That rival talker is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and the rival network is Cumulus Media. “The Mike Huckabee Show” launches on April 9, and Cumulus is eager to sign up radio stations to carry it. The opportunity for them is two-fold: if stations decide to drop Limbaugh, there’s an obvious opening for them to carry Huckabee’s show instead. But even if they don’t, most of the local station contracts with Limbaugh are exclusive: another station in the same market can’t carry him. In the past, that meant the station had snagged itself a prize. In the future, it might look more like they’re saddled with a cigar-smoking albatross.

Cumulus Media’s seized that opportunity, telling stations that don’t have Limbaugh now and that might choose not to reup their contracts to carry him in the future, that in Huckabee, they’ve got a better alternative. The company’s distributed a list of 31 advertisers who have asked that their spots not be affiliated with any Limbaugh-related programming. And they’re pitching Huckabee’s show by telling stations it’ll offer “more conversation, less confrontation.”

In a few weeks, we’ll start to see if that strategy works. And even if it does, Huckabee’s tone may be different from Limbaugh’s, but that doesn’t mean his positions—with a few exceptions like childhood obesity and arts education—will vary much from the man he has a chance to dethrone. But as radio stations reassess their budgets, they might want to reconsider whether Limbaugh’s once-vaunted brand will continue to be worth it to them at the end of the next contract they sign. More than 140 advertisers have already made that assessment and decided to move on.

Mike Huckabee spoke at a South Carolina luncheon yesterday and slammed Republicans’ calls to eliminate foreign aid, calling such a prospect “outrightly foolish” and “un-Christian.” Gingrich, who supports zeroing out foreign aid, spoke immediately following Huckabee, but did not address the former Arkansas governor’s criticisms.

Following the event, ThinkProgress spoke with Franks, who had listened to both speeches. The Arizona congressman said Huckabee’s message was “magnificent” and “right on.” When ThinkProgress noted that Gingrich was one of the Republicans who Huckabee targeted for wanting to eliminate foreign aid, Franks was reluctant to criticize his candidate of choice, saying simply, “I’m going to leave that right there”:

FRANKS: Scott, Mr. Huckabee articulates subjects like that in a way all of us wish we could. I thought he was magnificent. I’m considered one of the most conservative members of Congress and I don’t think I could have articulated my own perspective any better than that. He’s right on. I just think he’s right.

KEYES: Do you think that the Republican Party has kind of lost its way on the issue of foreign aid?

FRANKS: I think that they have to make the distinction between places where our engagement can further the cause of freedom and places where it furthers the cause of surrender. There is a difference, there is a distinction. [...]

KEYES: I was just curious to get your reaction because Speaker Gingrich is one of the folks who have called for zeroing out foreign aid which Huckabee was very critical of.

FRANKS: I’m going to leave that right there.

Listen to it:

Foreign aid accounts for less than 1 percent of the federal budget, yet Republicans have regularly demagogued the issue when discussing how to eliminate the budget deficit. Gingrich is one of the worst offenders, declaring in a recent South Carolina debate that all current recipients of American aid “ought to start off at zero and say, explain to me why I should give you a penny.”

Speaking at a U.S. Global Leadership Coalition luncheon in Columbia, Huckabee told the largely-Republican crowd that their party had lost its way on the issue of foreign aid. In debate after debate, Republican presidential candidates have competed to determine which of them could be the most critical of American foreign aid funding. When the candidates gathered in South Carolina last fall, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney all proposed zeroing out foreign aid funding. “You ought to start off at zero and say, explain to me why I should give you a penny,” Gingrich said.

Huckabee, who was tasked with introducing Gingrich at the event, addressed the Republican Party’s dismissal of foreign aid, calling the notion “outrightly foolish” and “extraordinarily disagreeable.” The former Arkansas governor, also an ordained Baptist preacher, went on to say that not taking action to help those living in poverty around the world “would be un-Christian.”

HUCKABEE: I resent the idea that the conservative viewpoint somehow is at odds with the idea of strategic investment in countries around the globe. I not only disagree with it, I find it extraordinarily disagreeable. [...] To be honest with you, you go to a lot of political rallies, you can get an applause that will raise the roof if you just say, “we’re going to get rid of all foreign aid. We’re going to cut it all.” But it’s shortsighted if not outrightly foolish.

The simple reality is that every time America is making its presence known in any government across the world, it will be far more effective when it delivers bread than when it delivers bombs. And the next thing I think we ought to do, if we really are the Christians we claim to be, is to want to make sure that we do not turn our backs on the suffering we see. [...] As as a Christian believer myself, it would be impossible for me to have read the gospels of Jesus, to look upon a scene like that and not be moved to the point of action, and to just simply be moved to the point of compassion that did not result in doing something, would be un-Christian.

Watch the highlights from Huckabee’s remarks:

Gingrich spoke at the event immediately following Huckabee, but did not address the former Arkansas governor’s comments or his opposition to foreign aid. Gingrich instead claimed that preparing for an electromagnetic pulse attack — what scientists and nuclear experts dismiss as “far-fetched” — was a good use of American resources.

In Florida, McCain shot at Romney: “As head of his investment company he presided over the acquisition of companies that laid off thousands of workers.” In a debate, McCain charged, “He managed companies and he bought and he sold and sometimes people lost their jobs.” McCain’s campaign manager added, “He learned politics and economics from being a venture capitalist, where you go and buy companies, you strip away the jobs, and you resell them,”

But today, McCain suggested attacks on Romney’s jobs record at Bain are akin to “communism.”

Meanwhile, former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is also defending Romney on Bain, even though he once quipped that Romney looks “looks like the guy who fired you.”

The flood of money into politics after the Supreme Court’s Citizens decision has worried progressives, who are concerned about their candidates being drowned by corporations’ deep pockets. But today, conservative former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee — who won the Iowa GOP Caucus in 2008 — condemned the rise of Super PACs.

Speaking on Fox News, Huckabee objected to the way that Super PACs allow campaigns to stay out of the fray while unidentifiable “snipers from the trees” (the PACs) run negative attack ads against opponents. Calling the outside money groups “one of the worst things that ever happened in American politics,” Huckabee said they have “killed civility.” He called for great transparency, saying anyone who gives money to fund attack ads should have to put their name on them:

HUCKABEE: And I think one of the worst things that ever happened in American politics is the rise of the independent expenditure groups that really don’t have accountability. You don’t know where this money is coming from. You don’t know where the accountability is coming from, and the candidates have no coordination. [...]

I wish that every person who gives any money [to fund an ad] that mentions any candidate by name would have to put their name on it and be held responsible and accountable for it. And its killing any sense of civility in politics because the cheap shots that can be made from the trees by snipers that you never can identify. It’s just the worst part of this process.

Watch it:

Citizens United, the conservative advocacy group whose 2008 anti-Hillary Clinton film led to the 2010 Supreme Court decision permitting unlimited corporate spending in political campaigns on First Amendment grounds, is now promoting fetal personhood laws through a new film narrated by Mike Huckabee. . . .

The [film] also promotes the strategy of pursuing federal legislation that would enshrine civil rights for fetuses on the grounds that their equal protection rights are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This argument, recently endorsed by Newt Gingrich, was injected into the campaign by Princeton professor and conservative Catholic activist Robert George during a candidate forum in South Carolina in September. By arguing that fetuses are people, and therefore entitled to the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment, they hope to bypass the more onerous process of amending the Constitution with a long-sought human life amendment.

Gingrich, Huckabee and others can argue that the Fourteenth Amendment says whatever they want, but nothing they say will change the fact that Congress simply does not have the power to defy a Supreme Court decision interpreting the Constitution — and the Supreme Court is crystal clear that abortion and contraception bans are illegal.

Nevertheless, the fact that a former governor and top contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008 is participating in this film is disturbing because it shows that two deeply radical ideas are now being mainstreamed within the Republican Party. The first is Gingrich’s deeply authoritarian belief that the Supreme Court can simply be ignored, the other is the personhood proposal itself — which threatens many forms of birth control along with all forms of abortion.

Speaking to a crowd of 350 in Mason, OH, Mason Buzz reports that Huckabee jokingly offered an eyebrow-raising way to help ensure victory on Issue 2: suppress the vote. Encouraging supporters to call friends and ask if they’re voting for Issue 2, he joked, “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,” he said. “That’s up to you how you creatively get the job done:

Listen here:

Huckabee is clearly joking, but given Building A Better Ohio’s track record of deceit , who knows. (HT: Politico’s Ben Smith)

The Personhood Mississippi group is kicking off its campaign Sept. 8 in support of the “personhood” initiative that is slated to appear on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The initiative seeks to define a “person” as a being at the point of fertilization, which would restrict abortion rights in Mississippi.

Tickets for the banquet, which will be held at First Baptist Church on North State Street, start at $50.

RH Reality Check points out that Huckabee was actively involved in the failed 2008 Colorado Personhood effort as well. Personhood USA hopes to get proposals on the ballot in nearly half the states by 2012.

As ThinkProgress has previously reported, Personhood USA and its affiliates are fringe anti-abortion groups that are determined to redefine life as beginning at the moment of fertilization, effectively outlawing contraceptives like birth control pills. The medical community has long been in agreement that fertilization does not mark the beginning of a pregnancy — fertilized eggs must first be implanted, and only about half of fertilized eggs actually result in a pregnancy.

Yet a growing number of lawmakers like Huckabee are supporting Personhood USA’s efforts to buck medical expertise and legally define life as the moment a sperm meets an egg. These laws would turn common forms of contraception into the legal equivalent of homicide and place millions of women in jeopardy.

Contraceptives like the pill and IUDs not only act to prevent fertilization, but, if fertilization does occur, may prevent that fertilized egg from implanting in a woman’s uterus. Personhood USA considers this tantamount to abortion, and wants to make it a punishable offense for women to control their own fertility. According to 2008 numbers, around 11 million American women use birth control pills and another 2 million use intrauterine devices (IUDs).

Because “personhood” legislation could make any effort to terminate a pregnancy a criminal act, it could also prevent doctors from saving the lives of women with ectopic pregnancies, which are never viable and need to be terminated as soon as possible.

(HT: Right Wing Watch)

I’ve been spending a lot of time talking to Ian David Moss, the research director at Fractured Atlas and the founding blogger behind Createquity. In the course of our conversations, he sent me a post he wrote a year and a half ago questioning whether or not it makes sense for the arts community to try to rebrand their issues as partisan issues. Ian writes:

What might this look like? As nonprofit organizations, most arts groups are limited in the amount of direct lobbying they can do, and they cannot endorse specific candidates. That’s not what I’m talking about, though. I’m talking about seeking a shift in the dialogue of the thought leaders on the left. I’m talking about making the arts a “progressive” issue in the same way that environmentalism, health care, reproductive rights, and labor are considered “progressive” issues. To be sure, this would lose us some fans and invite lots of confrontation, both of which are in a vacuum Very Bad Things. But it would bring with it an advantage, a huge, huge advantage: the machinery, infrastructure, and commitment of one of the two major political parties in the US–the one that at the moment just happens to have led in party identification among voters nationally for the past four years running. This is no small matter. For all the vitriol (and sometimes worse) that has been hurled at abortion-rights supporters since 1973, Roe v. Wade still stands. And where do you think the labor movement would be in this country without the strong support of Democrats through the years?

An alliance between the arts and the left makes a lot of sense on both sides. Most artists themselves identify as anywhere from moderately liberal to borderline Marxist, as do their core audiences…Part of the reason culture conservatives hate the NEA so is because so much art speaks to largely progressive groups: homosexuals, atheists, people of color, the sexually liberated, the alienated, the outsiders. One could even make an argument that art and creativity are inherently progressive values: they require and celebrate a capacity to think critically, to question convention, to consider different viewpoints. Is it time for us to come out of the political closet and show the world who we really are?

I think the obvious initial question to ask here is what the arts community would actually get if support for the arts as a public good, and as policies that promote and subsidize the production of more art, became a specifically Democratic issue. Obviously if there was no party in support of abortion access or policies that benefit organized labor, abortion might be even more unavailable than it is now, and the percentage of the workforce that has union representation would be smaller. But powerful outside groups have had to use hot pincers to obtain much of the support labor and women’s organizations have obtained from the Democratic lawmakers, and still experienced dramatic contractions of labor rights, union memberships, and abortion access. Throwing in with a political party may get the arts community access to machinery and infrastructure—but it would require arts organizations to build formidable new organizations and fundraising capacity to earn a seat at the party table, much less a favorable slot in the list of Democratic priorities.

Even if the arts community was willing to make that shift in priorities and in how they direct their fundraising efforts, it would still be a tough sell. “Authoritarians have always been the enemy of ‘degenerate’ art. What’s far more distressing is the unwillingness of progressives to defend it,” Ann Powers wrote in her classic “In Defense of Nasty Art.” “The reason for this hesitation is clear: We don’t know if we believe in this stuff, and even if we do, we don’t know how to deal with it.” I’ll say this over and over again, but it is so vastly easier to argue that something shouldn’t exist than to argue that something should exist even if we feel weird or outright bad about it. The “safe, legal, and rare” formulation is as much of a challenge as a defense of art we find truly unpleasant or downright morally objectionable*. This is a structural disadvantage progressive arguments face on dozens of issues. Art and artists are not alone, but it is a barrier to entry.

But most of all, if this is a good idea, and I remain undecided as to whether it is, I still think we need to define the broader arts agenda first, and to be dead sure there aren’t conservative allies who we’d lose if the arts got more partisan who we can afford to lose. Do advocates for arts education really want to walk away from Mike Huckabee’s support? Could David Koch be convinced to sign on to arts subsidy programs? Being inside the party structure can be helpful, but there are times when living outside of it can be an advantage.

*NB: Well worth reading, the AV Club’s Steven Hyden on what is morally objectionable in popular culture.

American politics largely consists of a battle in which the “center” is defined in highly elitist terms, a mix of somewhat right-wing views on economic policy (willingness to contemplate some tax increases as long as they’re paired with big spending cuts) paired with slightly left-wing views on social policy (abortion should be generally legal and gays and lesbians should have some rights but let’s not push the envelop too quickly please!) leaving the other, more populist quadrant, vacant. Ross Douthat in his requiem for Mike Huckabee says he’ll be missed precisely because he occupied that vacant zone:

This combination of views represents one of the plausible middle grounds in American politics. You can find it in the Republican Party, among the evangelicals and Catholics whose votes made the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush possible. You can find it among independent voters, particularly in what a recent Pew report calls the “disaffected” demographic, whose hostility to big government coexists with anxieties about corporate power and support for redistribution of wealth. And you find it in the Democratic Party as well — from the dwindling ranks of pro-life Catholic liberals to the “Bill Cosby conservatives” in the African-American middle class.

I had a rejoinder ready for this, but it came pre-acknowledged later in the column:

Of course, his 2008 campaign also reflected populism’s inevitable flaw: a desperate lack of policy substance. Huckabee won votes by talking about issues that the other Republican candidates wouldn’t touch, but his actual agenda was a grab bag of gimmicks and crank ideas. And nothing in his subsequent television career has indicated a strong interest in putting policy meat on the bones of his worldview.

But is this really an inevitable flaw of populism? I actually agree that it’s an inevitable flaw in the thinking of a lot of people who I see out there calling for populism of one stripe or another. People have decided that the problem is the bankers and that what we need is a populist politician who’ll call them out, but don’t necessarily actually know what they want to see happen. And it’s a mistake to make policy by emotional affiliation rather than dispassionate analysis. But is it actually impossible to combine the populist style with a more rigorous approach to substance? I’d say the John Edwards campaign in 2008 did a decent job. Obviously, his career’s wound up being undone by sundry character problems. But the lack of heft to Mike Huckabee’s national political persona is, in its way, equally a character problem and a more serious one: He doesn’t seem to actually care. He’d rather talk about problems then think of solutions to them. He’d rather host a weekend television show than try to become president.

WALLACE: Now you didn’t mention Mitt Romney. […]

HUCKABEE: If Mitt Romney is the nominee for our party I will support him because I believe that Mitt Romney would be a better president for the United States than Barack Obama on any day. […]

I’m going to support the Republican nominee and unless a person is way out there and is not clear on issues that to me are non negotiable like the sancity of life. I believe Donald Trump would be better for America than Barack Obama.

Watch it:

Potential presidential candidate Mike Huckabee acknowledged this shift on Fox News today, telling host Bill Hemmer that even former President Reagan, the great conservative icon, would likely be unable to win a GOP primary in the current Republican “atmosphere”:

HUCKABEE: Ronald Reagan would have a very difficult, if not impossible time being nominated in this atmosphere of the Republican party.

HEMMER: How come?

HUCKABEE: Because he raises taxes as governor, he made deals with Democrats, he compromised on things in order to move the ball down the field. As president, he gave amnesty to 7 million illegal immigrants. There were many things that would have been anathema. People speak of Reagan as if he was absolutely steadfast. He was in his convictions, but you have to govern in a way that is different that is different than the way you campaign.

Watch it:

Huckabee’s comments also reflect the fact that the Reagan conservatives speak of today never really existed. The “Reagan Myth” ignores much of the Reagan reality that conservatives would find “anathema,” as Huckabee says, including Reagan’s vigorous support of unions and his vast expansion of the federal government.

In February, former GOP Sen. Bob Bennett (UT) — who lost a primary to a tea party candidate last fall — echoed Huckabee, saying, “Ronald Reagan would probably not recognize the description of Ronald Regan that is coming out of a lot of the tea party blogs.”

SIMPSON: Who the hell is for abortion? I don’t know anybody running around with a sign that says, “Have an abortion! They’re wonderful!” They’re hideous, but they’re a deeply intimate and personal decision, and I don’t think men legislators should even vote on the issue.

Then you’ve got homosexuality, you’ve got Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We have homophobes on our party. That’s disgusting to me. We’re all human beings. We’re all God’s children. Now if they’re going to get off on that stuff—Santorum has said some cruel things—cruel, cruel things—about homosexuals. Ask him about it; see if he attributes the cruelness of his remarks years ago. Foul.

Now if that’s the kind of guys that are going to be on my ticket, you know, it makes you sort out hard what Reagan said, you know, “Stick with your folks.” But, I’m not sticking with people who are homophobic, anti-women, moral values—while you’re diddling your secretary while you’re giving a speech on moral values? Come on, get off of it.

Watch it:

Simpson could be referring to any number of leading Republican presidential contenders, including Newt Gingrich, who recently defended his support of the anti-gay American Family Association, Mike Huckabee, who “would love the world to be led by people who have a Biblical worldview, or Tim Pawlenty, who will never be at the point where he sees same-sex relationships as the same as traditional marriage.

And today on Laura Ingraham’s radio show, potential GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee revealed that he met with Trump last week and considers him to be a “very serious contender.” In fact, Huckabee wouldn’t rule out sharing a ticket with Trump:

HUCKABEE: Well, I had a wonderful meeting with Donald Trump. I think he’s a very serious contender. He’s going to get in. I kind of went into the meeting thinking he’s not really going to run. Came out thinking, by gosh, he really is. [...]

INGRAHAM: Could there be a possible Huckabee/Trump ticket in the offing here?

HUCKABEE: Never say never. I don’t know. But, whether Donald Trump would ever want to be seen on the same stage with me, I don’t know. But I found him very engaging, and a very smart guy. And I think people will dismiss him at their own peril.

Listen here:

While a handful of conservatives have been willing to tell Trump to knock off the birther talk, it’s astonishing how few have been willing to publicly condemn it. On CSPAN’s Newsmakers this weekend, Priebus — though he seemed loathe to talk about it and changed the subject whenever possible — refused to call Trump’s birther focus a “distraction,” let alone nonsense, when pressed repeatedly by the hosts.