Ground Game

The conservative blogosphere today continues to deliver a big “Huck Off” to Mike Huckabee’s surging campaign. However, it’s liberal bloggers who have some excellent counter-intelligence today, as opposed to the right's rampant mudslinging.

Huckabee has been getting lots of attention in the press today for hiring Ed Rollins, who helped run Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign, as his national campaign chair. But Daily Kos diarist DHinMI links to an archived Time Magazine article reporting that when Rollins managed the successful campaign 1993 New Jersey gubernatorial candidacy of Christine Todd Whitman, part of that strategy included suppressing the African-American vote.

That reminded me of a question from the CNN/YouTube debate a few weeks back, where Huckabee touted his African-American support while running for governor in Arkansas:

Huckabee: Well, according to your network's exit polls, some 48 percent of the African-Americans in my state did, in fact, vote for me, which is unusually high for African-Americans voting for a Republican. Here's the reason why: because I asked for their vote, and I didn't wait until October of the election year to do it. And, while I was governor, I tried to make sure that we included people not only in appointments and employment, but also in the programs that would truly make a difference, like putting disproportionate amounts of help for health problems specifically targeted to African-Americans like hypertension and AIDS and diabetes. So there's a reason. And I just want to express that our party had better reach out not just to African-Americans, but to Hispanics and to all people of this country.

I don't want to be a part of a Republican party that is a tiny, minute and ever decreasing party, but one that touches every American from top to bottom, regardless of race.