Personal Aside: Mail Flows in on Huckabee. Most Favor, Some Dissent. What? He’s a Dispensationalist?

Mail always comes in droves to this Blog. I’ve arranged for people to send me personal emails because there have been some crackpots writing to Reader’s Comments; besides, people can spend more time writing at leisure this way. Remember I didn’t endorse Huckabee: I said it occurs to me that 2012 may just be his time—with which I still believe.

Here are some of the many returns, edited for brevity:

TODD VOLKER, Ottawa, IL : Yeah, I like Huckabee, too. I like his leadership style.

DEBBIE EDWARDS, , Plano, Texas: “A trick pony? Nah. But someone who is running to win a marathon, knowing that trust, personal convictions and guts are what’s needed to win the race.”

BILLY KUTULAS, Illinois: “Hi, I think Huckabee would make a great president.”

J. ASHLEY, Illinois: “Mike is not a one-trick pony. In fact, he is a man whose time has come. I totally agree with you that social issues will be more much important in the next presidential election than in years past. The Republican party has almost split over this issue alone. Those who say it is too polarizing, have just missed the bus. They do not really has the pulse on the American people. Due to tea parties, we are just starting to see how really important our freedoms are to the mainstream American and how Barack Obama has awakened a sleeping giant…The Republican party better hope Mike stays on board because if he gets shoved under the bus by them like last time and goes independent, they will be doomed. Because Mike stands for everything the Republican party used to stand for way back when. Fiscal and social conservatism. And that is exactly what the American people minus obnoxious interest groups from Hollywood, Wall Street and others are ready for and truly want.”

JOHN WILLIAMS: “I am an avid reader of your blog—I love your in-depth analysis…I am convinced that [Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota] coming from a blue state in the Upper Midwest would definitely make more inroads here than a former pastor/governor from the South. I the near term I think the GOP would be better off without a southerner at the head of the ticket…With regard to electability, some things to consider: Pawlenty was twice elected statewide in a blue state without moving to the left a Romney did when he ran for senator and governor and he still managed to win in 2006 which was a bad year for the GOP.” (As to governmental experience, he says that while Huckabee served ten years, Pawlenty is on his second term plus having been a legislative leader for quite a while).

MIKE CONLON: “R U aware that Mr. Huckabee is a Dispensationalist? He could not be trusted in foreign policy. The neo-milleniarists want to hasten Armageddon which they believe will be at Megiddo [site of an ancient city at northern Israel’s Jazreel Valley].

My comment on Mike’s letter: A variant of Dispensationalism is shown in Tim LaHaye’s popular “Left Behind” book series in which he asserts the end of the world is near. The worry is that someone who believes this may act as president to fulfill the “prophecy” and endanger world peace. Those who were around in the 1980 campaign of Ronald Reagan remember that The New York Times suggested Reagan was a dispensationalist and supporter of the end-times, thus worrying that he would commit us to a world war to battle for the kingdom of the Lord. (I’d like to have some further comment on this from evangelicals particularly).

JEFF BERKOWITZ: Conductor of “Public Affairs” on access TV and a frequent guest on my radio show.

He comments on his blog that I have a tendency to “fall in love” with favorite candidates for example a few years ago State Sen. Bill Brady whom I now call “as light as a Panama hat.” He’s right about Brady and I plead guilty. I also veer toward…if not racism at least something that can be confused with racism… by comparing Obama to the hyper-articulate black lawyer Algonquin J. Calhoun who didn’t have the answers but who faked it with glossy rhetoric: a fixture on the old Amos `n Andy radio and TV shows.

Berkowitz is very ticklish about unfavorable comparisons made of blacks believing we are still in the mid-60s where we must tread very gingerly with them, moving in an affirmative action context to avoid giving them the same treatment when they are in the political milieu as we dish out to whites. I reject that self-righteous North Shore attitude completely.

As a founder of one variant of affirmative action (section 8 [a]) that empowered a presidential order on that the policy be applied to black business which provided four hundred billions to black businesses when he was in three cornered pants in private Wilmette school…a policy I called to be rescinded after a decade, by the way…I don’t exactly need a lecture on political correctness from Mr. Berkowitz. I don’t recall his being particularly active in 1969 nor so far as I can recollect was nowhere to be seen in 1966 man or bouy when, as an officer of Quaker Oats, I consulted with Andrew Young and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the slums of North Lawndale in 1966 when King took up residence here.

But at the very least, since in all probability he was too young to participate then, he may learn from his history books that the purpose of the civil rights drive was to see that blacks are treated not as specialized creatures but with the same equanimity as anyone else. Which means that if it’s okay to call my old chief Richard Nixon a crook, it’s acceptable to say that as president Barack Obama is not only a naïf but a duplicitous one who is not a patriot—and who may well be the worst president from the standpoint of foreign policy alone since the beginning of the Cold War. Obama wouldn’t know because you, see, for him—and evidently Berkowitz-- the 233 year history of the U. S. began only with the arrival of Destiny’s Tot from…er-er-er…Hawaii.

ANONYMOUS: Are you aware that Phyllis Schlafly doesn’t like Huckabee?

Yes. But then she doesn’t like me either.