Fox News personality and former governor Mike Huckabee parachuted into Ohio yesterday to kick off the campaign to support former Fox News personality and governor John Kasich.
Governor Kasich has a long and profitable relationship with Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, and the news channel promoted his bid for governor, so I’m not surprised they’re again pulling out all the stops in my state.
Watch this if you’d like to see my governor stammering and stuttering as he presents an emotional defense of his former employer. It’s cringe-worthy.
Preacher Huckabee is either lying or uninformed on the state law he’s lecturing on, but, as we discovered in the health care debate, asking a conservative leader to read a law before he opens his mouth to opine on it is asking too much.
Huckabee defended SB 5 as a “reasonable, common sense” approach to Ohio’s budget woes while deflecting criticism that it is anti-union.
In many ways Senate Bill 5 goes further than the antibargaining law that Wisconsin’s Republican-led Legislature enacted in March over the protests of tens of thousands of union supporters. Ohio’s law allows only limited bargaining: If management and union do not reach a settlement, then city councils and school boards can impose their side’s final contract offer unilaterally. The Ohio law bans binding arbitration and bargaining on health coverage, pensions or staffing levels.
Huckabee continues:
“In every state and in every municipality in this country, there is a huge crisis going on. In Ohio, an 8 billion dollar one. And that has to be made up somewhere,” he said. “I don’t know how many Ohioans you’re willing to put out of work in order to fund a bigger and bigger and bigger government.”
Ohio does not now and never had an 8 billion dollar deficit. Governor Kasich’s budget director admitted it, months ago.
I know facts and preparation don’t matter when a millionaire media personality is opining on a law he hasn’t read and a budget he doesn’t understand in a state he doesn’t live in, but I am curious about how he earns that huge paycheck he receives.
Maybe Huckabee earns the big bucks at Fox for telling jokes like this:
“Make a list… Call them and ask them, ‘Are you going to vote on Issue 2 and are you going to vote for it?’ If they say no, well, you just make sure that they don’t go vote. Let the air out of their tires on election day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date. That’s up to you how you creatively get the job done.”
Is one or another police agency investigating the now-weekly allegations of criminality and corruption around Rupert Murdoch, or do I have to listen to his mouthpieces conduct yet another political campaign in my state?
I’m sure he’s already booked on Morning JoePost + Comments (50)