McCain and Huckabee: Put ‘em Together and What’ve You Got?

This past weekend, I was involved in the highly successful showing of our Picture Palace Films movie, “Kings of the Evening.” at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles.

We have already won awards in the San Diego Film Festival: Best picture, best director Andrew P Jones, and best supporting actor, Glynn Turman. Los Angeles results are still not in at my publishing time.

However, if you remember last week’s segment, I was invited to lunch by a chum who is high up in the Republican Party. He told me he wanted to get my take on a problem facing them.

Lunch took place on the terrace at the Torrey Pines Lodge where one could look up from his heart of palm salad and gaze into the Eden-like golf course where Tiger just scooped up the marbles at the Buick Open.

He barely let me get past my salad when he waded in.

The way he described the problem is, the conservative right wing is feeling left out of the campaign.

“We are losing them,” he moaned, and in his words, “We want them back under the big tent.”

My friend knew I like word challenges but, I was not particularly pro or con McCain, that I had issues with him, and besides, what’s this “we” stuff. I was in no one’s big tent.

Still, it was all very seductive. I reluctantly surrendered to the sensory overload of the elysian setting and, I admit, relished the ideal of calming the storm, not a perfect one, granted.

I tried one final parry to ward off his intrusion into my duck confit.

“Senator McCain,” I said, “recently got his conservative bona fides from both Bushes, Jack Kemp, Bob Bennett and other heavies. That has to means something to the hard cores. Do you think Huckabee is stalling, because McCain hasn’t endorsed him as his running mate?”

”Damned if I know,” he said, purposely leaving me with no hand holds.

He wasn’t trolling for my vote. He knew I am apolitical. I had told him, and other friends involved in politics on both sides, .that I often wait till the last millisecond in the voting booth before closing my eyes and voting.

This was his sincere petition. .“Look, Hare,” he said with the practiced sincerity of a big league campaign fund raiser, “We need your help.”

What it boiled down to was, I was asked to “brand” that right wing segment of the Republican Party that is raising so much hell about McCain.

He said the right branding would give them a strong identity of their own and that they would not feel isolated.

My friend waited till the last possible moment, then said disarmingly, “The name we come up with has to bond them with McCain.”

“What?” Are you crazy? They hate McCain,” I bellowed, breaking the calm of the setting and disrupting a few putts.

“Yeah, that’s the reason I came to you,” he said. Think of a new name for them. “Evangelicals” isn’t going to do it. That isolates them.”

In a rush of words, he explained that, “We” need to draw them in. Give them a handle that says we love both Mike Huckabee and McCain, something that bonds them.

And, if McCain wants to bring Mike Huckabee in as his running mate, he can do it at his own pace, without being pressured by Huckabee’s stalling tactics.”

Before I could slide out from under, he abruptly remembered that he was late for an appointment, signaled for the check, leaving me dangling.

I had much more demanding priorities, but….. it intrigued me.

First, I had to figure out what the hell he had just said.

That was last Tuesday. The next day, I got off the air of my 1p-3p Pacific time Internet radio show at SignOnRadio.com and went to Peet’s to quaff a cup of mocha, the best mocha there is.

Their mocha is the reward I pay myself once a week if I have done a good show. This one was good, ergo, one medium cup of mocha, no whip.

I have told you in previous chapters that I was a devout believer in Divine Intervention. Otherwise, how would I have been able to predict rain 18 times in a row one year, or perform such improbable miracles as contacting China and successfully asking for pandas, clearly outside the province of a mere morning man.

It’s irrelevant that God forsook me and sent the pandas to the Washington Zoo, instead of San Diego, The thought was there ...Yet, at the time, the panda fiasco was a Divine Slight - and I told Him so.

I said to Him, “You owe me one….that is, if that’s okay with You.”

As they put it in the Old Testament, “and it was so”

I don’t have the patience of Job who often kvetched to God, so the petty IOU that I had outstanding with Him was soon allowed to lapse.

Besides, in past decades, He has blessed me with more gifts than I can tell you about without coming off as braggy, one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

But, I still set it down as Divine Intervention when I went to the discarded news paper basket at Peet’s and rummaged for The L.A Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Wall Street Journal, or an occasional New York Times.

There were none of these in the basket, only classified ad sections.

I began to turn around and walk back to my table, empty handed, when there on top of the heap that I had cast aside, was a remnant Watch Tower, a religious pamphlet handed out by Jehovah’s Witnesses for years.

At Starbucks or Peet’s, I often read stuff as a palate cleanser for my clogged brain.

I picked it up and began casually scanning.

More Divine Intervention. Practically leaping out at me in one of the articles was a word that impaled my frontal lobes.

The word was the name of an ancient Hebrew family that dates back to 170 B.C.

According to this Watch Tower article, this family was being pushed around by the Syrians, which at that time, possessed one of the mightiest armies in the world.

They invaded the Hebrew family’s temple, sacked it, then erected their own icons.

This family was so righteously enraged that they raised a ragged army of barely 2,000, took on the highly trained army of 20,000 Syrians, and defeated them. Then, they retook their temple and were never again messed with.

They are exalted in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Jesus praises their zeal in the New Testament.

I then began to ponder the core beliefs of the religious right wing. They are strongly bonded with Israel, regarding the Hebrews as their brethren, so the name that hit me like a hammer. Incidentally, their Hebrew family name, translated into English, is “Hammer.”

Their family name is …Macabee.

Macabees….Google it. There is a bunch of material on them.

It did not take me more than a moment, a twinkling of an eye, to put the rest together.

I took the “Mc” from McCain and the “Abee” from Huckabee, and bonded them together. The Mcabees would be the name of the Evangelicals who swing over to McCain, giving them a powerful identity rooted in evangelical lore.

By naming their group, “The McAbees,” they would be proclaiming their loyalty to the party under McCain, but it would also be their signal to the others that they want Mike Huckabee to be John McCain’s running mate

Here endeth this Macabee chapter.

By the way, I did this as a friendly gesture. have no blog in this hunt.

My fascination with this coming election runs much deeper than playing a diversionary word game. I regard it as vital, and will anxiously watch and wait.

I have brilliant friends on all sides whom I respect for their judgment, and will spend much of the coming months exchanging views with them before settling on my selection.

Our movie, “Kings of the Evening “ occupied the highly esteemed final showing last weekend at Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles The movie was received with raves by powerful film makers, people that you read about.

The Festival producers have chosen to show the movie an extra night, after the Festival has closed. It was the only movie that was over- subscribed and had to shown at two theaters Sunday. Due to demand, It was re-run Monday night, after the Festival had closed down.

The plot of “Kings of the Evening” deals with a disparate group of poor souls in 1930’s Georgia who are, in their minds…nothing….. and come to realize that the noblest goal of all is to take that nothing and make something of themselves. A feel good movie.


Correction….

Who said, “Most people go around asking, “What’s in for me?”

Not Chuck Blore. I misquoted him last week.

He said, “People listen to commercials asking the question, What’s in it for me?”


By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he is too old to go anywhere

                                                            Billy Crystal