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Max Blumenthal, The Nation, January 18, 2008

As South Carolina’s Republican primary election draws nearer, Mike Huckabee has ratcheted up his appeals to the racial nationalism of white evangelicals. “You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag,” the former Arkansas governor told a Myrtle Beach crowd on January 17, referring to the Confederate flag. “If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole. That’s what we’d do.”

Making coded appeals to white racism is nothing new for Huckabee. Indeed, well before he was a nationally known political star, Huckabee nurtured a relationship with America’s largest white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens. The extent of Huckabee’s interaction with the racist group is unclear, but this much is known: he accepted an invitation to speak at the group’s annual conference in 1993 and ultimately delivered a videotaped address that was “extremely well received by the audience.”

Descended from the White Citizens Councils that battled integration in the Jim Crow South, including at Arkansas’ Little Rock High School, the Council (or CofCC) has been designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In its “Statement of Principles,” the CofCC declares, “We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called “affirmative action” and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races.”

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Paul Krugman, The New York Times, January 18, 2008

Mexico. Brazil. Argentina. Mexico, again. Thailand. Indonesia. Argentina, again.

And now, the United States.

The story has played itself out time and time again over the past 30 years. Global investors, disappointed with the returns they’re getting, search for alternatives. They think they’ve found what they’re looking for in some country or other, and money rushes in.

But eventually it becomes clear that the investment opportunity wasn’t all it seemed to be, and the money rushes out again, with nasty consequences for the former financial favorite. That’s the story of multiple financial crises in Latin America and Asia. And it’s also the story of the U.S. combined housing and credit bubble. These days, we’re playing the role usually assigned to third-world economies.

For reasons I’ll explain later, it’s unlikely that America will experience a recession as severe as that in, say, Argentina. But the origins of our problem are pretty much the same. And understanding those origins also helps us understand where U.S. economic policy went wrong.

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Joe Conason, Salon, January 18, 2008

Behind the happy, healthy, guitar-strumming campaign style that has so besotted the national press corps, Mike Huckabee looks like something considerably less charming — a zealous proponent of the “biblical” reformation of every aspect of American society.

If that sounds too extreme and aggressive to describe the smiling Huck — who introduced himself to the country as “a conservative, but I’m not angry about it” — then consider how he explained his urge to revamp the nation’s founding document. At a public forum on the eve of the Michigan primary, while mocking Republican opponents who don’t want to append a “marriage amendment” or a “life amendment” to the Constitution, he said: “I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards.”

That outburst appalled many Republicans, who heard those words as an assault on traditional conservative and libertarian values. The next day on National Review Online, Republican speechwriter and strategist Lisa Schiffren complained: “Mike Huckabee is going to force those of us who have wanted more religion in the town square to reexamine the merits of strict separation of church and state. He is the best advertisement ever for the ACLU.”

But those offending phrases may have had even deeper significance. Not so long ago, he attributed his rising political fortunes, after many experts had written off his campaign, to the hand of the Almighty. “There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one,” he said. “It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people, and that’s the only way that our campaign could be doing what it’s doing … That’s honestly why it’s happening.”

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