OPEN THREAD: GOP Top Ten Debate

Watch along with us and weigh in during the main GOP debate at 9PM eastern. The event will be live-streamed on Fox News where you'll need your cable system login to watch.

Huckabee Has A Sugar Daddy

Politico has the details:

Almost all the money raised by the super PAC supporting former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee came from one donor: Ronald Cameron of Little Rock, Arkansas. Cameron, the CEO of the agribusiness behemoth Mountaire, gave $3 million to the pro-Huckabee super PAC Pursuing America’s Greatness, according to a Friday FEC filing. Cameron is a regular donor to major Republican causes. After Cameron, Sharon Herschend of Herschend Family Entertainment donated $500,000 to the super PAC. Real estate investor Jon K. Gibson and Cary Maguire, president of the Maguire Oil donated $50,000 each. In total, the super PAC raised $3,604,855.94.

In other words, about 98% of the donations came from just three donors.

Obama Slams Huckabee And Trump

Jewish Groups Denounce Huckabee

Jewish groups have denounced Mike Huckabee after he made the above comment in an interview with Breitbart. MSNBC reports:

“Whatever one’s views of the nuclear agreement with Iran – and we have been critical of it, noting that there are serious unanswered questions that need to be addressed – comments such as those by Mike Huckabee suggesting the president is leading Israel to another Holocaust are completely out of line and unacceptable,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, in a statement.“To hear Mr. Huckabee invoke the Holocaust when America is Israel’s greatest ally and when Israel is a strong nation capable of defending itself is disheartening,” Greenblatt added. The National Jewish Democratic Council called on others in the Party to denounce Huckabee’s remarks, saying they “may be the most inexcusable we’ve encountered in recent memory.” “To state that President Obama is leading Israelis ‘to the door of the oven’ is not only disgustingly offensive to the President and the White House, but shows utter, callous disregard for the millions of lives lost in the Shoah and to the pain still felt by their descendants today,” the organization stated.

Huckabee has doubled-down on his comments in several follow-up tweets.

Mike Huckabee: Marriage Is In Trouble Because People Think It's About Love

CNN reports:

Mike Huckabee says marriage is "in trouble today" because of the "redefinition of love" -- no matter who's in the relationship. And, the former Arkansas governor said Sunday, that's a problem "in every definition of marriage -- be it heterosexual or homosexual or polygamy or wherever the marriage redefinition ends up taking us over the course of the next few years." In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union," Huckabee complained that marriage is under assault from people who don't understand the commitment it entails.

Asked whether same-sex marriage or high divorce rates are a bigger threat to the institution, Huckabee responded that the question was like asking which wing of an airplane is more important. "Regardless, heterosexual marriage is largely in trouble today because people see it as a selfish means of pleasing self, rather than a committed relationship in which the focus is on meeting the needs of the partner," he said. "That sense of selfishness and the redefinition of love as to something that is purely sentimental and emotional, has been destructive."

Huckabee Doubles Down

Mike Huckabee has followed up his vow to prosecute the enforcement of public accommodation laws as a hate crime with the above image on his Facebook page. He has also published an op-ed for Fox News:

On Day One of my administration, I will use the power of the presidency to protect and defend people of all faiths in all fifty states. First, I will sign religious liberty executive orders that support traditional marriage and protect businesses, churches, non-profits, schools and universities, hospitals, and other organizations from discrimination, intimidation, civil penalties, or criminal attacks for exercising their religious beliefs. Second, I will direct the attorney general to protect religious liberty and prosecute any violations of First Amendment rights of individuals, businesses, religious organizations, institutions, and civil servants, including those who believe in traditional marriage. The Justice Department will protect and defend the rights of American citizens to follow their religious convictions without discrimination, and prosecute attacks on people of faith and their religious liberty. I will aggressively prosecute attacks against people of faith as hate crimes.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Mike Huckabee: I'll Make It A Hate Crime To Enforce Public Accommodation Laws

Matt Baume: Worst Marriage Reactions

Jon Stewart Mocks Wingnut Marriage Sadz

Huckabee: If Obama Can Put Up Rainbow Colors, I Can Put Up A Nativity Scene

Mike Huckabee Has The Sadz

"This irrational, unconstitutional rejection of the expressed will of the people in over 30 states will prove to be one of the court's most disastrous decisions, and they have had many. The only outcome worse than this flawed, failed decision would be for the President and Congress, two co-equal branches of government, to surrender in the face of this out-of-control act of unconstitutional, judicial tyranny. The Supreme Court can no more repeal the laws of nature and nature's God on marriage than it can the law of gravity. Under our Constitution, the court cannot write a law, even though some cowardly politicians will wave the white flag and accept it without realizing that they are failing their sworn duty to reject abuses from the court. If accepted by Congress and this President, this decision will be a serious blow to religious liberty, which is the heart of the First Amendment." - Mike Huckabee, via press release.

Mike Huckabee: I'll Block All Federal Recognition Of Gay Marriage Once Elected

"Until the Congress of the United States puts on my desk a bill that basically defies the laws of nature and nature’s God and defies the longstanding tradition of marriage, the federal government will not recognize same-sex marriage because there is no law that requires it and that would be true for the military and it would be true for all federal institutions. If the Congress decides that they want to pass enabling legislation, they could put it on my desk and I would veto it, and they can attempt to override it. That’s the process. If liberals were subjected to a conservative court that forced them to tithe their income to scripture or forced them to go to church or forced them to believe something that they don’t want to believe, they would say, ‘We can’t do that, that would go against our conscience.’ And I would say, ‘You are exactly right and we can’t have such a ruling.' This is why I find this very unsettling is because liberals will rue the day when the sword they use to enact their agenda is the sword of the court rather than to do it by way of the people’s elected representatives." -  Mike Huckabee, speaking today on wingnut radio.

Huckabee Gets Trolled On Facebook

Talking Points Memo reports that things went "hilariously off the rails" after Mike Huckabee offered to answer Facebook users' questions about his presidential campaign. See the thread.

Huckabee: God Already Solved Racism

"I keep hearing people saying we need more conversations about race. Actually we don’t need more conversations. What we need is conversions [to Jesus] because the reconciliations that changes people is not a racial reconciliation, it’s a spiritual reconciliation when people are reconciled to God. When I love God and I know that God created other people regardless of their color as much as he made me, I don’t have a problem with racism. It’s solved!" - Mike Huckabee, speaking on Fox News.

Janet Porter: Gays Set America On Fire

Huckabee: I Will Stop The Criminalization Of Christianity By Same-Sex Marriage

"The Supreme Court is not the Supreme Branch, and it is certainly not the Supreme Being. I refuse to sit silently as politically driven interest groups threaten the foundation of religious liberty, criminalize Christianity, and demand that Americans abandon Biblical principles of natural marriage. I will fight to defend religious liberty at all costs. I also refuse to surrender to the false god of judicial supremacy, which would allow black-robed and unelected judges the power to make law and enforce it, which upends the separation of powers so very central to our Constitution. Too much power concentrated in the courts is a threat to our Republic. I will fight judicial tyranny and return power to the people. I call on all GOP candidates to join me in this fight to defend the Constitution. If you lack the backbone to reject judicial tyranny and fight for religious liberty, you have no business serving our nation as President of the United States." - Mike Huckabee, in a letter to hate group leaders Mat Staver, Cindy Adams, Penny Nance, Tony Perkins, Janet Porter, and many others.

Mike Huckabee: If Only Somebody In That Church Had Been Carrying A Gun Too

Todd Starnes writes at Fox News:

President Obama had a moment to bring healing to the nation, but he chose to play politics instead, using the terrible massacre in Charleston to call for a crackdown on guns. Everything with this administration is about politics. Everything. Gov. Mike Huckabee told me he was disappointed with President Obama’s “grandstanding.” “All the proposals this president has put forward on gun control would not have stopped this shooting,” he said. According to the GOP presidential candidate, one thing might have stopped the tragedy: A pistol-packing church-goer. “The one thing that would have at least ameliorated the horrible situation in Charleston would have been if somebody in that prayer meeting had a conceal carry or (if) there had been an off duty policeman somebody with the legal authority to carry a firearm and could have stopped the shooter," Huckabee said.

UPDATE: Right Wing Watch has the video.

REPORT: Roy Moore And Mike Huckabee's Co-Author Was Sued For Child Molestation

Buzzfeed reports that John Perry, the co-author of books by Roy Moore and Mike Huckabee, was accused of molesting a young girl in two separate lawsuits.

“The alleged sexual battery was reported to have occurred when the victim was between the ages of 11 and 14,” said Nashville police department spokesperson Don Aaron in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “As a result of the investigation, the allegations of sexual battery were sustained, but it was determined that the statute of limitations had tolled, barring prosecution. The victim was age 18 when she first disclosed the allegations to non-law enforcement and said at that time she did not want the matter reported to the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services or the police.” In a second series of lawsuits brought in a county court in Tennessee, and related to the same alleged acts of child molestation, Austin Davis, a former parishioner of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville, claims that the church covered up Perry’s alleged acts of child molestation and launched a campaign to silence and harass Davis.

Huckabee's spokesman has not responded to a request for comments.

Huckabee Doubles-Down: I Take Nothing Back From That Anti-Trans Speech

"I take nothing back from that speech. I’m kind of glad it’s posted because people, if they watch the whole clip, what they’re going to see is that I’m giving a commonsense answer to the insanity that’s going on out there. Because I hear people, everybody wants to be politically correct, everybody wants to be loved by the media and loved by the left and loved by the elitists. But, you know, I know I’m not going to be, so let’s just get it over with. I’d rather be a commonsense candidate for people who did take their brains to work today." - Mike Huckabee, doubling down on his statement that he wishes he'd pretended to be transgender is high school so that he could have showered with girls.

Bill Maher To Conservatives: Stop These Phony Claims Of Christian Persecution