I am starting to get a complex! Maybe the AJC has something against big, bald, ugly guys?

Below is Cynthia Tucker’s column from last Sunday on Huckabee and her views on illegal immigration (yawn)

Below that, my LTE sent in last Sunday in response. I post it here because they did not publish it there. I will try to make it a habit of posting the letters to the editor sent to various newspapers and magazines that don’t get ink.

We thank Jerry Gonzalez – Sam’s boy and Jane Fonda’s pal – for archiving the AJC column in its entirety on his Website.

OUR OPINION: When goodwill bypasses illegal immigrants

By Cynthia Tucker
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 12/23/07

The politics of the Grand Old Party’s ultra-conservative religionists produce the oddest cognitive dissonance. This campaign season has illuminated the jarring contrast between the public piety of conservative Christians —- a significant faction in the Republican Party —- and their intense anger toward illegal immigrants.

That hostility is all the more jarring at Christmastime, when Christians around the world commemorate the birth of Christ. You’d think that the season would bring forth an outpouring of compassion, mercy and generosity. After all, the Bible, which conservative Christians hold out as the inerrant word of God, includes several admonitions to practice kindness toward “strangers.”

But kindness doesn’t seem to be much in the minds of Bible-thumping conservatives. Sadie Fields, head of the Georgia Christian Alliance, has long criticized public benefits such as health care for the children of illegal immigrants. “We’re against illegal immigrants because we must uphold the rule of law,” she has said. “We are a nation of law. Our biblical worldview mandates that we be a people of law.”

According to polls, immigration is a much more important issue among Republican voters than among Democrats. That’s especially true in early voting states such as Iowa and South Carolina, where sizable pockets of illegal immigrants have settled only in the last decade or so.

The intensity of the resentment has come as a surprise to Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister. As an abortion-detesting, evolution-denying homophobe, Huckabee is fast winning the devotion of his party’s Christianists, who seem to confuse the office of president with that of preacher or priest. But Huckabee has one glaring flaw in an otherwise perfect doctrinal suite: He has shown compassion toward illegal immigrants.

As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee supported legislation that would have made undocumented college students eligible for college scholarships and in-state tuition prices. Besides the imminent practicality of the proposition —- Arkansas, like its Southern neighbors, needs more college graduates —- Huckabee says he wouldn’t “hold children responsible for something their parents did” —- crossing the border illegally

….PLEASE READ THE REST HERE.

My letter to the editor here. I added a hyperlink for those who are still not educated on this Huckster character.

Dear editor,

Ever the shrill illegal alienist, Tucker’s less than welcoming stance on Mike Huckabee for president is somewhat surprising. One would think she would cozy up to someone who has so venomously attacked anyone who objects to the crime of illegal immigration and employment and amnesty-again.

In 2006 Huckabee stated clearly that opposition to legalization for illegal aliens was “driven by racism or nativism”. How Tucker-ish in his lack of reasoning or argument.

Candidate Huckabee wrote in his 2007 book that strict enforcement of our immigration laws would be “sheer folly”. Hola, Ms. Tucker…

Huckabee, who in 2005 described Arizona’s Prop 200 legislation requiring proof of citizenship to vote and demonstration of eligibility to access public benefits as “inflammatory, race-baiting demagoguery” sounds a lot like the Cynthia Tucker who amuses readers so often.

Maybe Huckabee’s position on other issues will change enough by next week for Tucker to take another look?

D.A. King
Marietta, Ga.

King is president of the Dustin Inman Society, which is opposed to illegal immigration.