In all seriousness, with recent polls showing Huckabee gaining on Mitt in Iowa, we could see Huckabee beat Mitt. If Huckabee beats Mitt in Iowa and NH, Mitt will have only one response, and you’ll definitely see it in South Carolina. It will be serial rapist Wayne Dumond. Mitt’s spent too much of his own money to lose this to some upstart Baptist radio minister from Arkansas.
But if Mitt’s connections & money for ads & organization can keep Huckabee at second place, then Huck becomes a valuable VP.
Please share widely!
Oddly, I like Huckabee’s occasional appeals to populism (I hope CMD and GGW are not reading. Maybe I can distract them into commenting on this editorial.)
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Huckabee’s social conservatism creeps me out though. The idea that he has a chance of winning is pretty scary.
Huckabee is astoundingly right on some things (prison reform) and astoundingly wrong on others (bedroom snooping).
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And he’s also even money to win in Iowa.
From what I have read, Huckabee is a soft touch.
A Huckabee-Romney ticket would be formidable.
And on the editorial, I think recession is likely at this point.
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There is a ways to go on the housing front. I’m not sure that this necessarily means that prices are due to continue to plunge. The “death spiral” problem results from panicky lenders foreclosing very aggressively as loans default, dumping supply onto the market, which depresses prices. At depressed prices, refinancing becomes difficult or impossible, which stimulates defaults, leading to agressive foreclosure, etc. Although foreclosures are way up, it isn’nt yet killing all sectors of the market in the same way that in did in the last 80s. I suspect that lenders are proceeding more carefully this time. That said, more big drops are certainly a pretty big threat right now.
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The price of oil isn’t helping. Eventually, it will just make everything more expensive and the energy required to do anything becomes more expensive, sapping productivity. In that way, it is not unlike a huge tax increase, and has a similar effect. It certainly risks a return to the 70s paradox of declining economic activity but inflationary prices.
Recession comes, or not, and even if worst case, it’s hard to imagine a recession lasting more than 3 quarters. Coincidently, the Iraq war situation will probably have improved. So, right about election time, there’s going to be a recovering economy, repleat with low interest rates, some bargain real estate and a diminishing war presence in Iraq. Whatever is a Democrat to do come election time if he/she can’t campaign on change?
I’m not sure that I see evidence that Iraq will have improved. Indeed, once the surge runs its course, we may see a regression. Given what we have learned since 2003, exepcting good news from Iraq is a fool’s errand. There will be isolated patches of good news, as there has been since the beginning, for Hugh Hewitt et al. to denounce the media for missing, and which will qualify as progress toward acheivement of a goal to be articulated in the context of the bit of good news. Hard to see much besides circling unless there is a dramatic change in policy.
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On housing, we’ll learn a lot by late spring. There is likely another round of resets in January on floating rate mortgages, which will continue to feed the deafult pipeline at least until summer. So, the best hope there is that housing prices stabilize, as they aren’t going up for awhile.
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On the energy markets, any easing of price due to concern about recession, which would ordinarily be a relatively helpful feedback, could be erased by the “fear premium” that got us up to $100/bbl recently. “Free premium,” I believe, roughly translates as the market’s “fear” that the current U.S. executive will do something stupid and destructive in Iran. That ain’t changing until a year from January.
…oil and gas contracts being recast to the Euro as a reserve currency. The day of the “almighty US$” is apparently over.
I don’t think the $100 bbl is fear premium, although that hypothesis is hard to prove or disprove. Oil has moved up in tandem with gold and silver and many other commodities (soybeans for example and copper). Commodity inflation looks more like a symptom of the weak dollar than fear.
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It’s tough to forecast interest rates, but if the long bond is any measure, rates appear to be rock solid or trending down, despite the weak dollar.
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Corporate earnings are still good. The transport index is weak lately, which always has struck me as a great leading indicator. Housing is lousy, but that’s expected from the sub-prime stuff, but we worked our way through the the RTC back in the 1980s, and the subprime problem is no bigger, relatively speaking. Subprime is big, just not as big (relative to the whole economy) as the media is yelling.
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The key, as you’ve pointed out is the consumer. Jan through March (big re-set months) will be telling.
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The final shoe to drop will be the effect on State budgets, if consumer spending drops. Mr. “together we can” might have some tough choices ahead, if the already tight budget is tighted further with lousy tax revenues.
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My hypothesis: 12 months is a long time. There’s at least some possibility that by Nov., the recession (if any) will have passed; Iraq will be at worst, no worse and at best, better. Under either scenario, the dems don’t have a game plan to speak of, so do you vote for the Rep who says I’ll do a better job in Iraq than GWB or the Dem who says the same? Iraq’s a coin toss, and faced with a decent economy, perhaps we’ll end up with a close, House and Senate.
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I just love the smell of grid-lock in the morning. Smells like victory: if they’re getting nothing accomplished at least they’re not bothering me.
Pretty unlikely, I think inflation is much more likely which will shred any chance that the fed can lower rates.
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That inflation, BTW, is exactly what most people who’ve ever taken an intro level economics class predicted when Bush started running up these massive deficits. It’s hitting late because we underestimated the amount of dollars that China would buy but it’s still hitting. Maybe if Bush had read his own economics advisor’s (Greg Mankiw) intro textbook as to what you risk by running huge deficits, we’d have a much sounder economy right now at the cost of not quite as much money in the pockets of the top .1%
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…by aggressively foreclosing, other than increasing the housing “inventory” that they can’t sell anyway. If I were a potential buyer who didn’t have to buy, I’d wait. But the effect of that is to depress the housing market even further. Aggressive foreclosures benefits the potential buyers, who can wait until the market seems to have reached a bottom. But it screws not only the foreclosed householders, and also the lenders themselves.
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And that’s irrespective of the price of oil (and natural gas, by the way).
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…Huckabee is a Southern Baptist minister. Given the retail nature of American Protestantism, one does not get to be a successful minister by being overtly hateful–although we know how they can manipulate language to be covertly hateful.
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I’ve seen Huckabee one-on-one with, for example, Jon Stewart, and he comes across as being quite affable. He’s affable as a snake, but quite affable.
Like mayor Richard daley one and two. And the Mayor of Philadelphia that dropped “the bomb” on the project. John Edwards, Hillary and Bill. Would you like me to continue?
Seems to me you’re trying to refute a claim raj didn’t make in the first place. Where in his comment did you see a claim that Democrats are saints, or were you just trying to change the subject?
…I didn’t make. Is that usual for Republicans?
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BTW, I’ve been poking “fun” (aka making diatribes) at Mayor Goode of Philly for well over a decade for burning down an entire Philadephia city block to root out a group of squatters.
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Stupid is, as stupid does.
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Also, I’ll be interested in seeing who GWBush pardons before he leaves office. I suspect that we’ll see a lot of pardons of the potential criminal defendants from his malAdministration’s malAsdministration. Of course, that wouldn’t protect them from civil lawsuits.
The Reverend Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, Washington:
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And to appease those who might call me a Christian hater, compare that with what Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently said about the Gene Robinson fiasco:
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I bet Huckabee leans closer to Huthcerson’s opinion of Homosexuality than Tutu’s.
Theology is a complicated discipline which requires far more nuance than you give to Christianity instead using two extremes, one you agree with and one you condemn, to shout Christian vantage points defending your political opinion.
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Bishop Tutu has a very progressive record on gay rights for a Christian leader, but make no bones about it this comes not from a want to be politically progressive but from a basic understanding of Christian love and charity. Similarly while many preachers on the right frequently sully their pulpits with vile homophobic rants I have never heard Mike Huckabee say anything homophobic other than “marriage is between a man and a women” so to compare the two is like comparing apples and oranges, the only thing they share in common is that their fruits and the only thing Huckabee and this preacher share in common is their opposition to gay marriage, an opposition the majority of this country (wrongly in my view) hold.
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Also Tutu has made several statements that clarify his views on the subject, he, like me, shares a support of gay marriage in the civil sphere (the State) but remains skeptical of allowing it in the spiritual realm (in the Church) as do I.
jconway said:
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I have never heard Mike Huckabee say anything homophobic other than “marriage is between a man and a women”
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He supports “don’t ask, don’t tell,” opposes civil unions, believes homosexuality is a choice, opposes gay adoptions, and has described the decline of values in America as “Let’s face it. In our lifetimes, we’ve seen our country go from ‘Leave it to Beaver’ to ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ from Barney Fife to Barney Frank.”
Robertson smiles to the camera, while all the time he tells lies and spreads hate. The grannies and grandpas look at his smile and believe him to be a godly person and send him money.
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It doesn’t play well to become too aggressive with the hate, while in fact that is all that the Robertsons of the world are spewing.
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BTW, if you are interested, read Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Hear. If you want a shorter example, read some commentary regarding Heinlein’s character Nehemiah Scudder. The latter, a televangelist is more directly on point.
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It most certainly can happen here. And, in more ways than one, it has.
…and I’ve seen some pretty vile things on the “Christian” cable network. I can’t recall the network or the show, but it was homophobic and it anti-Buddhist (or was it Hindu) believe it or not.
I care about end results. One guy is a raving idiot and is using God to shield his bigotry and crazy actions, and the other guy is making sensible statements.
nt