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Monday, December 10, 2007
Heads up: John Linder about to endorse Mike Huckabee
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is about to get his first endorsement from a Georgia congressman, and it’s not Nathan Deal, who was caught saying kind things about the former Arkansas governor last month.
It’ll be John Linder, which makes sense. He and talk radio host Neal Boortz have now written two books on the Fair Tax. And Huckabee has spoken up for the consumption tax in debates.
On how Andy Young’s comments on Obama came to light
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Over the weekend, videotaped comments of former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young on Barack Obama’s candidacy took the Internet by storm.
The clip even made the Drudge Report.
Obama was too young, the former United Nations ambassador said. He didn’t have the support network you need to keep out of trouble. Bill Clinton was just as black. Volatile stuff. See our original post on the topic here.
But when did Young make those comments? Sept. 5, says Jim Welcome, executive producer of Newsmakers Live, where the Young video was posted.
The clip wasn’t put up until late October or early November, and even then the video was buried a couple layers deep on the web site, Welcome said.
But from what we can piece together, two things happened.
In late November, the web site was revamped so that the Young interview — the most recently taped by Newsmakers Live — begins playing as soon as the site is visited.
That same Thanksgiving week, Welcome and editor-in-chief Maynard Eaton mentioned the interview to Rob Redding, an Atlantan who operates Redding News Review, an Internet clearinghouse for African-American news.
“I guess ‘the black Drudge’ is how we’ve been termed,” Redding said — not that he likes the comparison.
Redding posted a link to the Young interview on Wednesday. The mainstream media picked it up Friday afternoon.
“He helped to be sure,” Eaton said. “I think the jury’s still out on who broke it.”
Said Welcome: “Redding got it before any journalist that I know of.”
The interview received about 36,000 hits over the weekend.
The original date of the interview is of some importance. Sept. 5 was about a month before the Clinton campaign — a clockwork organization already famous for its message control — began rolling out its black support in the South. In other words, Young’s comments were — well, they were what the former civil rights leader does.
In fact, only a portion of the interview is aired. And if you look on the web site’s archives, you’ll find that, before Young made his comments on Obama, the former mayor addressed his tendency to make news with his seat-of-the-pants statements.
Said Young:
“I don’t really think about words. Now Martin was an orator. Martin Luther King thought about words. He was an English major at Morehouse. He had memorized long passages of Shakespeare and W.H. Auden and all the poets. Knew the Bible. Almost had a photographic memory. So for him, the oratory was important. I just never was into it that much.
“I started out very early figuring that I had to say what was in my heart. And I didn’t really worry about how it came out. That’s the reason I get in trouble every now and then. That quite often people will misunderstand or misinterpret what’s in my heart. Because I don’t censor myself.”
Young, if you couldn’t tell in the trouble-making video clip, is a Hillary Clinton supporter — as is John Lewis — and has hosted a fund-raiser for the candidate.
Ralph Reed on the politics of proctology
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Somehow we missed this quote that Ralph Reed gave to the Religious News Service last week during the Mitt Romney discussion:
“We have been conducting doctrinal frisks and theological GI-tract exams of our candidates and we have to remember that these candidates are not running for president of the seminary and they’re not running for pastor in chief. They’re running to be commander in chief at a time of global war on terrorism.”
Gosh. Sounds like the former Christian Coalition leader is describing Rudy Giuliani.
Waiting for Ron Paul
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There’s a great deal of enthusiasm out there for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. But it’s not coming from Republicans.
The Libertarian National Committee in a weekend meeting unanimously approved a resolution urging Paul to seek the Libertarian’s presidential nomination in 2008 - Watch out, Cynthia McKinney! - if he doesn’t get the nod from Republicans.
The resolution, proposed by former congressman and ex-GOPer Bob Barr, isn’t so far fetched. Paul, a Texas congressman, was the Libertarian presidential nominee in 1988.
Paul’s GOP campaign is being fueled chiefly by the internet, and Libertarians are among the on-line supporters who recently helped generated millions of dollars for Paul’s campaign.
In their resolution, the Libertarians said Paul’s latest campaign “has ignited a renewed passion for liberty across America.”
The Libertarian nominating convention is in Denver around Memorial Day.
He went to Iowa because coastal Georgia needs its own president
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Over the weekend, the Brunswick News reported that Cap Fendig, the Glynn County commissioner running as a Republican candidate for president, spent nearly a month in Iowa, but has come back home to thaw out.
He’s got about $70,000 in his entire budget, which isn’t what Mitt Romney is spending there each day.
“We spent three and a half weeks visiting 55 cities and towns in Iowa,” Fendig said. “Our strategy was to campaign in towns with a population of 7,000 to 10,000. We felt these smaller communities would be more responsive to our message.”
So far, Fendig’s strategy of not peaking too early — pity that poor Mike Huckabee — seems to be working.
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