There Goes the Log Cabin Vote

"Mike Huckabee," the AP reports, "once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could 'pose a dangerous public health risk.'"

If the preacher is planning to go Reaganesque in his surge toward the GOP nomination, this news will not sit well with the 47 chapters of the Long Cabin Republicans, who got their start in California in 1977 when the Great Communicator opposed an anti-gay ballot initiative against teachers and helped defeat it.

Reagan wrote a letter outlining his views, in which he said, "Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this."

In contrast, answering a questionnaire when he was running for the Senate in 1992, Huckabee wrote: "It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents."

The former Arkansas governor won't be making any new friends in Hollywood either when they learn he opposed federal funding for AIDS research and suggest that celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Madonna who support it do so "out of their own personal treasuries."

But as a candidate this year, Huckabee did a little flip-flopping on his web site: "My administration will be the first to have an overarching strategy for dealing with HIV and AIDS here in the United States, with a partnership between the public and private sectors that will provide necessary financing and a realistic path toward our goals."

Huckabee and Mitt Romney might have bumped into each other racing toward new positions on gays from opposite directions. But he could make a new friend in Lou Dobbs, who wants to treat illegal immigrants as lepers, too.

The Senate's Silver Idiot

If there is a total antithesis of the clichéd Silver Fox, Sen. John Warner took permanent possession of the title today with the most asinine, craven play in the Iraq end game to date.

In his usual portentous manner, Warner came back from the war zone and made the daring suggestion that George Bush bring home 5,000 troops for Christmas.

On the PBS News Hour, the Senate’s Oliver Twist noted that it was up to the President, of course, but after long study, he was emboldened to ask, “Can we have some, sir, please.”

At 80, Warner is positioning himself to run for a sixth term next year by being on both sides of ending the war, but a proposal to withdraw a handful of 160,000 troops is an insult to the intelligence of his Senate colleagues as well as his constituents.

Journalists of my generation will always remember Warner as a well-tailored empty suit who, in the words of his fellow Virginian Chuck Robb, LBJ’s son-in-law who became a governor and senator, “outmarried myself.”

Warner did it twice, first with a billionaire’s granddaughter, Catherine Mellon, and then movie star Elizabeth Taylor. Even so, he lost his first Republican primary but got the nomination when the winner died in a plane crash and then barely beat his Democratic opponent.

Throughout the Iraq war, Warner has been a stony-faced Bush supporter but is now attempting to play elder statesman with today’s stupid suggestion. Senatorial courtesy will elicit oohs and ahs, but Carl Levin et al must know the score.