Governor Huckabee of Dogpatch

Half a century ago, after the Supreme Court desegregation decision, an Arkansas governor named Orval Faubus stood in the doorway of Central High School in Little Rock with National Guard members to keep African American teenagers out. Now Mike Huckabee is doing a Faubus impersonation in South Carolina.

“You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag,” the former Arkansas governor told a crowd in Myrtle Beach yesterday. “In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole, that’s what we’d do.”

In doing a Faubus to court what remains of the redneck vote, Huckabee might want to recall what happened to his predecessor. President Eisenhower nationalized the Arkansas Guard, ordered them to stand down and sent in troops from the 101st Airborne Division to escort the kids into the school.

As John McCain continues to lead in the polls, Huckabee protesters are dogging his appearances by waving Confederate flags. But McCain refuses to cave in as he did in 2000.

"Probably the worst piece of advice I've ever given to myself," he tells Katie Couric, "was when the Confederate flag was flying over the state capitol in South Carolina, and I decided that I would say it's not an issue I should be involved in, that it should be decided by the people of the state of South Carolina.

"I knew it was a symbol that was offensive to so many people. And afterwards, I went back and apologized. But it was, needless to say, by saying that I wouldn't have anything to do with an issue like that was an act of cowardice."

If Huckabee believes he can win in South Carolina by going back to the past, he should take a look at the later career of Orval Faubus. A decade after the Little Rock standoff, he was managing the Li'l Abner theme park in the "Ozark Mountains, Dogpatch USA."

Giuliani's Base Campaign

America’s Mayor wants to become America’s President in the worst way, and it’s beginning to show.

With Mitt Romney’s money producing results in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls, and Fred Thompson’s footsteps getting louder, Rudy Giuliani is pressing his case to the Republican Right with a prosecutor’s zeal.

Exaggerating his 9/11 presence and then having to apologize for it are only the latest signs that he is feeling the heat.

After saluting the Confederate flag in Alabama, taking on a racist adviser in South Carolina and puckering up to Pat Robertson, Giuliani has now turned to out-Bushing Bush on bellicosity by bringing aboard as foreign policy adviser Norman Podhoretz, who wants to bomb Iran yesterday and, just in case the Base should doubt his conservative conversion, adding to his retinue the rabid Admiral who swift-boated John Kerry in the 2004 elections.

When Fred Thompson announces, it is sure to get uglier as the Senator-actor’s new pal Alfonse D’Amato starts slinging 9/11 mud from his firefighter friends at Giuliani.

Up to now, the former Mayor has had Right Field pretty much to himself, but Mike Huckabee is gaining traction and Thompson is set to drive his pickup-truck appeal onto the scene.

Before long, the Republican rumble may make the Clinton-Obama feuding look like a Sunday picnic.

Giuliani Strategy Going South

America’s Mayor wants to come off as what used to be known in the New York neighborhoods as a stand-up guy. His entire campaign is about character, and Giuliani keeps reminding voters that on 9/11 they saw he has plenty of it.

But as he pursues a “Southern strategy” to make the Hard Right forget he is a multiply married New York liberal who sometimes dresses in drag, Giuliani is finding bumps in the pickup-truck road and has to keep swerving to avoid them.

Yesterday he was backing away from Sen. David Vitter, his Southern chairman and wannabe running mate, just as quickly as the Mayor dumped his South Carolina chairman last month after he was accused of dealing cocaine.

Vitter’s prostitute problem, Giuliani said, was “a personal issue.” So it is. But then again, the candidate has been distancing himself from so many issues of personal preference--from abortion to flying the Confederate flag-—that it may be casting doubt on his don’t-tread-on-me image.

While puckering up to Pat Robertson last month in his leadership lecture at Regent University, Giuliani stressed the importance of optimism. If his new Southern friends keep tripping him up on the run to the White House, he’s going to need it.