Rev. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who has ridden the media’s penchant for come-from-behind stories to the lead in pre-primary season polls in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida, was caught lying about the role that Republican political strategist Dick Morris is playing in his campaign
Asked by George Stephanoupolos [in early December 2007] if the bizarrely evil Dick Morris is consulting the candidate, Huckabee hummed and hawed as though Morris was merely a passing acquaintance. “Dick’s one of the smartest political minds, as you well know,” said Huckabee, describing Morris in a way in which the interviewer would likely differ, seeing that Stephanopoulos, in his White House memoirs (All Too Human), chose to characterize this smart political mind [Morris] as a “small sausage of a man” with “the look of a B-movie mob lawyer” — and, in Stephanoupolos’ most succinct estimation, simply an “insincere prick.”
However, Morris — a onetime advisor to Bill Clinton who is now a rabid Clinton-hater — is very much onboard the Huckabee express, according to the Politico, a rightwing media outlet:
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has been holding private conversations with Dick Morris, according to aides, a long-standing relationship that is raising new questions as Huckabee’s campaign begins to take off…
Huckabee [became a client of Morris'] in 1993 when he advised the Republican’s winning campaign for lieutenant governor.
Morris lately has been lavishing praise in newspaper columns and television appearances on Huckabee, whose polished debate performances and recent gains in the polls in Iowa have given him a chance to penetrate the top tier among the GOP candidates….
Morris’ public touts of Huckabee sometimes come with disclosures of his past working relationship with the candidate, but they do not mention that the two men still talk regularly — an omission that could raise eyebrows among journalistic ethicists…
Here is what is known: Morris and Huckabee confer with one another, according to two top Huckabee advisers — campaign manager Chip Saltsman and consultant Dick Dresner, who is himself a former business partner of Morris.
Why would Mike Huckabee seek to cover up his relationship with Dick Morris, even going to the extreme of lying about it on ABC’s Sunday morning political chat show?
On the eve of the Democratic Convention in September 1996, Morris was forced to resign as head of Pres. Clinton’s reelection campaign after Sherry Rowlands, a call girl with whom he had a long-term for-pay relationship, sold her story to the supermarket tabloid “The Star†for around $50,000. In the article, Rowlands revealed that Morris had a fetish for toe sucking, a fact that will always have a place in the TMI hall of fame.
She also offered a glimpse into Morris’ marriage that may have some saliency today, if his phone number does appear on Palfrey’s list.
Asked about Morris’s wife, Rowlands said: “I’m sure this is hurting her, and was not meant to hurt her. He’s the one who hurt her, not me. . . . He loves his wife — that’s why he would pay me . . . to come see him. That makes him feel he is not cheating on his wife. This is business as long as he’s paying for it.”
Shorter: It isn’t adultery if you pay for it.
Huckabee’s position on marriage is clear:
- I support and have consistently supported passage of a federal constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
- As Governor of Arkansas, I led the successful effort to pass a similar state constitutional amendment in 2002.
- As Governor of Arkansas, I led the successful effort to make our state only the third to adopt "covenant" marriage.
- Our true strength comes from our families.
All of Huckabee’s lofty sentiments about the sanctity of marriage get tossed under the bus when it comes to winning in politics, obviously.
