Media's Masters Adore Huckabee

The media elite is having a honeymoon with Mike Huckabee. As an ordained Southern Baptist minister, Huckabee is the darling of evangelical Christians, but why would the major media, dominated by atheists and agnostics who are traditionally hostile to evangelicals, suddenly undergo this conversion?

By Michael Collins Piper AFP

Many good conservatives are said to be captivated with the former governor of Arkansas —Mike Huckabee, not that other former Arkansas governor, William Jefferson Clinton.

It seemed as if—just at the moment Texas populist Ron Paul was beginning to make waves, with even The Washington Post reporting Paul’s grass-roots campaign threatened, in the Post’s words, to “upend” the Republican presidential primary campaign—the mass media began focusing on Huckabee, whom they had previously ignored.

For his own part, Huckabee has said he can support any of his Republican competitors with the notable exception of Paul. As governor—and until running for president— Huckabee strongly supported amnesty for illegal aliens and called for extending health and welfare benefits to them. He also raised taxes many times as governor.

There is good reason to believe powerful backstage forces are behind the Huckabee “surge,” and some observers suspect Huckabee is being promoted by the media’s owners precisely to redirect attention away from Paul’s burgeoning grass-roots campaign.

That Huckabee was governor of Arkansas may point toward “special” backing. Arkansas has long been a fiefdom— an outpost—of the New York-based Rockefeller family whose satellites in Arkansas, such as the Stevens banking empire—which backed Bill Clinton—now supporting Huckabee.

One of the Rockefeller brothers, Winthrop, was elected governor of Arkansas as a Republican in the 1960s with the backing of a young Bill Clinton, a liberal “Democrat for Rockefeller.” Then—although many Huckabee fans and foes alike seem to have forgotten it—while Huckabee was governor, Rockefeller’s son, Winthrop Jr., was Huckabee’s lieutenant governor, only to die prematurely of a blood disorder.

Should there be any doubt Huckabee is oriented toward cold, hard power politics, he recently told The New York Times Magazine that he takes his foreign policy leads from such seemingly diverse forces as liberal New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and “neo-conservative” power broker Frank Gaffney.

Although these Huckabee gurus are ostensibly “different,” they have one thing in common: all are hard-line supporters of Israel, with Gaffney having been one of the key propagandists promoting U.S. involvement in Iraq and now touting the need for a U.S. attack on Iran.

Washington insiders have not failed to note that Huckabee has received a boost from big names in the Establishment media, ranging from influential liberal columnists such as longtime Democratic operative Donna Brazile to David Broder, undisputed dean of the “elite” columnists.

These media figures (and others) tout Huckabee as a likeable fellow, a hard-driving “winner” who could add a lot to the GOP ticket, if not as its presidential nominee, certainly in the second slot.

While evangelical Christians are delighted that Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, advertises himself as a “Christian leader,” the fact Huckabee seems to be getting an unusually favorable welcome from the major media is intriguing. The media has never promoted Christian “leaders” unless those “leaders” had the implicit backing of the elite behind-the-scenes owners of the media.

All told, there’s clearly more to the Huckabee phenomenon than meets the eye.

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