Some of us heart Huckabee

Mike Huckabee jumped on his New Year’s Day stage, fresh through the doors of his tour "Huckabus" and the Cedar Rapids Elks Lodge at 12:30 p.m.and established his presence by immediately by strapping on the bass guitar and playing renditions of old blues songs like "Mustang Sally" and "Blue Suede Shoes" with an international blues band.

The two-member band is made up of a long-haired lead guitarist wearing a brown corduroy blazer and stoner glasses and a bald, goateed biker-looking drummer in blue jeans and a Larry the Cable Guy shirt.

After changing the line in "Mustang Sally" line that goes "you better slow your Mustang down" to "you better start following Mike Huckabee around," Craig Erickson, the Cedar Rapids-born guitarist who has played with Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix gave the stage up to Huckabee’s wife, Janet, who introduced her husband to the crowd of 200 plus northern Iowans in the lodge as the next president of the United States.

The majority of supporters at the Huckabee stump had never heard of him until the past few months, when he quickly ascended in the polls and finally overtook Mitt Romney this month.
Mark and Marie Scherbaum, of Marion, Iowa, have been taking their five home-schooled children around to as many Huckabee events as possible after they took their support away from Sam Brownback.

They said they realized Huck was the only candidate to support their traditional family values, much like many conservative religious groups who have backed the candidate in light of his recent surge in Iowa.

His ascent is largely fueled by his days as a Baptist minister, giving him favor in the religious
community.

"His whole train is pro-life from birth ‘til death," Marie said, illustrating the cycle of life with elaborate hand gestures.

"He has everyday values," Mark said.

The family also said Huck was the only truly comprehensive candidate who doesn’t give his ear to any special interests.

Indeed, the Huckster knows how to play on the emotions of his neoconservative base who want to see the GOP return to it’s core traditional values of small government and an expressed willingness to work with both ends of the political spectrum on any issue

But in a ballroom that could easily be converted to a sleezy strip club in west Des Moines seven hours after the Cedar Rapids event, he strengthened his newly-acquired lead in the polls with a special message from Chuck Norris while one of the only representatives of Iowa’s black community at the event slumped behind his complex switchboard and shook his head over Huckabee policy.

The sound technician who didn’t give me his name was probably the only person in the building who would say "He’s really not my type of guy" beside his workmate who was the spitting image a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war. He was too drunk to talk.

"Politics is more commons," the black man said, asserting that a representative of the country’s working class should not be elite.

"I’m not a fat cat," he said. "I don’t have money."

The skinny black man, who appeared to be in his late 50s, bared his gnarled teeth in a sarcastic snarl while he talked about how Huckabee’s proposed energy independence plan would be counterproductive for the country.

He asked if foreign oil reserves were not needed, why would we be buying from foreign sources?
He said substantial U.S. oil reserves didn’t exist.

"If that was the truth, we’d be using it right fuckin’ now," he said.

The governor wants to exempt the U.S. from deals made in the 1960s with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries that bound the U.S. to Middle Eastern oil exports. The plan Huckabee wants to implement would utilize untapped domestic oil reserves, alternative energy sources like biodiesel and wind energy, and get rid of what Huckabee’s Web site calls OPEC’s "energy embargo against us."

Sounds slick, but Democrats don’t buy it.

"(Huckabee) sounds charismatic and good, if you don’t pay attention to what he’s saying," said Colleen Wilcox, a recently retired school superintendent who came to Iowa Friday to advocate for the Hillary Clinton campaign after Bill Clinton stumped for his wife in Amana, Iowa.

While polls show that Huckabee will probably win the Republican nomination in Iowa and ultimately the country, he will still have to run the gauntlet of a more diverse society and play on the emotions of people across the country who aren’t as stuck to tradition and deregulation as conservative Americans.

Looking up at the "Chuck and Huck" event like he was forced to experience Alex DeLarge’s horrific cleansing in "A Clockwork Orange," the sound technician illustrated his disdain for Huckabee’s pander to his new base.

"Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining," he said.

-Hedgefund