Silly Attempts to link Huckabee with White Hate Groups

The Nation has a piece up now called Mike Huckabee's White Supremacist Links.

I think it a fairly well done hit piece that sadly does not point out the full story.

I know quite a bit about the Council of Conservative Citizens. I follow their exploits quite a bit. To think that Mike Huckabee is associated with them or agrees with them is beyond the pale.

First, let me say that often politicians do not know the full background to the Council of Conservative Citizens before they appear in front of these groups. It has a rather ordinary sounding name. In Louisiana a well know conservative politician made a similar mistake. This is partly because the organization gets more radical and in fact more numerous where you go. For instance in Mississippi and South Carolina they are far more known organization than in Louisiana or Arkansas. Often a politician will show up not knowing what or whom he is speaking too.

Further as the years have gone by the national organization has got more extreme and even more radical. This is showing up in the local chapters more and more. Especially since the dates in question.

Two things that are significant. Mike Huckabee has not just recently got away from the Council of Conservative Citizens. There is no doubt that he became aware that this was much more than a just a conservative organization and thus backed off them. The fact that he would not share the same stage with a racist and anti semite should be noted. Several other politicians that day decided not too do the same

They have been fighting him in a aggressive manner for years. The Nation Article does not go into that. The Nation Article does not go into how one their big members from Arkansas has been in Huckabee's face for years. Way before Mike Huckabee decided to run for President. It has not gone through the archives of the Political Cesspool show(The CofCC leading radio voice) and see how this same person was ranting against Huckabee. The article is indeed misleading. Mike Huckabee's political foes included the Council of Conservative Citizens. The fact that they can not link Mike Huckabee in anyway to Council of Conservative Citizens chapters in South Carolina where they are a force is significant. Why would Huckabee have to denounce the Council of Conservatives Cities. They are and have been mortal enemies for years!!!! It is obvious Mike hates them.

However they left something else out which they know of no doubt.
"Huckabee took the pulpit of a small but growing church in Pine Bluff, Ark., and started a Christian radio and TV station, which aired his Sunday sermons. One day a listener contacted him. He was a black teenager and was interested in attending services at Huckabee's church, but worried he wouldn't be welcome; Immanuel Baptist Church had been all white since its inception in the 1890s. 'Of course you can come, I told him,' Huckabee recalls."The minister prepared his flock. 'I hope that nobody has anything except warm feelings,' he recalls telling them. 'In fact, if he is not welcome, I don't want to be here either.' The speech didn't go over well among some church elders, who threatened to fire him. Several members quit in protest. But most of his parishioners stood with him, and in the years that followed, the church slowly integrated. 'I grew up with a lot of people who really resisted integration,' Huckabee tells NEWSWEEK. 'The more I listened to them, the more I became convinced that racism was an incredible evil.' Rex Nelson, who worked for Huckabee when he was governor, says his racial awareness 'comes from being raised poor...He knew what is was like to look up at other people who were looking down on him.'

That speaks volumes to me. A young pastor and with a wife and children to support took a stand that could have him his job. That was a mighty brave stand for Mike Huckabee and was not a easy one I would think. Many Many Many good ministers no doubt in the same situation compromised their morals in Huckabee's situation. I know I have seen it happen!!!

I am a adamant foe of the Council of Conservative Citizens and never would support anyone that was a knowing ally of theirs. I was fully aware of what the Nation reported before I signed on to support MIke. Huckabee has had these people as his enemy through much of his reign as Arkansas Governor. That should have been noted and examined by the Nation.

Update-
From a 1994 article not printed by the Nation
Huckabee won't appear with racist.Little Rock -- Lt. Gov. Mike Huckabee accepts numerous speaking engagements, but has withdrawn from a program sponsored by a group that also invited a purported white supremacist.Huckabee said he had cancelled his scheduled speech to the Council for Conservative Citizens luncheon seminar April 16 at the Camelot Hotel.

The program also includes a speech by Houston lawyer Kirk Lyons, described by the Nazi-hunting Simon Weisenthal Center as heading an organization that defends white supremacists in trouble with the law.The Los Angeles-based center also contends that Lyons has been a featured speaker before groups that deny the Holocaust occurred during World War II.Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the center's associate dean, asked Huckabee in a letter to "reconsider your sharing the platform with a person promoting racism and bigotry."Huckabee said he knew nothing of the sponsoring organization or about Lyons.

He said that if the Simon Weisenthal Center had contacted him before releasing a letter to the news media that he would have withdrawn from the program. He said the Weisenthal Center has since issued an apology to him."I will not have anything to do with a person tied to a supremacist organization," Huckabee said.When he was contacted about the center's request, he said he had never heard of Lyons."But if he is who they say he is and he's going to be on that program, I will not be,"

Huckabee said. "I will not participate in any program that has racist overtones. I've spent a lifetime fighting racism and anti-Semitism."The Council of Conservative Citizens' newsletter, The Council Reporter, bears a post office box number in St. Louis, but St. Louis-area directory assistance had no listing for the organization or its president, Samuel Turnipseed Jr.A woman who answered the telephone at Lyons' organization -- the CAUSE Foundation -- said Lyons was taking part in a re-enactment of a Confederate Civil War march in Louisiana and would not be available for comment until next week

. A message left on an answering machine at a telephone number where it was believed Lyons could be reached was not returned Wednesday.

Huckabee said the invitation to speak at the conservative forum entitled "The Message from Middle America" was one of dozens of speaking requests he receives each week, mostly from civic groups or Republican organizations."It's such a rare thing that we have such an organization like this and usually there are people on the program that we know," he said. "This is one we may not have known enough about."According to the Simon Weisenthal Center, Lyons' organization has defended Fred Leuchter, an engineer who was indicted by German authorities for denying that people were gassed at Auschwitz.

Lyons also has been a featured speaker at conventions sponsored by the Institute for Historical Review, a group that denies that the Nazi Holocaust ever occurred, the center said.Betty Tate, a spokeswoman for the CAUSE Foundation, described the organization as a civil rights group. She said the organization has defended such white supremacists as Richard Butler and Robert Miles Jr., who she denied were racists.Ms. Tate said the foundation also has filed a suit against the federal government, "the perpetrators of that holocaust at Waco," on behalf of surviving family members of David Koresh's followers.

It is a sas day in politics when even a liberal magazine like the Nation refuses to recognize that Huckabee has spoke out against these people and has been their enemy.