty? Rick Santorum? Newt Gingrich? Stay tuned - for another year and a half!

GOP presidential: Three on base, two out

THE REPUBLICAN presidential field? Let me guess. The number running: 3. The number running away: 2. The number of mentionables: roughly 6. The number of unmentionables: How many bananas are there in a bunch?

So far, it hasn't been a good year for the political pundits trying to tout a mock draft. Two of the potential candidates have now explained their departures in biological terms. Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor, said he just didn't have fire in his belly. And now Mike Huckabee says it was his heart who told him not to run. In his heart he also knew he would have to give up his Fox TV show.

All this b0dy talk has become the new X-factor for the politicos trying to figure out one party's presidential race in which people are gasping, None of the Above. Will Sunday morning panelists begin to take a more serious look at Donald Trump's hair, not as a helicopter pad, but as a much more decisive element in his final decision? Peoria wants to know.

The official GOP field as we speak includes Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania who was routed in this bid for reelection; Newt Gingrich, who said he has overcome his past sins with help from God; and Rep. Ron Paul, who has just likened Medicare and Social Security to slavery. Should we remind them that they might find their next line of work on craigslist?

Among the unmentionables that leaves us with Michelle Bachmann, who is already said to benefit from Huckabee's heart-felt decision since both are the sort of conservatives who function out of the same shell; Mitt Romney, who was boasting about his health care reforms as Governor of Massachusetts when it was still socially acceptable for Republicans to say so; Sarah Palin, who appears to have peaked in 2008; Tim Pawlenty, who doesn't make a shadow on the sunniest day, and Gov. Mitch Daniels, former director of George Bush's Office of Management and Budget.

Oh, and Herman Cain, too. He's the founder of Godfather's Pizza who will soon make his candidacy official. . There are others, but why bother? I think I'll just hang around until the helicopter lands safely on Trump's unique coiffure.

UPDATE: Saying that his business was his greatest passion in life, Trump today declared his un-candidacy. Fortunately he didn't mention his hair as a factor in his decision. That leaves three who are running and three who are running away.

Let's have a moment of silence for poor Iowa

WHAT MUST LIFE be like in Iowa to wake up each morning, turn on the radio and be told that Michele is back in town. Michele Bachmann, that is, the Minnesota congresswoman who is doing her part to move the Hawkeye state closer to a theocracy that she defines as freedom and liberty and such. Most recently, she again took on Planned Parenthood, now effortlessly describing it as the "LensCrafters of big abortions."

We can't be sure how that will go over with the execs at LensCrafters and whether they would rather that Michele drop her metaphors on a rival company. You can fairly ask why she chose an eyeglass company over, say, the "General Motors of big abortions" or the New York Yankees. Now we're beginning to make a little sense. Besides, what are big abortions, anyway?'

Poor Iowa, where there are some very nice people who don't need all of this silliness for the many months leading to the Republican presidential caucuses. They already have Rep. Steve King, whose dumb utterances arrive daily like the bong-bong of a grandfather clock. He will be remembered many decades from now as the fellow who said that if the government had followed his advice to abolish the IRS, one of its buildings wouldn't have been standing in February 2010 to tempt a crazed pilot to crash into it.

Nothing to be gained by mentioning that Mike Huckabee is working on another tent revival to carry him through the caucuses now that he has explained that he was misunderstood when he cast president Obama as a Mau Mau. Wanna bet that there won't be flyers tucked under automobile wipers on caucus day repeating Huckabee's original idea?

And it has to get worse before it has any hope of getting better. Donald Trump is scheduled to speak to a Republican Lincoln (!) Day dinner in Iowa in June. Will the thrice-married developer be inclined to speak on family values? Or will he still not have exhausted his mad crusade to expose Obama as, what? A darkly tanned Siberian?

Again, poor Iowa. The state deserves something better - and there's no chance that it will get it.

The BJ tries to report a story - and doesn't

THE BEACON JOURNAL'S strange coverage of the Summit County Republican Lincoln Day dinner in its Sunday edition left me wondering whether most of it wasn't handled by remote control with pre-program comments from a few admiring folks standing in line to buy Mike Huckabee's book. A couple of things stood out in the boilerplate article:

Although the BJ reported there were 1, 300 who assembled to hear the probable presidential candidate, Quaker Station's on-line reference in the Akron hotels list says the Grand Station Hall's capacity is 850. Huh? It's not unusual for pols to inflate the attendance and it does appear that the paper went for the hook.

The bigger hole in the story was the absence of Party Chairman Alex Arshinkoff, who is rehabbing away from home from critical foot surgery. A Republican source mentioned to me that it was Arshinkoff's first absence from a major county party event in 39 years. Seems to me, that deserved a place in an article stuck together as Journalism-Lite.

Finally, it was noted that Huckabee did not make himself available to the media; no questions, no answers, thank you. Folks, he gamed the BJ. He got the favorable publicity that noted that he is running second only to Mitt Romney, in Republican approval even though such polls tell us nothing. .

Newspapers should never allow this to happen. You want some positive free coverage, Mike, you damned well better make yourself available. But I am regressing to the days when it wouldn't have happened..

Besides the business about the book hustle, the only other thing we learned was about the fellow waiting to buy the book. He described Huckabee as a "good man" and a "Christian."

As matters stand in the GOP these days, invaluable style points, I'd say, for the ex-Arkansas preacher.

When Lincoln Day has no meaning for the new GOP

AS I MENTIONED earlier, I will not be attending the Summit County Republican Lincoln Day Dinner Saturday night at Quaker Station. Big deal, right?

Let me explain: First of all, as you may have guessed, I am not a Republican. Secondly, I wouldn't want to be keeping company with Chairman Alex Arshinkoff's special guest, Mike Huckabee, who will be signing his book(s), playing guardian angel with all of his well wishers and promising to lead a failing nation away from President Obama's road to perdition.

An evangelical preacher, Huckabee has been spending some time rounding up hundreds of like-minded preachers in an apparent effort to run the table in the 2012 Iowa presidential caucuses just as he did in 2008. In Iowa, the former GOP has become a subsidary of the right-wing pulpitistas who are educating people on how to be "Biblically informed" in politics.

Huckabee has left no doubt that he wants to Christianize the nation as he sees fit, and so Akron area Republicans will get a strong sense of his purifying anti-Obama, anti-gay and various other assaults on secular abominations targeted by the social conservatives.

There has been some feeling, I'm sure, that my anti-Arshinkoff pique is soley the reaction to being unceremoniously ejected from his big wingding last summer. Wrong. As a nosy reporter over the years, I've been thrown out of much better places. But the incident at the party's fundraiser fueled my stronger disdain for what little is left of the GOP as a whole. As such, Arshinkoff is merely a local apparatchik for a deranged national party whose marketing message has become the property of Tea Party favorites like Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and an army of freshmen senators and representatives in Congress. Don't think so? Ask John Boehner.

In a relatively short time on Capitol Hill and among legislators and governors' offices across America, they have strutted around with weighty chips on their shoulders since the November election. Insisting that their thoughts have been sculpted by "the people who have spoken", they have taken enormous liberty with realities, from huffily condemning environmental concerns about global warming to downgrading the needs of the elderly and the poor. (Goodbye food stamps?)

They have become the new hucksters of the Midway, seeking novel ways to challenge voters on Election Day. In Ohio, where there has been no evidence of serious voter fraud, the GOP is intent on creating new hurdles for voters to prevent, um, serious voter fraud. They have set out to eliminate unions once and for all under the cover of restricting collective bargaining while at the same time denying the public unions the right to strike. By the most rational labor relations gambit, that is still a non sequitur.

They have bashed gays with Falwell-style license ("Love the sinner, but hate the sin" - Huh!) and disagreed with military sources who say ridding the ranks of Don't Ask Don't Tell is not causing any problems. Same sex marriages? Stem cell research? Forget it - this from a party who wants get the government off our backs.

While we're at it, how about their mind control efforts as they rework our text books and darkly monitor what they consider offensive in museums. The evangelical governor of Maine orders the removal of a mural at the state's Department of Labor as being too "pro-labor". (You can't make up such insanity.) In Wisconsin, the Republican Party has demanded to see the e-mails of a distinguished University of Wisconsin history professor who has been critical of the governor. It is purely a fishing expedition.

National Public Radio? It's too liberal - and good luck on explaining that spin. Sarah Palin, the wintry wind from the north, has slammed the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, describing the two agencies as "trivialities". She obviously has no sense of the darkness and dense culture of the Middle Ages. A real case may be made that we are not talking about liberal broadcasting here, which would be hard to prove anyway. Instead, there are religious broadcasters waiting in the wings for spots on the radio spectrum that will be vacated when some NPR stations go out of business..

In their long pursuit of an abortion-free land, these culture warriors otherwise acting as politicians also want to put Planned Parenthood out of business (with plenty of help from the Catholic and Southern Baptist hierarchies).

Sometimes the new arrivals stumble over their own far-fetched ideas. In Ohio, Gov. Kasich wants to privatize liquor sales to please his crony investors even though booze is the only profitable business run by the state. In his haste to serve his own contributors, he has been ready to privatize everything except Lake Erie. But only because the state only owns a slim part of it.

All of the above is at the heart of my scorn of the Republican Party. Arshinkoff's antics merely helped me file it under damaged goods.

It's ironic that the Lincoln Day Dinner may be held on the week end when a Gingrich 2 may be upon us - a government shutdown. And who will be hurt the most by it?

I've decided that instead of giving a $50 dinner fee to the GOP on Saturday, I'll send the money to where reality exists 24 hours a day - the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank's Harvest for Hunger. It will do a lot more good for humanity, don't you think?

Harold MacMillan, the former British prime minister, once grunted to an aide as he was uncomfortably obliged to move into a crowd of voters during a campaign.

"Beastly things," he said. "Elections."

That's where we are today, people.

UPDATE; Arshinkoff has reached farthest to the right for the Ohio congressman who will introduce Huckabee: Urbana area Republican Jim Jordan, former OSU assistant wrestling coach who has won several awards from right-wing groups , including Pro-life Legislator of the Year from the United Conservatives of Ohio. He is now chairman of the Republican Study Committee in Washington, a conservative outfit with no peer. He has joined four other congressmen in sponsoring a bill whose provisions include capping food stamps for all recipients and even denying them to a family if one of its members is on strike. Among his other positions, needless to mention, are limits to sex education, opposition to gay marriage and support of the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. Whew! Way to go, Alex, who happily describes Jordan in a press release as a "fast rising conservative star"!

For a modest $50, you get the Arshinkoff-Huckabee tandem

IF YOU WANT TO spend an evening with a fellow who suspects that President Obama is a Mau Mau, Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff has created an opportunity for you. He's scheduled Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas preacher and governor, to be the guest at the party's Lincoln Day Dinner on April 9 at Quaker Station. It's $50 a plate, and my guardian angel has sternly warned me against going to the event. Besides, what do Arshinkoff and Huckabee have to do with Lincoln?

Huckabee will be in town to sign his new book - whose title is A Simple Government - and help Alex advance his boast of a bountiful Republican spirit hereabouts.

In a review, New York Times Columnist Gail Collins described the book as "one long howl about the Obama White House," where the author finds an A student who is an arrogant nerd, who "can't hit, he can't throw and he can't run." Nice.

By the way, did I mention that Huckabee is running for president if the crick don't rise ,even if George Will dissed him as "implausible"? Still, sitting through a dinner with a Razorback guitar player who autographs books is worth something, I guess, at least for Arshinkoff, whose political skills reside in inviting Southern politicians to his bashes. The vintage list includes Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, and now Huckabee.

One Republican who won't be there is indicted auto dealer Tom Ganley, who was enthusiastically endorsed as a leader when Ganley, as a congressional candidate last year, appeared as a guest on Huckabee's Fox TV show. Indeed, Ganley returned the favor by hiring Huckabee's midwest presidential campaign coordinator to be his own campaign manager. Not that it did any good.

Trust me. Alex will be his usual effusive self with Huckabee. For fifty bucks, the steak had better be tender.

Republican attack of "vibrations of weirdness"

ARCH CONSERVATIVE George Will's discovery of "vibrations of weirdness" within the Republican Party is hardly news to liberals who have been scorned for saying the same thing for a long time. He was reacting to presidential wannabe Mike Huckabee's insistence that Barack Obama has evolved from the Zombies that we've been hearing so much about these days. By the way that he continues to make a fool of himself in the media, it's evident that he is increasingly immodest about his credibility....Meantime, Sen. John McCain was back on the Sunday morning talk shows, which is the equivalent of staring into the same cage at the zoo for hours while ignoring all of the other attractions. The networks simply won't allow him to back-pedal into oblivion.

And how about this one: the Republican House Speaker in New Hampshire is upset because hordes of young people register and vote on the same day. He wants the practice to end and there's a Republican bill in the legislature that would do just that. Says Speaker Bill O'Brien of the tads: "They don't have life experience and they just vote their feelings and they're taking away the town's ability to govern themselves." Gee. I thought that's what adult voters do.

Time for a GOP presidential round-robin tourney?

AS I WITNESS one potential Republican presidential candidate after another making a vacuous Tea Party-inspired statement in front of a TV camera, I confess my bewilderment over why the job should be so appealing to people who would be a lot better off managing traveling circuses. We are now hearing, for example, a lot of talk about impeaching President Obama, an intrusion that wistful Republicans haven't tried since 1998. The Democrats had a good opportunity to corner George Bush with much graver charges than sexual trysts, but, as is often their brand, they lacked the will to stir up trouble.

Anyway, I think I now know why so many Republicans are running for president: Truth be told, each one has such a low opinion of all of the others that they are convinced that this is their moment to run the table. That will become more obvious when, say, Newt Gingrich officially declares his candidacy. What other reasons can a retread in his late '60s with a thoroughly troubled past possibly have? And Rick Santorum? A religious zealot who was trampled when he ran for reelection to the Senate in Pennsylvania? So far, Newt is ahead in that matchup, but not by much. Mike Huckabee might edge Gingrich if he wasn't in the news each night for one more assault on Obama's legitimacy as a native-born American. He seems to be trailing the entire field in style points. Mitt Romney, a Mormon whose health care reforms in Massachusetts were ever so much like the new Federal law?

We are now past the point of no return, but you can see how this is going down.

I invite you to play this game as well as a sort of vapid round-robin competition that could end up with nobody left standing. In that deferral to democracy, you can at least fill in a blank to the end of the season. So I ask you: Wouldn't it be smart for the GOP to take a cue from the Miami Heat or New York Knicks and rent a name player to pose as a presidential candidate to relieve the party 's dearth of credible standard-bearers?

As of now, my choice would be, oh....Sen. Frank LaRose?

Huckabee's version of Obama's childhood

OUR ALARMIST former preacher, Mike Huckabee, continues to warn his audiences that he is quite concerned about Barack Obama because the president grew up in Kenya. Unfortunately for Mike, his Book of Revelations is erroneous. As others quickly pointed out, Obama never set foot in Kenya until he was more thn 20 years old. On the other hand, Huckabee grew up in Arkansas. Next question, please.

UPDATE: Conceding that he "misspoke" when he accused President Obama of spending his childhood in Kenya, Huckabee said he still considers Obama to be "anti-American". People, there's going to be a rising tide of this kind of make-believe tale as the presidential race roars onward, and if that's all that Huckabee's got, don't invite him to the Republican candidates' debate.

She's not even stopping to take a breath

SARAH PALIN is America's leading growth industry. To those of you who have tired of hearing the name, she's only getting started. The New York Times, which is not usually given to superlatives to political pop stars, has already described her as a "booming...media empire." That seems a bit excessive. Media empires tend to boom anyway.

Still, Sarah is never content to rely only on a wink and a nod in her 24/7 quest for the presidency. She has her own TV series, sort of a travelogue on the wonders of Alaska, where she spends as little time as possible. She is on Rupert Murdock's payroll as a chirping insider on the Fox News of the day. She is a mainliner at right-wing rallies. And her daughter Bristol found her way onto "Dancing with the Stars" to finish a dubious third-place in the finals, outlasting purported better dancers for TV ratings-sake.

Oh, in her spare moments she writes books. For some reason, she is said to prefer California for her literary endeavors. She will begin a national tour, including a stop-off in a small town in politically-hot Iowa, for her latest tome, "America by Heart"" - a wispy title that is sure to become a best-seller among all of her heart-felt disciples. It didn't hurt that the advance notices from HarperCollins, her publisher, describes it as a "highly personal testament to her deep love of country, her strong roots in faith, and her profound appreciation of family." (She will doubtless leave her affection for Babe Ruth, Shirley Temple and the Durants' voluminous 10-part history of civilization for her next effort.)

Nevertheless, HarperCollins seems to have touched the traditional native emotions of Americans with its clever way of saying "God, mother and country." That squares nicely with her own boast that she is doing the work of God.

By now Palin, has surely moved ahead of some of the other presidential sketches such as impossible dreamer Newt Gingrich, deep south governor Haley Barbour and Mike Huckabee. Poor Mike has already warned the other so-called contenders for the crown that Sarah might "run away" with the nomination, and very well could be. I can't imagine Newt Gingrich tugging at a kayak in the Alaskan wilds and Barbour scaling a deadly cliff for a travelogue. For that matter it would be unseemly for Huckabee, a man of God, to beat a convulsing and bloodied fish in front of a movie camera.

What seemed impossible after she helped shatter John McCain's dream of the presidency, now seems quite doable for a tireless, self-absorbed, heavily-promoted agent of promise for a staggering nation - at least among her wing of the Republican Party. Her GOP opponents are taking notice. And some are already wincing, "It's scary....Very scary."