… seems to be the GOP version of Howard Dean for this caucus season — the candidate who becomes popular with the base in direct contradiction to the wishes of the party bosses. I don’t know if a memo literally goes out or if people just understand these things intuitively, but the piling on from the loyal party soldiers is pretty blatant. Sean Hannity insists he’s just “vetting” charges to “help” the candidate when he talks at great length about how Huckabee released a convicted rapist who went out and raped and killed another woman (the Wayne DuMond case was a cause celebre among the Clinton haters — i.e., Hannity’s core audience, ironically enough — who believed that Bill Clinton had framed an innocent man). Oddly, I have not heard Sean Hannity “vetting” charges against the other Republican candidates in such excruciating detail.
In other right wing crazy news: Bill O’Reilly has apparently realized that the War on Christmas has become his Vietnam, because he has declared victory and withdrawn. Apparently we secularists are crushed by this devastating defeat. I’d write more about this but I have to get my Christmas presents off to the Post Office before I am socked in by the imminent snowstorm …