She's Nothing If Not Indecisive

Norma McCorvey, 'Jane Roe' in Roe vs. Wade, chooses a presidential candidate like she chooses sides on the abortion debate: "I'm for Brownback Huckabee Paul"

Norma McCorvey on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court with Gloria Alred in 1987

Norma McCorvey's baptism by Rev. Phillip Benham in 1995

ABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports:

It's not as well-known as his anti-war stance, but Ron Paul - an OB-GYN by trade - is also pro-life.

This is a fact he has highlighted in Republican early primaries as he has tried to sell his libertarian, anti-establishment ethos to the Republican rank and file.

He will get a boost at an event in Washington tomorrow when the "Roe" in the Roe v. Wade 1973 court case, Norma McCorvey, endorses his bid for the presidency.

McCorvey has famously changed her mind about abortion and now the woman whose court case created current abortion law crusades against the practice. Paul is McCorvey's current choice for President, but he was not her first.

Back when the Presidential campaign was getting going, before the summer, McCorvey endorsed Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. She even campaigned for him at the Iowa straw poll in August, which is an early test of a campaign's organization in that state.

At the outset of the 2008 campaign, Brownback was seen as the pro-life candidate of choice. But his star fell with the rise of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who eventually won in Iowa at the January caucus.

It's interesting that McCorvey is now going to go with Paul, although, with Brownback as evidence, don't expect her endorsement to turn the public tide in Paul's favor.

McCorvey, a pathetic woman with a trainwreck of a life, should never have become the face for safe and legal abortion; a pox on any group that tries to exploit her for their cause. Any cause.

The Republican To Beat (For the Moment) . . . .

. . . . Mike Huckabee:



In the purest Republican tradition of hijacking the English language to lead people into believing you've said something entirely different, this was the speech of the night. The word to look and listen for is 'change'; tonight it became the word that will define the 2008 election, and that each of the candidates will shape their campaigns around from here on out. The question that they now must answer is, "How?"

Transcript:

MIKE HUCKABEE: Thank you, Iowa.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

You know, I wasn't sure that I would ever be able to love a state as much as I love my home state of Arkansas.

But tonight, I love Iowa a whole lot.

Over the past several months, my family and I have had the marvelous joy and privilege of getting to know many of you. And it's been an incredible honor.

I was thinking last night that some of the friendships that we've forged here in the last several months are friendships that will last a lifetime.

And we didn't know how this was going to turn out tonight. But I knew one thing: I would be forever grateful to the people that I met, the ones who voted for me, even the ones who didn't, who still treated me with respect and who gave me their attention, who have allowed me to come often, not just into their communities, but into their homes, not once, but time and time again.

And a few of them, I even convinced to vote for me tonight and that's really remarkable.

I want to say how much I appreciate my wife, Janet.

She was a wonderful first lady of Arkansas.

And I think she'll be a wonderful first lady for the United States of America.

We also want to say thanks. Our three children are with us tonight.

I would like them to come and just be a part of this tonight. They have all been so much involved. Our oldest son, John Mark, our son, David, his wife, Lauren, our daughter, Sarah, who has literally lived in Iowa for the past two and a half months.

And I told her if she stayed much longer, she'll have to get her an Iowa driver's license and probably start paying even more taxes up here.

And I say thanks to all of them for joining with us in this effort, because a family goes through it, not just the candidate. But tonight is a celebration for everybody on our team, so many of you who have traveled from all across America to be here.

I'm amazed, but I'm encouraged, because tonight what we have seen is a new day in American politics. A new day is needed in American politics, just like a new day is needed in American government. And tonight it starts here in Iowa.

But it doesn't end here. It goes all the way through the other states and ends at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue one year from now.

I think we've learned three very important things through this victory tonight. The first thing we've learned is that people really are more important than the purse, and what a great lesson for America to learn. Most of the pundits believe that when you're outspent at least 15 to 1, it's simply impossible to overcome that mountain of money and somehow garner the level of support that's necessary to win an election.

Well, tonight we proved that American politics still is in the hands of ordinary folks like you and across this country who believe that it wasn't about who raised the most money but who raised the greatest hopes, dreams and aspirations for our children and their future.

And tonight I hope we will forever change the way Americans look at their political system and how we elect presidents and elected officials.

Tonight, the people of Iowa made a choice, and their choice was clear.

Their choice was for a change.

But that choice for a change doesn't end just saying, "Let's change things."

Change can be for the better. It could be for the worse.

Americans are looking for a change. But what they want is a change that starts with a challenge to those of us who were given this sacred trust of office so that we recognize that what our challenge is to bring this country back together, to make Americans, once again, more proud to be Americans than just to be Democrats or Republicans.

To be more concerned about being going up instead of just going to the left or to the right.

And while we have deep convictions that we'll stand by and not waiver on, or compromise -- those convictions are what brought us to this room tonight. But we carry those convictions not so that we can somehow push back the others, but so we can bring along the others and bring this country to its greatest days ever.

Because I'm still one who believes that the greatest generation doesn't have to be the ones behind us. The greatest generation can be those who have yet to even be born.

And that's what we are going to...

And, ladies and gentlemen, we've learned something else tonight, and that is that this election is not about me. It's about we.

And I don't say that lightly. I'm the person whose name gets on the signs, who occasionally gets the attention in some...

... of the few ads that came out here and there.

But the election is not about me. And the country is not just about me.

What is happening tonight in Iowa is going to start really a prairie fire of new hope and zeal. And it's already happening across this nation because it is about we; we the people.

We saw it tonight. We've seen it in other states. And we're going to continue to see it because this country yearns and is hungry for leadership that recognizes that when one is elected to public office, one is not elected to be a part of the ruling class; he's elected to be a part of the serving class. Because we the people are the ruling class of America.

G.K. Chesterton once said that a true soldier fights not because he hates those who are in front of him, but because he loves those who are behind him. Ladies and gentlemen, I recognize that running for office, it's not hating those who are in front of us. It's loving those who are behind us.

It's recognizing that behind us are great patriots dating back to the beginning of this wonderful country, when 56 brave men put their signatures on a document that started forth the greatest experiment in government in the history of mankind, and gave birth to the idea that all of us are created equal, and we have been given by our creator inalienable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And these who signed that document, who gave birth to this dream, were the beginnings of those throughout our history who have continued, with great sacrifice, extraordinary valor, to pass on to us that liberty and the quest for something better than the generation before them had.

I stand here tonight the result of parents who made incredible sacrifices as part of a great generation, who went through a Depression and a world war and said our kids won't have to go through these things. And every sacrifice they made were to lift us on their shoulders and give us a better America than they ever could have envisioned. And they were successful in doing that.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, for the same reason that our founding fathers and those before us saw what was behind us and gave it their best, I ask you to join me across Iowa and the rest of America to look out there in front of us and not to hate those, but to look behind us and to love them so much that we will do whatever it takes to make America a better country, to give our kids a better future, to give this world a better leader.

And we join together tonight for that purpose. God help you and thank you for all you've done. I'm so grateful for the support, the incredible work that you've done. And now we've got a long journey ahead of us.

I wish it were all over tonight, and we could just celebrate the whole thing. But unfortunately, if this were a marathon, we've only run half of it. But we've run it well.

And now it's on from here to New Hampshire, and then to the rest of the country. But I'll always be wanting to come back to this place and say, wherever it ends -- and we know where that's going to be -- it started here in Iowa.

Thank you and God bless you, every one of you. Thank you tonight. Thank you.

Not Walking The Talk

Striking writers outside the Burbank, Calif. studios of NBC. (Photo: Ric Francis/Associated Press)

Last week, it was Huckabee's mistakes about Pakistan. Just three weeks earlier, it was his ignorant blunders about the NIE on Iran which he blamed his failure "to keep up on every little thing, from Britney to 'Dancing with the Stars'" to being on the campaign trail.

Now he's showing us his plain ignorance about the status of the writer's strike (it's not over, 'dimples'), as well as proper recognition of striking employees whom you claim to "support" - You don't cross their picket line!

The New York Times'-blog reports:

Former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas today professed his support for the striking television writers union just a few hours before he was expected to board a plane for a taping of the Jay Leno show where he will face a vocal picket line of striking writers.

Mr. Leno’s program is returning to the air for the first time since a long hiatus for the strike. Speaking to reporters, Mr. Huckabee said he was unaware that he would be crossing picket lines and believed that the program had reached a special agreement with the union.

Although crossing picket lines might not be unusual for most Republican candidates, Mr. Huckabee has waged an unusual populist campaign on economic issues, stressing his empathy with the anxieties of working people. On Wednesday, he said he identified with the striking television workers as an author himself and believed they deserved a share of the proceeds from the sale of their work.

Mr. Huckabee’s inconsistency about the picket lines outside the Leno show are the latest in a string of missteps that have underscored the ad-hoc, on-the-fly nature of his insurgent campaign. Last week, he made a series of small misstatements about Pakistan that raised questions about his fluency in matters of foreign affairs and raised eyebrows when he suggested applying special scrutiny to Pakistanis at the borders in the interest of national security. Then, he reversed a pledge to avoid attacking his opponent, Mitt Romney, and two days ago reversed himself again to renounce those attacks.

On Wednesday, Mr. Huckabee appeared to edge back once again toward explicit swipes at his opponent. Asked by a reporter about Mr. Romney’s roughly $17 million in personal loans to his campaign, Mr. Huckabee asked how voters could expect understanding of their problems from a candidate who “writes checks for tens of millions of dollars and doesn’t miss the money?”

In a stump speech in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Mr. Huckabee did not name Mr. Romney but made veiled references to his opponent. Alluding to Mr. Romney’s professed change of heart on abortion rights, Mr. Huckabee said he was a candidate whose views in the issue did not change depending on polls or where he was running.

“You want someone who is authentic, you want someone who is consistent, you want someone who can lead,” Mr. Huckabee said.

“Some of us come to you with the views that we had because they are convictions not political conveniences,” he said later in Mason City, Iowa.

“Wouldn’t it be something if the people of Iowa proved that they cannot be bought?” he said, alluding to Mr. Romney’s heavy spending on the campaign.

Speaking to reporters, he said he expected his appearance on the Jay Leno show to reach more Iowa voters than a day of appearances to crowds of a few hundred each. He said he planned to fly back to Iowa by the end of the day, spending as little time as possible out of the state. He is continuing to wage his Iowa campaign largely from the airwaves of national television, beginning Wednesday with three morning television interviews before boarding a bus for two appearances on the stump.

Episodes like these offer candidates unique opportunities to own the moment by sucking all of the oxygen out of the air (waves) with a grand gesture (or stunt).

If I was on Huckabee's staff and advising him, I wouldn't let him go into NBC's studios. I'd have him stand on the street with the picketers (after clearing it with the WGA) and get Leno to wire him up for a remote interview. I'd focus the interview on the striking writers, working Americans, quality television, and have some prearranged gag that the writers had prepared. Something like this:

Huckabee Tells His Bloggers, "God Wants You To Clog The Net, Prevent Press From Filing Bad Stories About Me"

Yesterday in Des Moines, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee hosted an event thanking roughly 700 bloggers who, he said, were responsible for keeping his campaign alive.

Calling them his secret weapon, Huckabee urged the bloggers to clog up the wireless system in Des Moines so that reporters couldnt file any more bad stories about him. He added that by blocking the free press from doing their jobs, bloggers were doing the Lords work:

The New York Times-blog reports:

Mike Huckabee held a little event here on Tuesday to thank the roughly 700 bloggers who, he said, were responsible for keeping his campaign alive. Because he had no money and initially got very little media attention, he said, he could not have kept going without their dedication.

He said the bloggers, whom he called his “secret weapon,” spent their days “pounding their keyboards and hitting ‘send’ in the middle of the night.” Ed Rollins, his campaign consultant, said none of the bloggers were on Mr. Huckabee’s payroll, chuckling at the idea of a payroll.

At one point, Chuck Norris, Mr. Huckabee’s most famous supporter, wandered into the small meeting room where the event was being held. Mr. Norris, the martial artist and action actor, confessed to being “computer illiterate” himself, but thanked the bloggers for getting him and Mr. Huckabee together.

Mr. Norris proposed holding a fundraiser for Mr. Huckabee with a “virtual barbeque” at his Texas ranch on Jan. 20. He said he would take the blogosphere on a virtual tour of the ranch, including his 2,000-square-foot gym, and perhaps Mr. Huckabee would sing with his band. One blogger proposed that all bloggers hold actual barbeques in their home towns at the same time to raise money. The bloggers applauded their approval.

“Pork across America!” Mr. Huckabee proclaimed.

About a dozen or so bloggers had set up their laptops to take notes and blog as Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Norris spoke; the mainstream media was allowed to observe but not ask questions.

Mr. Huckabee had a rough time yesterday at the hands of the media when he announced he was canceling a negative ad against Mitt Romney and then showed the ad to the assembled reporters, who burst out laughing. Today, he turned the tables. He noted that the mainstream media might be “filing a bad story” right now, and if the bloggers were relying on the same wireless system at the hotel, they might be “clogging up the lines” and preventing them from filing.

If that’s the case, “thank you,” he said. “You’re doing the Lord’s work.”

Mr. Huckabee was asked if he became president whether he would hold an event like this one in the White House. He said he would. “You gotta dance with the one that brought you,” he said.

Afterwards, Anthony Bonna, 20, a blogger from Florida who is a student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., said he supported Mr. Huckabee because he is “the authentic conservative” in the race. His Web site, www.huckamania.com, is devoted to him.

Huckabee Excuses His Own NIE Blunder, "Bush is Worse"

The Quad City Times reports:

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee defended his failure to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran in early December, joking in an interview Monday that President Bush didn’t read intelligence reports for four years.

Huckabee came under fire in early December when, in response to a reporter’s question about the Iran report, Huckabee said he wasn’t aware of it. Huckabee’s lack of familiarity with the National Intelligence Estimate — a report that showed Iran had discontinued its nuclear program — provided fuel for his critics who said he was a lightweight on foreign policy.

“The whole perception was based on an ambush question on the NIE report,” Huckabee said in an interview Monday with the Quad-City Times. “From there, it was like, ‘Wow.’ That was released at 10 o’clock in the morning. At 5:30 in the afternoon, somebody says, ‘Have you read the report?’ Maybe I should’ve said, ‘Have you read the report?’ President Bush didn’t read it for four years; I don’t know why I should read it in four hours.”

His comment about President Bush appears to be a reference to allegations made by Bush’s critics that Bush didn’t pay close enough attention to intelligence reports, particularly in the early years of his presidency.

When asked to clarify, Huckabee said this:

“The point I’m trying to make is that, on the campaign trail, nobody’s going to be able, if they’ve been campaigning as hard as we have been, to keep up with every single thing, from what happened to Britney last night to who won ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ ”

He said the campaign learned from the criticism related to the Iran report and now he gets regular briefings about developments in foreign policy.

On top of the briefings about Britney and 'Dancing with the Stars'.

FACT CHECK:

The NIE had been out for 30 hours. Not only hadn't Huckabee read it, he didn't know what it was.

Why is this guy running?

Who's Briefing This Guy?

If he isn't ducking questions (such as why, in his autobiography, he linked homosexuality with pedophilia, necrophilia and sadomasochism) or promising to throw doctors in jail for providing women with the safe medical procedure of abortion (let's all try to remember that abortion is still legal in the U.S.), Arkansas-governor-and-presidential-wannabe Mike Huckabee is showing off his credentials from the Nodda Cloo foreign policy school at Ouachita Baptist University.

USA Today reports:

As his campaign has surged, Mike Huckabee has made a series of public foreign policy gaffes, fueling attacks by rivals that he lacks the international experience to be president.

The former governor of Arkansas has confused the status of martial law in Pakistan, raised questions about Pakistanis crossing the U.S. border and wasn't initially familiar with the latest U.S. intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear weapons program.

While the missteps are his, a tough foreign policy critique has often been lobbed against governors, or past governors, running for president — Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, among them. But what Reagan, Clinton and Bush had — and what Huckabee seems to sorely lack in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination — was a roster of respected foreign policy advisers to reassure voters on national security issues.

On Friday morning, Huckabee listed former U.N. ambassador John Bolton as someone with whom he either has "spoken or will continue to speak."

At a Thursday evening news conference, Huckabee said, "I've corresponded with John Bolton, who's agreed to work with us on developing foreign policy."

Bolton, however, has a different view. "I'd be happy to speak with Huckabee, but I haven't spoken with him yet," said Bolton, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.

"I'm not an official or unofficial adviser to anyone," said Bolton, who mentioned he'd had conversations with other Republican candidates but declined to name any names.

Asked to explain Bolton's comments, Huckabee aides said the former Arkansas governor had e-mailed with Bolton. Bolton did not immediately respond to a request to address Huckabee's e-mailing claims.

Huckabee said he had also spoken with former State Department official Richard Haass (now president of the Council on Foreign Relations); military analyst Ken Allard; former national security adviser Richard Allen; former House speaker Newt Gingrich; Frank Gaffney, founder of the Center for Security Policy, a conservative think tank; and a "number of military personnel."

A Gingrich spokesman said the two men had spoken, on an unofficial basis, on Friday.

Council on Foreign Relations spokeswoman Lisa Shields said Haass has "briefed Huckabee on foreign policy issues as well as [briefing] many other candidates" in both parties. Shields stressed that the relationship was not exclusive and that Haass was not affiliated with the campaign.

Reached via e-mail, Allen said an intermediary asked him to speak with Huckabee, but he hadn't yet agreed. "I'm gradually getting older, but am fully capable of recalling with whom I have spoken," said the former Nixon and Reagan foreign policy campaign adviser.

Allard and Gaffney could not be reached for comment.

Huckabee argues that foreign policy is less about experience and more about judgment. "The most important thing a president does is to make tough decisions when confronted with a crisis," he said Friday. As a governor, "you've dealt with the unexpected, a crisis, time and time again."

The confusion over Bolton, however, is the latest in a growing list of foreign policy hiccups by the Iowa front-runner. And to succeed nationally, Huckabee must broaden support beyond his socially conservative base by proving his competency on issues such as national security.

On Thursday, he commented on the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, saying the U.S. needs to consider "what impact does it have on whether or not there's going to be martial law continuing in Pakistan." Martial law, as it turns out, was lifted two weeks ago.

Huckabee clarified the point later that day. "What I said was, you know, it was not that I was unaware that it was suspended two weeks ago, or lifted two weeks ago. The point was continued: ... Would it be reinstated? Would it be placed back in?" he said.

Huckabee also raised eyebrows Thursday when he said that Bhutto's death should prompt "an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there's any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country."

And earlier this month, Huckabee said he was unfamiliar with the National Intelligence Estimate reporting that Iran hadn't had a program to develop nuclear weapons since 2003.

Huckabee's lack of foreign policy experience has fueled a host of critics. On Thursday, rival Sen. John McCain of Arizona said Bhutto's assassination highlights Huckabee's lack of foreign policy experience.

"You know, I don't think it's appropriate to respond in a political way," Huckabee said.

Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denounced Huckabee's critique of the Bush administration as having a "bunker mentality" when it comes to foreign policy.

"The idea that somehow this is a go-it-alone policy is just simply ludicrous," she said at a State Department news conference. "One would only have to be not observing the facts, let me say that, to say that this is now a go-it-alone foreign policy."

I long for the good old days, when candidates for the highest office in the land and the leadership of the free world brought a firm base of knowledge about the affairs of the world based on a sound education, extensive travel and life experience in business, government service, or both.

Nowadays it seems that more of them would prefer on-the-job training, a precedent that was set by Bush 41, who called on his former aides to put together a crash tutorial on world history to prepare his 52-year-old son for a Presidential run.

Call me crazy, but I'd like our next Commander-in-Chief to be able to find Pakistan on a map. It isn't this guy:

Will Evangelicals Do It To America Again?

Will evangelical Christians saddle us with another president too ignorant to be trusted with the awesome responsibility that is the Commander-in-Chief of the greatest military power in the world?



The New York Times reports:

In discussing the volatile situation in Pakistan, Mike Huckabee has made several erroneous or misleading statements at a time when he has been under increasing scrutiny from fellow presidential candidates for a lack of fluency in foreign policy issues.

Explaining statements he made suggesting that the instability in Pakistan should remind Americans to tighten security on the southern border of the United States, Mr. Huckabee said Friday that “we have more Pakistani illegals coming across our border than all other nationalities, except those immediately south of the border.”

Asked to justify the statement, he later cited a March 2006 article in The Denver Post reporting that from 2002 to 2005, Pakistanis were the most numerous non-Latin Americans caught entering the United States illegally. According to The Post, 660 Pakistanis were detained in that period.

A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security, however, concluded that, over all, illegal immigrants from the Philippines, India, Korea, China and Vietnam were all far more numerous than those from Pakistan.

In a separate interview on Friday on MSNBC, Mr. Huckabee, a Republican, said that the Pakistani government “does not have enough control of those eastern borders near Afghanistan to be able go after the terrorists.” Those borders are on the western side of Pakistan, not the eastern side.

Further, he offered an Orlando crowd his “apologies for what has happened in Pakistan.” His aides said later that he meant to say “sympathies.”

He also said he was worried about martial law “continuing” in Pakistan, although Mr. Musharraf lifted the state of emergency on Dec. 15. Mr. Huckabee later said that he was referring to a renewal of full martial law and said that some elements, including restrictions on judges and the news media, had continued.

Mr. Huckabee’s comments on the situation in Pakistan were not the first time he has been caught unprepared on foreign policy matters. Early this month, after the release of a National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, Mr. Huckabee said that he was not familiar with the report, even though it had been widely reported in the news for more than 30 hours.

When do those who gave us Bush and Cheney realize that the most important decision they should be ever be trusted with again is what to wear when they get out of bed every day? And when are we going to say this out loud to them?