Was that the speech that fifth graders will be reciting 20 years from now? Or is that speech still to come?

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Oh, Washington Post… ever eager to draw readers by perpetuating DC/Freemason/secret society conspiracy theories. Now all they need is Jerry Bruckheimer and Nicolas Cage to put on another KICK ASS production to find mystical treasures in a CGI-created Tidal Basin.

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We’ve sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists. What we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people no matter how evil or bad they are.

That was John McCain speaking on December 15th, 2005. McCain just met with President Bush and got the President to support McCain’s call for a law banning torture. It was a huge win for McCain’s anti-torture stance and for the country’s image on the world stage.

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I always approach Baptists with caution. Growing up a Presbyterian in Alabama makes you rather defensive in fending them off when they want to make sure you are “saved” and don’t get it when you explain that Presbyterians just don’t think of things exactly like that. Of course, the stuffy Presbyterians could stand to learn a thing or two about passionate faith from the Baptists, but that is neither here or there in this discussion, because I think I have found a Baptist I can trust, and he is in politics of all places, where one should never, ever put trust in someone. More surprisingly, he is a Republican, and his economic beliefs that led him into that party are where I disagree highly with him, but of all candidates out there for the Republican nomination, Huckabee is the right man for the job. He might be a bit more of a “moralist” than I would like, but you can’t fault the guy for holding true to his beliefs (unlike 21st century Massachusetts candidates tend to do). However, while he may be from the so-called “fundamentalist” camp, he doesn’t seem to be such a fundamentalist. From what I can tell, the guy’s faith led him to understand the necessity of compassion and did his best to inject compassion – not hatred – into Arkansas’ laws while he was governor.

Huckabee did what he could to improve the lives of immigrants while governor, which in the long run will benefit America as a whole much more than trying to deport 12,000,000 million hard working people from our country. (By the way, where are we going to look for a logistical game plan for forcibly moving this many people across a continent? Hitler? Stalin? Amin? Mugabe?) He tried to give the children of illegals a hand up to success, which I thought was what America was all about. Of course, as I write this, Huckabee has apparently toughened up on his stance to do some pandering himself, which is almost as disappointing as his belief that capital punishment has a place in the US. In all honesty, I think he knows better than this in his heart, and I am disappointed in him for not standing by his beliefs there.

While we are on the topic, I would like to point out that Huckabee is not, as another S&P blogger says, a “new earth creationist.” I typically thought such snap beliefs and litmus tests for candidates were held for the Jerry Falwells of the world, but I guess I was wrong. I believe God created the heavens and the earth. There is not a doubt in my mind about that. Does that make me a “new earth creationist?” No. Why? Because no where in the Bible does it say “On the first day, which was 24 hours long with the sun rising at 5:58 a.m. and setting at 7:32 p.m., God created the…” Who are we to limit God to our time frame? Who are we to limit God to what our minds can comprehend – or even what our science can explain? I believe God created the world, and I also see no reason not to accept the prevailing scientific theories regarding the Big Bang and evolution. Why should I not think that one of God’s days could have lasted a 100 million or 100 billion years? Some might want to limit God to their petty minds and say, “The earth has to be only 6,000 years old because that is the way I read my translation of the Bible and that’s how it fits in my time frame,” but I think that is very short-sighted. And, as I understand it, Huckabee feels the same way, according to his standard line for that question: “I believe God created the heavens and the Earth… I wasn’t there when he did it, so how he did it, I don’t know.”

But, getting back to the presidential race, which has absolutely nothing to do with some petty human argument over something as awesome as the beginning of the world… when it comes to the pandering fields of has-beens, paranoids and demagogues running for the Republican nomination, Mike Huckabee stands out like a shining star compared to the rest. We don’t need and can’t have another insider running the country if a Republican wins the election. The current Harvard-and-Yale-educated-son-of–a-former-president-vice-president-and-CIA-director-who-resurrected-the-cabinets-of-Nixon-Reagan-and-Bush-all-at-one-time president (otherwise known as the ultimate conglomerated insider) has screwed things up worse than any one could have imagined seven years ago. Not even the ridicu-liberal wing nuts thought it could get this bad.

• Not having an insider means no John McCain, who would make a solid secretary of defense. Despite holding to his morals on many things (McCain-Feingold, for example), he is way to hawkish than America needs right now. If John McCain ran the country, we would get into WWIII before his first term ended. The SoD role might be just right for him, because it keeps him restrained under the president. That is, if the president stands his ground, and Huckabee – who does not seem like the kind of guy who would start a war at the drop of a hat (like Bush did, and like I think Giuliani and Romney and Thompson would) – might fill that role nicely.

• Romney and Giuliani are jokes. Watching them stand there during the You Tube debate and try to make each sound more and more evil for ever speaking/looking at an illegal immigrant was just pathetic pandering. Giuliani knows he wouldn’t be on that stage if it were not for the millions of amazing people in New York that happen to be immigrants, and Romney (despite his flaws) is too brilliant of a financial mind to be pandering on an issue like immigration. He knows immigrants’ value in the economy, and it disgusts me that he wants to pander to that ugly wing of the Republican Party and abandon his Wall St. roots. He would make a good secretary of the treasury, but nothing higher.

• Who else is running? Oh, that’s right, no one else adds any value to the already dumbed-down discourse. Moving on…

Huckabee also took on an important issue that we need to pay more attention to: FAT PEOPLE. He lost over 100 pounds and became a marathoner! Fat people get sick and are a drain on our economy, an embarrassing waste of our wealth in our country, and set a poor example for our children – leading to a type 2 diabetes epidemic. Am I prejudice towards fat people? Yes, I am. Am I a “weightist”? Yes, I am that, too. Do I feel bad about it? No, because I would probably pack on a few pounds too if I didn’t get out and exercise and watch what I eat. There are few things I would rather do than sit on my couch and eat dougnuts, ice cream and fried chicken all the time, but I’m not a fat slob, so I don’t. If Americans simply quit drinking soda and eating so much fat and sugar, we’d all be better off. I generally don’t complain about taxes, but I have little sympathy for fat people who drain Medicare and Medicaid because they can’t resist eating that last drumstick. With a Huckabee presidency, the national dialogue about fat people could be elevated.

As governor, Huckabee also came up with a creative way of working to lower the divorce rate in divorce-happy Arkansas, with his covenant marriages, which allows couples to opt into a marriage that does not allow for divorce without serious counseling beforehand. It’s not forcing anyone into anything people don’t want, and even the ACLU is ok with it! Even though a Baptist pastor came up with the idea! Gosh, someone might even think the ACLU isn’t as anti-Christian as the Christian Coalition makes them out to be! Who would have thought they could be fair and want the best for the country?

So, from one of the tree-hugging hippies, I disgree again. We need someone better than John McCain, we need Mike Huckabee.