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http://caucuscooler.blogspot.com/2007/12/cooler-exclusive-governor-graft.html   COOLER EXCLUSIVE- "Governor Graft" The Cooler has obtained documents that show Mike Huckabee received $378,000 in consulting fees during 2006, while he was still governor of Arkansas.   Most noteworthy, $17,500 came from Novo Nordisk, one of the world's largest embryonic stem cell researchers. It seems that when money is at stake Huckabee may be able to look past his supposedly fervent opposition to this procedure He also received speaking fees and honoraria from churches while Governor. It is certainly calls into question whether or not it is appropriate for a Governor to be taking a consulting fee from interest groups, as Huckabee did, when issues surrounding that interest group could come across his desk. The consulting money was funneled through an organization called 12 stops, a group created in 2004 to handle Gov. Huckabee's book deals. With all the attention Senator ...

ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.star-telegram.com/464/story/373403.html WASHINGTON -- In a brief foray into politics, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday denounced comments by a leading Republican presidential candidate that the Bush administration's foreign policy is arrogant and unilateral.   "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."   Her remarks came in response to a question about criticism from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has surged in the polls to become a front-runner in the upcoming Iowa caucuses for the GOP presidential nomination. Huckabee recently said the administration's foreign policy was characterized by a "bunker mentality."   Rice did not mention Huckabee by name in her response and at...

American Pastoral Mike Huckabee preaches to the choir, but not everyone's singing along. Friday, December 21, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST I didn't see the famous floating cross. What I saw when I watched Mike Huckabee's Christmas commercial was a nice man in a sweater sitting next to a brightly lit tree. He had easy warmth and big brown puppy-dog eyes, and he talked about taking a break from politics to remember the peace and joy of the season. Sounds good to me. Only on second look did I see the white lines of the warmly lit bookcase, which formed a glowing cross. Someone had bothered to remove the books from that bookcase, or bothered not to put them in. Maybe they would have dulled the lines. Is there a word for "This is nice" and "This is creepy"? For that is what I felt. This is so sweet-appalling. I love the cross. The sight of it, the fact of it, saves me, literally and figuratively. But there is a kind of democratic politesse in America, ...

Thursday, December 20, 2007 I'd really like to know which "prominent DC-based Huckabee ally" told Mark Ambinder that...  "Rush [Limbaugh] doesn't think for himself. That's not necessarily a slap because he's not paid to be a thinker—he's an entertainer. I can't remember the last time that he has veered from the talking points from the DC/Manhattan chattering class. If they were praising Huckabee, he would be too... Also, I have to think that he's dying to have Hillary in the White House. Bill Clinton made Rush a megastar. Having another Clinton back in power would make him the Leading Voice of the Opposition once again." Really? Rush Limbaugh is part of the DC/Manhattan chattering class? Hey, if Rush Limbaugh isn't "red state enough" to question Huckabee's conservative street cred, who is? 12/20 02:49 PM

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2007/12/20/retro_campaigning Retro Campaigning By George Will Thursday, December 20, 2007 ... On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee's role in the '70s Show involves blending Jimmy Carter's ostentatious piety with Nixon's knack for oblique nastiness. "Despicable" and "appalling" evidence of a "gutter campaign" -- that is how The Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, Mass., characterized this from Sunday's New York Times Magazine profile of Huckabee: "'Don't Mormons,' he asked in an innocent voice, 'believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?'" Imagine someone asking "in an innocent voice" this: "Don't Jews use the blood of gentile children to make matzoth for Passover?" Such a smarmy injection of the "blood libel," an ancient canard of anti-Semitism, into civic discourse would indelibly brand the in...

Frank Gaffney has been cited by Mike Huckabee as one of the two guys he gets foreign policy advice from, the other being The New York Times' Thomas Friedman.  Here's my exchange with Gaffney on yesterday's show ( transcript here ): HH: Since you're one of the unofficial advisors to Mike Huckabee, I want to play for you a little Huckabee quote from, concerning Iran. Cut number five. He made this in a speech earlier this year.  MH: We haven't had diplomatic relationships with Iran in almost thirty years, most of my entire adult life. And a lot of good it's done. Putting this in human terms, all of us know that when we stop talking to a parent or a sibling, or even a friend, it's impossible to resolve the difference to move that relationship forward. Well, the same is true for countries.    HH: What do you think, Frank Gaffney?  FG: Well, for the purposes of setting the record straight, Hugh, I want you and your audience to recall that the othe...