Mike Huckabee & the Hucksters will now sing their hit song, Let The Bible Cure Your Cancer
The
New York Times reports on 2016 presidential hopeful and (sigh) talk radio host Mike Huckabee's "unconventional" fundraising efforts. But they're the same scams and apocalypse-fodder that the whole rest of the conservative movement sends out, so perhaps what they mean to say is that they are in fact
very conventional fundraising efforts.
“I’m Mike Huckabee,” he says with all the folksy charm that propelled a career as a preacher, politician and broadcaster.
But this is no campaign ad. It is an Internet infomercial for a dubious diabetes treatment, in which Mr. Huckabee, who is contemplating a run for the Republican nomination in 2016, tells viewers to ignore “Big Pharma” and instead points them to a “weird spice, kitchen-cabinet cure,” consisting of dietary supplements.
“Let me tell you, diabetes can be reversed,” Mr. Huckabee says. “I should know because I did it. Today you can, too.”
Except he didn't do it via the cinnamon-based dietary supplement, but by losing weight. He himself never tried the "dietary supplement," possibly because the American Diabetes Association considers it bunk.
In a better world this is the sort of thing that would get a fellow invited to a congressional hearing, but in this world this is just the most prominent of Huckabee's many links to dubious and/or outright creepy product peddlers. Members of his mailing list may look forward to all sorts of (literal) miracle cures and whatnot, as you can read beneath the fold.
One ad arriving in January in the inboxes of Huckabee supporters, who signed up for his political commentaries at MikeHuckabee.com, claims there is a miracle cure for cancer hidden in the Bible. The ad links to a lengthy Internet video, which offers a booklet about the so-called Matthew 4 Protocol. It is “free” with a $72 subscription to a health newsletter.
Another recent pitch sent out to Huckabee’s supporters carried the subject line “Food Shortage Could Devastate Country.” It promoted Food4Patriots survival food kits, described as the “No. 1 item you should be hoarding.”
So here's the thing. Yes, being a supporter of Mike Huckabee gets you put on a national sucker list, a national sucker list virtually indistinguishable from the Glenn Beck national sucker list or the right-wing radio show national sucker list or the one that keeps the majority of the internet's conservative "news" sites humming along. But you can't say the advertisers are wrong on that one—why yes, Mike Huckabee's most avid supporters
are likely to believe that the Bible and $72 will cure their cancer, or that the apocalypse is imminent so you'd better be stocking up on pre-packaged food. Or bullets. Or shiny golden coins. Or radiation detectors. Or take your pick.
The more relevant question is whether Mike Huckabee's supporters themselves should hold him accountable for treating them as his own personal national suckers list, not only milking them for donations as he can manage it but then selling them out to an ongoing series of hucksters keen on selling them packaged food and cinnamon-based medical cures. That is for them to decide, but please remember that these are people who already think Mike Huckabee, of all people, ought to be the president of the nation. They are not firing on all cylinders in the best of times.