What?? Are you sure you got in on the context of all this?
Nonsense. There is nothing objectionable about calling into question a furlough program conducted under a governor’s watch.
The objectionable part is selecting a specific individual and framing a television campaign around him to play on fears of the killer darkies who that governor wants to unleash upon you all.
There is actually no equivalence between Dukakis and Huckabee on this issue, either. Dukakis set up a general program, but was not specifically involved in decision making for individuals.
Huckabee, on the other hand, acted in the case of a specific individual, exerting influence to alter the decision of the parole board, threatening that he would commute his sentence anyway. It’s an entirely different circumstance, and much more telling about the personal qualifications and character of Huckabee than the furlough program is about Dukasis.
I said it to emphasize that attacks on issues can come from your “teammates” as well.
In that particular case, that turned out to be a problem - Republican operatives watching that debate were inspired to dig into the furlough issue more deeply because Gore brought it up. Such a risk applies today every time a Democrat attacks another Democrat, or a Republican another Republican.
I actually went to great pains to parse my words closely so that I couldn’t be accused of implying there was an equivalence (specifying “furlough” in the first post and making clear in the second that George H.W. Bush first mentioned Horton. And there isn’t an equivalence there.
This doesn’t change the timeline one bit, and doesn’t change the fact that the 1988 Democratic nomination battle was a nasty one. So was the Republican battle, for that matter.
And so? What happened with you guys. Did all the words run together or something?
To refresh, this is where it started:
I’m sorry, but I just lack the motivation I guess. Presidential candidate says/does/implies something stupid/mean/outrageous. Leaked by opposition party hack, or dug up by journalist seeking noteriety/riches/advancement. I don’t understand why any of this is remarkable. What happens to people every four years that they completely forget the previous umpteen election cycles? I think that’s why Moto’s comment about bad people on all sides is important. Huckabee is being skewered here because he is a Republican. No one has skewered Clinton for his 1993 speech. Meanwhile, on right-leaning boards, the Democrats are being skewered. It’s just noise. There’s precious little light in politics. It’s almost like a chess game where the winner is the person who makes the next to last mistake.That was me. That’s how I know.
Then, **Moto ** responded with this:
In all likelihood, this was dug up by an opposing Republican campaign. I’d guess Romney’s, frankly.
In this, it is also instructive to recall past campaigns - after all, the infamous Massachusetts prison furlough program wasn’t brought up by George Bush first, but by Dukakis’ Democratic opponents in the primary, notably Al Gore. Dukakis also was the one responsible for leaking the Biden plagiarism tape - two of his staffers fell on their sword over that one.
Everything old is new again.Which I took to mean that there is as much intra-party dirt digging as there is inter-party dirt digging, which sentiment sandwiches his whole post. In order to make it into something other than that, one has to dig parts of sentences out of context and run with them to a completely different place. **John ** was right about the Christian thing, but here he just comes across as picking a fight. And of course, you’re just the me-too. You always are.
Mr. Moto: It was not at all obvious that you were trying to make that point, and it doesn’t seem to me you went to any lengths at all to make sure you were clear. At any rate, we all know that inter-party mudslinging happens during the primaries.
Show me where John Mace pointed out that there is no real equivalence between Dukakis and Huckabee. If you cannot, what exactly do you mean by me being “the me-too”?
Intra, John. Intra. I did the inter. **Moto ** did the intra. 
Maybe out of habit you did a web search instead of a news search?
I got several hits, and the first few I looked at had this as a source:
Me-too in the sense of tacked on to an already irrelevant digression. I completely understood Moto’s point and, after all, I am the person he was addressing. I think **John ** made a similar error to the one I made previously with him, wherein certain buzzwords jerked me toward a conclusion that really had nothing to do with what he was saying. Same same here.
Again, nonsense. You’re slipping, pally. There’s nothing wrong with pointing out that part of an open comment from Moto to you is simply misleading. Just because you chose to agree with it, believe it or not, does not make it correct.
You are neither the arbiter of what is correct or irrelevant - not that your pathetic weaseling explanation is even reasonable vis a vis what you meant by “me too.”
And yet the assumption was that hit jobs on Huckabee were done by Democrats? I just wanted to remind folks here that that wasn’t always so.
I think you’re being a bit unfair here. Everyone (well, everyone reasonable) knows that:
(1) Every serious presidential candidate is Christian
(2) Every serious presidential candidate panders to the particular audience they’re speaking to
Thus, merely being Christian won’t get a presidential candidate pitted (really! it won’t! where’s the pitting of Fred Thompson for being Christian? Oh, right, we SDMB atheists are NOT actually the frothing anti-religious kooks you like to believe we are). What will get you pitted is scaring people with your Christianity. Mike Huckabee’s Christianity scares a lot of people, for various reasons, with this speech being a catalyst for a pit thread (which was made sillier by the fact that the speech is 10 years old).
I think Sarahfeena put her finger precisely on what really makes this speech disturbing, which is quotes like:
Now, it may be that that’s just the way Christians talk, but it sounds an awful lot like what someone would say if they wanted to be an evangelizing president who could bring Christianity to all the poor sad hell-bound heretics in the US who still need to hear Christ’s glorious message of salvation.
Clinton’s speech, on the other hand, in the context of what we know about Clinton, obviously means no such thing.
Similarly, if the people over on right wing messageboards are convinced that Hillary is a big fan of taxing people and taking their money to solve problems, it would not be hypocritical or two-faced of them to pit her for a speech in which she is talking about “communal responsibility and action”, or some such slightly-vague-but-sounds-like-it’s-about-taxing phrase, but not pit a similar speech from a Republican candidate who is known to be a tax-cutter.
Good. I’m glad we’re in agreement, then. (See how that sucks?)
Well, sure. But again you’re talking about different things than a speech, aren’t you? You’re talking about policy and appointments and things of that nature.
Now, these things are perfectly legitimate subjects for debate, which makes me wonder why they aren’t being debated, and a decade old speech is.
Equivalence, no. But there is a similarity when it comes to each man’s judgment.
(And please note, you invited this comparison, not me.)
Huckabee displayed poor judgment here. Clearly. Frankly, this is one reason (out of many) why I’m not supporting him in the primary. But what can we say about Dukakis?
When the courts ruled that the furlough program had to be open to first-degree murderers, the legislature rushed through a fix to the furlough law to block them from being furloughed. It was vetoed by Dukakis. And he changed his mind and allowed the law to be changed only after the newspaper article series I mentioned above and the public outcry accompanying it forced him to drop his opposition.
Had the law gone through the first time, Willie Horton wouldn’t have escaped during a furlough, Gore wouldn’t have had cause to mention the program, and neither would the Republicans.
It is true that Dukakis wasn’t involved in decision making for individuals in the furlough program (though he was in other cases, like most governors.) However, the veto decision was a decision as well, and he can be criticized for it, since it had problematic effects.
OK. Anyway, I think we’ve said all there is to say on this matter, and we seem to be left with little more to do than snipe at each other, so I think I’ll bow out of this thread and let it die its well deserved death.
Fundies are not a block that is complete agreement in all sects. When Huckabee refused to have the state pay for an abortion for a young teenager who was raped by her stepfather, I believe some thought he went too far.
Huck went after Mormonism yesterday saying Romney must believe that jesus and the devil are brothers. Romney was offended by the attack ,but I have not see him address the issue yet. Dirty religious politics will follow.
As a Christian, I’m not sure why that’s offensive or why Huckabee would find it controversial. It all hinges on the premise of whether angels are spiritual beings created in the image of God. If they are, then Lucifer is our brother. If not, then not. Seeing as how a Christian is to return good for evil anyway, I don’t see why it would matter.
"Liberal
Charter Member
[…]
sucks…".
(I have no idea what your last post was about. Are you now claiming I’ve taken words out of context? That’s a bit different than accusing me of “me too” posting, and is not relevant to anything evident to the rest of us. Something is amiss.)
I already explained the me-too remark. I also already explained how John took Moto’s remarks out of context. You took the position that my response to John was “nonsense”. If that doesn’t mean you support his position against ours, then you need to do some serious work on your expository skills. Now it seems like you just want to pick a fight. (That often seems to be your MO.) I’m going to join **John ** at this point and just disengage. I’m not even interested in whatever the hell it is you’re talking about at this point, and **Dio ** has obviously abandoned this ill-advised thread.