Meet the Focker

I guess I'm behind the curve here, but I didn't realize Mike Huckabee was a serious candidate for president. I mean, the dude took his name from a Dustin Hoffman movie. How was I supposed to know he wasn't kidding? Now that I've seen him spouting idiocy on both Letterman and Leno, it's clear he chose the wrong movie. He's clearly a Focker at heart.

[P]eople get totally wrapped up in left [and] right. . . .
[P]eople are ready for leadership to come vertically.
[People] want to talk about . . . ideas that lift America up.
It's not so much where you are horizontally, but are you going to take this country up or down.

-- Mike Huckabee

Uh, whaaa? That's not a political position: that's the Frug. And this isn't a debate: it's Dancing With the Stars. Familiar dance, too: those are the moves Bush used to convince us he'd be a populist leader and not some wacko who'd attack Iraq to spread God and steal us some oil.

Clearly, left and right matter. Left means we should leave other countries alone and spend our money to help ourselves. Right means we should send more troops -- and, in fact, attack Pakistan and Iran, because there are oil-rich heathens there too. Left means you think every American deserves equal rights. Right means you want to stuff God into government, with the end result being a Congress that's like Santa, deciding who's naughty and who's nice.

Putting gays somewhere between unemployed and quarantined.

It's a perfectly clear, consistent Republican strategy. The candidates with the truly extremist views don't want to frighten anybody, so they declare themselves uniters, not dividers. Which is true, to some extent. After they win the election, they say, okay, everybody slide down to the far right.

No more vertical. Back to horizontal.

Up, down, sideways, around. Huckabee's not a man: he's a Weeble. And he needs to wobble right back to Crazyville where he belongs.