MIKE HUCKABEE
WEB SITE mikehuckabee.com
LOOK FOR “My plan to secure the border? Two words: Chuck. Norris.”
LAUGH AT Huck’s contention that the earth is 6000 years old — because the Bible says so.” I don’t separate my faith from my personal and professional lives.”
GRADE C |
Remember when people poked fun at Bill Clinton for being portly? Apparently, the other Man from Hope, Arkansas, used to look like he enjoyed Big Macs too. Then he lost 110 pounds — so fast, wrote the New York Times, “that it was as if he simply unzipped a fat suit and stepped out.” He even wrote a book about it: Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork. Mike Huckabee’s Web site is pretty slim, too. And he may be burying his presidential campaign by not embracing more multimedia and social-networking tools. Yes, there are tiny links to his Flickr and Facebook pages. But no, a few links to un-embedded YouTube clips, a drab blog, and a ton o’ text isn’t gonna cut it in these tech-savvy times. Then again, I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised that he isn’t much into Web development — this is, after all, a guy who supports teaching creationism in schools.
TOM TANCREDO
WEB SITE teamtancredo.com
LOOK FOR The bloody TV spot recreating a terrorist attack, perpetrated by “jihadists who froth with hate” who presumably slipped in via Mexico
LAUGH AT Tancredo, inviting you to a Nashua house party, posing with pretty red balloons
GRADE C- |
I was ready to give this Paleolithic no-hoper credit for at least having a modern, tech-savvy site: it’s well-stocked with YouTube clips, Facebook links, scrolling blog-post thingamabobs, and assorted Web 2.0 whatnottery. Then I noticed a letter from a constituent, given pride of place on Tom Tancredo’s homepage in the form of a PDF file. It seems this woman was at Wal-Mart one day, “looking for toddler crew socks.” She asked several employees where she could find some, but each one said, “No English.” So the woman approached an African-American employee stocking shelves and repeated her question. “As we were walking,” she writes, “I told her I had asked several of the women in the front of the store, but they spoke no English and were no help to me at all. She stopped in her tracks and said, ‘I always knew something would bring us together’ — who would have guessed it would be language?” How touching — healing the racial divide by shared disdain for Mexicans.
DUNCAN HUNTER
WEB SITE gohunter08.com
LOOK FOR Endorsement letter from the ever-relevant Chuck Yeager
LAUGH AT Poll questions, such as, “Would you join with Rep. Hunter and pledge to make your holidays [sic] purchases ‘Made in America’?”
GRADE B |
This Web site doesn’t just toss up a few shaky clips of Duncan Hunter talking up corn farmers in Sioux City or lunching with old ladies in Nashua. No, indeed. The online videos for Hunter are staged presentations with snazzy graphics and high production values: the candidate standing in front of a white background, expounding on the “War on Terror” or border security or fair trade as he gestures toward flashy computer simulations of missiles in space or the wall he wants to build between the US and Mexico. Clearly, these professionally executed films mean the (not far from Hollywood) California congressman has his proverbial shit together and is well-suited to be Commander in Chief. Right? Actually, other evidence — his bill prohibiting federal money to Columbia University for its hosting of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; his desire to ban CNN from Iraq; his contention that China plans to invade Panama; his hairpiece — suggests that he’s just sort of insane.
