Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

On the other hand, Huckabee is out to display in every possible forum that Guiliani and Romney are mere pretenders while he is the authentic article.  "Even if we lose elections, we should not lose our honor," Huckabee proclaimed relative to Ron Paul's warning, "and that is more important to the Republican Party."

It is interesting to analyze how Huckabee defines honor.  Here was a regime with a neoconservative leader in Cheney who remained on the company payroll of Halliburton, which he formerly headed as CEO, making the case for war and holding secret meetings involving his own company and its role in dividing up the wealth following an invasion of Iraq.  

Meanwhile spokesperson Bush ignited the verbal firestorm preceding conflict, aided by Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations, as a fictitious case evolved for attacking Iraq based on what was termed iron clad factual evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction possessed by Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein.  

The attack was launched before a UN inspection team led by Hans Blix could finish its efforts, a means of circumventing the facts, the ultimate conclusion that such "weapons" did not exist.

The current death toll, Governor Huckabee, is between 600,000 and 1 million deaths overall in Iraq since the first shock and awe assault.  This is according to studies from organizations such as Johns Hopkins University and European think tanks.  Ah yes, Governor, and Cheney's Halliburton cronies have profited over the billion dollar mark since the nation was invaded.  

Huckabee's vision of what encompasses honor went beyond the Iraq War, however, as he took aim on a familiar target of the Republican red meat brigade.  In his anxiety to secure votes from the religious right the Arkansan proclaimed his support for a "human life amendment" to outlaw abortion.

John McCain, looking for a life raft to lift his rapidly sinking campaign, used a comment from Mitt Romney to display his strong support for current Cheney-Bush Iraq War policies.  

"The surge is apparently working," Romney commented relative to the increase in troops.  This brought an instant rebuke from McCain, who solemnly proclaimed, "The surge is working, sir, no, not apparently.  It's working."

One night later on MSNBC Keith Olbermann along with program guest Jonathan Alter of Newsweek put the latest neoconservative spin on the surge in proper perspective.  Using a tactic employed in the business world by longtime Bush crony the, late Kenneth Lay at Enron, Bush is preparing to glowingly reveal figures on the Iraq surge based on "cooking the books."

The Bush team has engaged in vigorous numbers gymnastics, altering previous definitions to define what constitutes sectarian violence in Iraq.  By ruling out numerous basic and previously defined categories to achieve a deceitful result Bush will triumphantly declare that sectarian violence has been reduced by 75 percent.

Tell that, Mr. Bush, to the families of the latest 7 American service personnel victims stemming from the latest 2 assaults revealed in today's Iraq War news.

Apart from Ron Paul, a Burkean conservative and libertarian competing in a field of neocon trumpet blowers, there is one word for the continuing Republican debacle, to which Fred Thompson has just added his name.

That word would be shame.