Mike Huckabee (R-Dogpatch)
Rod Dreher (The Dallas Morning News) and Tom Pauken (Dallas Blog) are gleeful over Mike Huckabee's surge in opinion polls. Dreher is a "disaffected conservative" upset by Bush's handling of the war, his lack of fiscal discipline and his failure to push the religious conservative agenda. Dreher suggests that Huckabee's rise is due to "cultural and religious conservatives [being] fed up with being treated like useful idiots by the Republican establishment." (If the shoe fits, wear it, I always say.)
Pauken uses three separate posts to take potshots at George W Bush and Karl Rove. He praises Texas Gov. Rick Perry for saying George W Bush was never a fiscal conservative, then goes Perry one better by calling Bush a "big spender". (Bush's rise in Texas coincided with Pauken's fall.) Pauken attributes Huckabee's rise to not following the Republican game plan as developed by Karl Rove. (Rove helped Bush climb over Pauken in Texas.) Finally, Pauken attempts to drape the mantle of Ronald Reagan over Mike Huckabee. Huckabee says, "Before I look parents in the eye to explain why I put their son’s or daughter’s life at risk, I want to do everything possible to avoid conflict." Pauken thinks that sounds a lot like something Ronald Reagan would say. The editors at National Review Online remember a different Reagan. They remember the Reagan who "lived and breathed the global fight with the Soviet Union for decades." They liken Huckabee's foreign policy pronouncements to Jimmy Carter naivete.
The Republican Party is fighting like children over Reagan's inheritance. Those who feel used by Bush and Rove are seeking sweet revenge. So far, damage has been contained because each faction has reason to hope that its man might still emerge victorious from the primaries. By February, we'll know who actually does. Then, the show will shift to watching whether the GOP patches up its rifts or breaks aparts altogether.
Is Bush Caught Up in Baseball's Drug Scandals?
Slate's Bruce Reed digs deeper than George Mitchell did into baseball's scandals involving players using performance enhancing drugs. Specifically, into the 1992 trade that brought Jose Canseco from the Oakland A's to Texas and George Bush's Texas Rangers. The A's suspected Canseco of using performance enhancing drugs, so much so that they considered testing him. Instead they unloaded him to the Texas Rangers, where owner George Bush welcomed him, hoping Canseco would get the Rangers, finally, into the playoffs.
Other players on the Rangers' roster that year also show up in the Mitchell report, but not George Bush himself. That leaves the big question hanging. What did George Bush know and when did he know it? Don't count on baseball's owners showing any interest in getting to the bottom of that question.
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