Mike Huckabee has fashioned a great image for himself on the campaign trail among the press corps: he's good-natured and at times very funny. This showed during the minor row over his Christmas commercial where a book shelf doubled as a cross. Making fun of those that looked a bit too deeply into his commercial, Huckabee said that if they play the commercial backwards, they'd hear the message: "Paul is dead. Paul is dead. Paul is dead".
Good save Reverend, but your past is starting to catch up with you. (More after the jump.)
Yesterday The New Republic discovered what can turn Huckabee into Hyde. It seems Governor Huckabee didn't like a certain liberal Arkansas columnist's obsessive coverage of him and took some time to sit down and pen some letters to him.
In a series of unpublished private letters dating to the mid-'90s that Huckabee faxed to [Max] Brantley, a surprising--and furious--side of the former governor comes through. The four letters, which Brantley provided to The New Republic, are multi-page, rambling, and highly personal attacks that Huckabee wrote while in Arkansas office. In them, he excoriates the journalist, referring to the Arkansas Times as "a local version of the National Enquirer," a "collection of carping columnists," a "newsletter for the Democrats," an "irrelevant irritant" and the "Theater of the Absurd," among other sobriquets.
Brantley wasn't alone, TNR learned, as other Arkansas reporters called him "combative" and "malicious".
Welcome to the spotlight Governor, don't mistake it for the full moon.
