Via Politico, I see Mike Huckabee now has a blog! I'm now hoping he'll a) really take to the medium and b) run again in 2012, just so we'll have a blogger-candidate's entire post history to comb through and amuse ourselves with. Yesterday Huck blogged from Japan ("the raw fish is sometimes a little tough on a guy who grew up thinking fried catfish was seafood") to implore his fellow GOPers to play nice with Obama:
What I am saying is that we need to challenge Obama on the basis that his ideas are the wrong ones—not attacking him personally. If people spend their time repeating a bunch of internet driven drivel about his middle name (he didn’t choose his anymore than I chose mine), or his race (I do sincerely celebrate that our country has moved to a place where a person’s race doesn’t limit him from aspiring to the highest office in our land, but I just believe that due to his proposals and lack of substantive experience, he’s gone far enough—not because of his race, but because of his sincere, but misguided proposals), or his church (there are far more important reasons for us to elect Senator McCain than where Obama went to church).
Politics ought to be VERTICAL and Obama’s ideas will not take this country UP, but DOWN. I think he is a sincere and obviously a very intelligent and charismatic person. For us to deny that is foolish. Our focus should be to logically and systematically explain why ideas really do matter and why some are bad for those struggling as it is to pay the rent.
It's a sweet idea, but was Huckabee born yesterday? The generic ballot favors Democrats by more percentage points than it has in two years. On the ideas front, not many Americans are in a mood to trust the GOP's offerings. If he really believes Obama's "ideas will not take this country UP, but DOWN," the only hope is to be a little Machiavellian about it and run against Obama by attacking him personally -- by, to put it generously, questioning his judgment, or more cynically, questioning his middle name.
--Eve Fairbanks