During the 2008 presidential campaign I made a flat-out boast to several acquaintances: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee would not be elected President of the United States in 2008.

In recent history, Southern governors who have become President have mostly been Democrats: Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton. So Republican Gov. Huckabee (just like Mississippi Go. Haley Barbour this time around) would have had too much Deep South “baggage” in the general election, and unlike the Southern Democrats, he would have had zero support from Black voters. Zilch. Nada. No Soul Brothers.

Don’t tell me Pres. George W. (for Worst in History) Bush was a Southerner. He was a Kennebunkport, Maine (like his Daddy and his Granddaddy), C-average, Yale University student, who adopted Texas later in life so he could deride New England pointy-headed liberals the way conservatives like to do.

And besides, “W.” was “selected” by a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court vote, not “elected” by the voters, who gave more votes to Walter Mondale than to Bush in 2000. And Texas is no way an Alabama, Mississippi, or an Arkansas in its “Southern-ness.” Continue reading →

Back in the Day–1980 to be precise–GOP presidential candidate George H.W. Bush referred to fellow candidate Ronald Reagan’s “supply-side” financial theories as “Voodoo Economics.” He was correct. He went on to join the Reagan ticket, became Vice President and then President and so much for his critique of Reagan’s policies.

Today we’re living with Republicans whose economic philosophy amounts to Reaganomics-on-Steroids, and there are probably not enough pejoratives to accurately describe their notion that tax cuts for the wealthy and spending cuts in services everyone else depends on are good for a society trying to crawl out of the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Cut spending. Cut spending. Cut spending. Cut spending. That is the Republican formula for solving the economic crisis that has been decades in the making. Continue reading →