A stunning thought just pooped… sorry… popped into my head.

What if, after McCain settles things with the conservatives in his party, he picks Joe Lieberman as his running mate? Consider the following:

Huckabee is finished in his run for president. It may not be official yet, but with the Southern Baptist preacher’s loss in a South Carolina primary full of conservative Southern white Christians… he ain’t got nothin’.

Literally.

Not only does he not have the votes of what he has tried to form into his “base,” he also has no momentum, no money and no campaign organization to compete on the national level with giants like McCain and Ward Cleaver Romney. However, what Huckabee can say is that he energized the Christian conservative base like no one else has in this campaign (although that is not saying a lot), and this will likely win him a the number two spot on the ballot when McCain leaves Romney in the dust saying “Golly gee whiz! What happened?” and Giuliani… wait, who? Oh, nevermind…

McCain is a suspicious creature to the religious right, and his pandering to them went over about as well as his friendship with Bush. If he wants to shore up their support in November, McCain will have to run with someone with some more credibility on the Republican’s issues - God, guns and gays. Not only does Huckabee provide this, he also manages to do it while wooing the crap out of bleeding hearts like me, who rarely meet Baptists that seem trustworthy.

A McCain-Huckabee ticket hits all the right Rovian wedge issues on the head, but with a twist of compassion.

War on Terror? Check - Mac’s a war veteran and former prisoner of war that everyone respects.

Experience? Check - McCain’s been in Washington since Lincoln was shot.

Fresh face of change? Check - We’re not sure if Huckabee has even been anywhere in Washington besides Russert’s studio.

Hate-mongering religious issues? Check - Huckabee is a Southern Baptist, BUT he manages to take the GOP’s edge off these issues and make you realize he has actually put some deep soul-searching into them (AND, he supports the major aspects of Christianity that got dropped from the GOP platform because they didn’t meld well when the Sons of Confederate Veterans made a change and decided to leave the Dems and join the GOP). Double whammy - ridicu-liberals will continue to despise him for comments he made 15 years ago (no matter how irrelevant now), and moderate Christians will feel all warm and fuzzy inside about him.

All other wedge issues? Check - Huckabee is southern and white and Republican. No matter what he might have done with taxes as governor of Arkansas, those three qualities will turn enough good ol’ boy heads away from whoever the Dems run that it won’t matter.

You heard it here first. McCain-Huckabee versus… someone… in 2008.

Be sure to check back in July when I pry my foot out of my mouth.

OK, I know I have said in the past that Ron Paul adds nothing of any value to the intelligent discourse of the presidential race, but I have to recant that statement. After watching the ABC/Facebook debate tonight and watching that nutty backwoods conservative scream over and over about the Iraq War and the welfare state, I have to say, he’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch. I don’t know how much longer he can last, but I almost want to give money to his campaign to watch the fireworks continue.

On domestic issues, I am about as opposed to him as I can be. I think he is a moron to want to cut the federal government as much as he wants to (that’s not to say it couldn’t use a little trim here and there). However, on foreign policy, while I disagree with his isolationist stance as a whole, there are some good and sound messages in there that we should take to heart.

The rest of the field fell all over themselves to say that Al Queda didn’t attack us because we have bases in Muslim countries, while Ron Paul was man enough to say that was the main reason it happened. Of course, none of them were able to say that it could have been a combination of that and the values that we hold dear as a nation (which it of course is).

So, I recant. I hope Ron Paul hangs in there as long as he can.

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.

So there’s been a big uproar over a bunch of supposed Democratic “plants” at the recent CNN/YouTube Republican debate. By “a bunch of a uproar” I mean Michelle Malkin is in a tizzy… oh boy. (Eww, I just linked to Michelle Malkin… I feel dirty.) I don’t get it. The point of the YouTube debates is to provide an open forum for ANYONE to submit questions. It’s up to CNN to decide which questions are pertinent, interesting and will give the audience substantive, telling answers. It’s not up to CNN to give a rat’s ass about the political affiliation of the questioner. The positions of the Republican candidates affects Democrats just as much as anybody else. It also provides an opportunity for those independent/undecided voters to see how these candidates handle tough questions that don’t come directly from their base.

And this is completely different from the Hillary plant debacle. THAT was a plant. That was stupid and calculating. That is a campaign trying to subvert an open forum. This YouTube debate is merely Democratic voters wanting answers on issues that are important to them. CNN was right to include those questions. If these questions made up the majority of the debate then it would be out of whack, but they didn’t. There were three stinking questions out of god knows how many.

A couple of years ago during his book tour for his memoir, “Herding Cats,” Trent Lott sat on a stage at his beloved Ole Miss next to his long-time college friend Curtis Wilkie at the annual Oxford Conference for the Book. Wilkie, a native Mississippian less polished visually and audibly than his cheerleading friend, spent decades as a reporter for the Boston Globe both in the US and in the Middle East, and - like many reporters of his generation - is clearly more progressive than not when it comes to social issues.

Both survived the tear gas and riots at Ole Miss during the school’s integration, but each chose a very different path on the world stage. Wilkie wrote about Israeli-Palestinian troubles and Jimmy Carter being elected president, while Lott worked his way up to become a skilled deal-maker in Washington. Wilkie writes passionately in his memoir “Dixie” about his come-to-Jesus moment regarding his place in the world as a white Southerner juxtaposed with the place of his black friends, while Lott will forever be remembered for accidentally tipping his mitt and letting the public catch a glimpse of the ultimate proverbial scarlet letter of southern white men - a secret, nostalgic desire for the good ol’ days.

But on this day, the two men with similar origins in working-class Mississippi but very different life backgrounds and perspective, sat laughing on stage the way most old college friends would. The jokes culminated when Lott, knowingly bloviating about his time in the Senate, reached over and grabbed Wilkie’s hand as he talked about “fighting for the values we Mississippians hold dear.”

The crowd loved it and hooted. Wilkie rolled his eyes, and Lott knew he had gotten the best of his buddy.

This seems to sum up what has made Lott such sustaining figure in Washington. Despite being generally unsuccessful as a party-line driving majority leader (true-blue Republicans will remember his ultimate sin of not gathering enough votes to remove Bill Clinton from office during the impeachment), and sticking his foot as far into his syrupy-Southern-accented mouth as he could by saying Strom Thurmond should have been elected president (in so many words), Lott has survived quite a bit, mostly due to a couple of things. First, he has an inherent ability to make deals like the most successful in the Congress always have (Lyndon Johnson and Tip O’Neal come to mind as others). And, second, the guy is simply good-natured and knows how to have a good time.

Lott’s retirement is being called a setback for the GOP, but it is just as much a setback for the Senate as a whole. Some might gasp as they read that last sentence, but you have to look at the facts. Mississippi will NEVER elect another Democrat to the Senate as long as Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton are alive, yet as we all know, the number of wheeling-and-dealing Congressmen has been dwindling ever since Tom DeLay’s hammer came crashing down onto the heads of those willing to negotiate with the other party. And, while Haley Barbour seems to be a pretty good wheeler and dealer himself, it is unlikely his appointee - or the next person to hold the seat - will be as good a negotiator as Lott.

Dealmakers are fewer and farther between in the Senate with each election. With Lott’s retirement, we can hardly hope to see another like him take his place. Without a doubt, he will excel as a lobbyist and probably cut a fair share of deals there, but like most lobbyists deals, they will probably do more harm than good.