FoxNews on MLK/inauguration weekend presented a contrast in styles.
Mike Huckabee used the occasion to highlight the amazing legacy of King; have a civil conversation with the former New York governor Mario Cuomo on both Lincoln’s legacy and the relationship of religion to politics; and to surprise 76 African American students and their teacher with tickets to Obama’s inauguration.
Next up on Fox, Sean Hannity declared the new President “off the tracks” before he had even took office.
Which approach is more likely to draw citizens who voted for Obama back to the Party of Lincoln?
Undoubtedly, criticism and loyal opposition will be required. But Huckabee is finding the way to make lemonade from the lemons of defeat. Hannity just sounds sour and bitter.
18 responses so far
1 senorlechero // Jan 23, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I suppose you also think that those on the left who were “sour and bitter” and said the most outrageous things about Bush for 8 years had no effect on the public perception of President Bush? In fact the outrageously bitter attitudes of the Democratic party became the fuel for their past 2 victorious elections. In fact, it’s impossible to point out a voice on the left as reasonable as Huckabee. On the right decent dialog is commonplace.
2 artigiano // Jan 23, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Believe me. If Rush and Hannity did not exist, Democrat scientist would have to go into the lab and invent them. They drive public opinion alright. They drive it to the left.
Keep blowing fellows. It’s just more wind for our liberal sails.
3 MSheridan // Jan 23, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I am posting as a liberal, but not (I hope) as a troll. senorlechero, I think the public perception of President Bush was shaped most by…President Bush. You may have forgotten, but we on the left were pretty unhappy with Reagan when he was President. It didn’t matter very much to the country at large.
In your comment below you appear to be saying that although Huckabee is in fact more reasonable than Hannity, Hannity’s tone is the one to emulate because discord and divisiveness worked for the opposition. I don’t wish to falsely ascribe positions to you that you do not hold, but doesn’t your argument essentially allow “the left,” or your perception of us anyway, to define the nature of your discourse? “It worked for them so let’s do it too,” doesn’t sound very principled to me. Given that so many Republicans believe that their principles are what separate them from us evil/misguided liberals, I’m somewhat surprised.
4 senorlechero // Jan 23, 2009 at 4:00 pm
MSheridan….I respect the tone of your comment, though I wonder what is your motivation to post on a website created to inspire “conservativism that can win agains”. Huckabee and Hannity are equally reasonable. They are different only in their tone and presentation. Hannity is as much a performer as he is a pundit. Huckabee is a politician. To answer your question …NO! My argument is that there is room on the right for many styles in promoting our cause, and that railing against a style that obviously helped the Democrats is foolish. Let the leftists and Democrats rail against Hannity, but we should not.
5 senorlechero // Jan 23, 2009 at 4:11 pm
MSheridan….the public perception of President Bush was shaped by the lies the left told about him and the MSM that repeated those lies. How can you still be a liberal when you liberals created a phony story about Bush’s TANG records (proven to be fabricated) and that story stayed in the news for months. But you are not the least bit interested in Obama’s connections to Tony Rezko or what he actually did as a “community organizer”, or his relationship to Raila Odinga (who inspired the murder of hundreds of Kenyans last year)? If your premise is true, that Bush shaped public perception of himself, how do you explain the lack of these things in Obama’s career shaping perception of him?
6 MSheridan // Jan 23, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I don’t actually think we have space in this column to address all the issues we differ on and I’m afraid if I tried I’d be distracting from this site’s true purpose, but I’ll note that the truth of Bush’s TANG service was not ever officially challenged (it was noted in the book Shrub by Ivins and Dubose well before the election). The records you mention may well have been fabricated by Dan Rather or some other individual (certainly not by all liberals) which is reprehensible if true, but the elderly TANG stenographer who supported part of the Republican rebuttal of those records DID say that the content matched her recollection of what the records contained, just not the format. Obama’s connections to Rezko were a perfectly valid subject to challenge and explore. I did not ignore them or his actions as community organizer. As for the opportunist Raila Odinga, are you referring to Odinga’s false claim to be related to Obama, or his true claim that Obama regularly spoke to him by telephone (as Obama had been specifically asked to do by the U.S. State Department)?
7 MSheridan // Jan 23, 2009 at 4:56 pm
To be honest, I don’t think Obama could have been elected in 2008 without a George W. Bush clearing the way for him. Quite possibly he could have won an election a few years down the road, but I think at this time America was primed to look for a savior and was willing to create a cult of personality around someone fresh and new and relatively unknown. Don’t get me wrong–I’m pretty happy with our current President, but he’d never have won against Bush Sr. in 1988 or even Bush Jr. in 2000. I’m dubious he could have won even in 2004. It took eight years for the Republican brand to turn this toxic. As for why I’m here, it’s because I don’t think it’s healthy for any ideology to reign unchecked and I’m curious as to what the Republicans will do. I think some conservative principles are valuable correctives–one of my favorite senators, the mostly very liberal Sen. Proxmire of Wisconsin, was a fiscal hawk. I hope at some point you guys get your act together so you’ll force us liberals to keep OUR act together. Otherwise it’s inevitable that we won’t.
8 tarazeigler // Jan 23, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I found the 9pm hour of Fox news pretty painful when Colmes was still around. Now that he is gone, it is totally unwatchable. Hannity is just so angry and whiney and negative. (BTW: I dislike the same things about Olbermann) The Rush Limbaugh interview was the worst. The clip everyone has seen has Rush looking for an Obama failure. Does he realize that a failure of our president could have dire implications for our nation? Guess not. As for Huckabee, he is pretty great. A conservative who is interested in genuine conversation and respectful debate with liberals. Doesn’t get much better than that.
9 senorlechero // Jan 23, 2009 at 6:05 pm
MSheridan….I really appreciate you answering a question, how refreshing. To answer yours…No, I’m not refereing to Odinga’s claim to be Obama’s cousin (though I wonder why you call it false….my friend, a powerful person in Nairobi says it’s most likely true, and I know of no proof that it’s not….though it doesn’t matter), I’m refering to the fact that Obama campaigned for Odinga while visiting Kenya. Odinga is as corrupt as Kibaki, and has made an agreement with radical Islamists in Kenya. I’m curious where you got the informations that Obama was asked to speak with Odinga by the state dept?
10 senorlechero // Jan 23, 2009 at 6:07 pm
taraziegler…you, like most democrats, have twisted what Rush said about Obama…He said if Obama implements Socialistic policies he wants them to fail. Huge difference. You democrats were working frantically for the past 8 year to insure Bush would fail. I don’t recall you or any other democrat chastising them for it.
11 Scott in Los Angeles // Jan 23, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Hannity is an embarrassment and a liability. In a time when we need to change peoples’ minds on issues, he changes none. He’s a choir-preaching blowhard who does more to alienate the opposition than to bring any of them over to our side.
12 MSheridan // Jan 23, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I think it was a Time article in January 2008 in which I learned about the Obama-Kenya-State Dept. connection, although it might have been the USA Today of the same vintage. As for the campaigning it’s asserted Obama did for Odinga, I don’t know anything with surety. The fact that notorious liar Jerome Corsi appears to be a primary source of this report inspires negative confidence in that claim. Certainly most conservatives largely and rightly ignored his garbage attack pieces on McCain when Corsi was still a declared Presidential candidate on the Constitution Party ticket. When Obama visited Kenya on his CODEL, Odinga did take maximum advantage of proximity to a wildly popular figure to infer close association. Given the mass of conflicting reports, that’s all I feel I can be certain of.
13 senorlechero // Jan 23, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Sheridan….I’m not saying you are wrong about the O_K-S connection, but I’ve never heard about it and I’ve read alot about what’s going on in Kenya. I also have serious doubts that Bush would authorize his political enemy to be some sort of emmissary. As for the truth of Obama’s support, I agree with you about Corsi, however Obama’s support for Odinga has been widely reported. Here is a link to one article … http://tinyurl.com/4nd9gg
14 sinz54 // Jan 23, 2009 at 9:20 pm
The conservative “new media,” particularly the blogosphere, is in a feisty “Fight, fight, fight” mood. Their oft-stated rationale is: “We’ll treat President Obama the way the Left treated President Bush.”
There are two things wrong with this. First of all, it’s pure revenge, and vengeance isn’t likely to appeal to swing voters or moderate voters. Secondly, Bush’s election in 2000 was marred by losing the popular vote, and winning the electoral vote only by a controversial recount process in Florida, which was challenged in several courtroom venues. Lots of decent Democrats thought Bush didn’t really win the election, and that bitterness tainted Bush’s entire presidency. Whereas Obama clearly won his election fair and square.
15 senorlechero // Jan 23, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Obama clearly won, that’s true, but “fair and square”? That may or may not be true. Nobody has a clue how many Obama voters voted in two or more polling places in states that allow same day registration and park benches as legal addresses. No one (actually a few young independent journalists are) is trying to find out how many inelligible voters were registered by groups like ACORN (a group Obama worked with in his community organizer days). Since 2000 when Democrats made a concerted effort to bar the votes of overseas military members they have been making efforts to legally cheat, twisting laws and regulations to benefit their candidate. Cheating goes against core conservative values, but is an ingrained liberal value.
16 MSheridan // Jan 23, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Ah, actually I had seen your linked page. When I spoke of conflicting reports, that page contained several of them. Interestingly, on it there is a link to the Time article I mentioned: The Demons That Still Haunt Africa @ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1702349,00.html
17 senorlechero // Jan 24, 2009 at 1:51 pm
That article also makes reference to Obama being asked by Sec. of State Rice to “call” Odinga in hopes of getting him to attempt to end the violence after the election. Perhaps that is what you are refering to as the State Dept. connection. But it makes me wonder why Rice called Obama….unless she knew Obama supported Odinga.
18 InTheMiddle12 // Jan 27, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Senor: “Cheating goes against core conservative values.?” I guess Richard Nixon, guilty of inspiring a breakin for political reasons andk Cheney, guilty of treason by outing a CIA agent, missed the memo.
No doubt all parties have those that break laws. I think the 2004 GOP Congressional class give you enough to start with. Until our dialogue rises above these ridiculous partisan untruthful rants, there can be no GOP majority.
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