CONWAY--"Obama," they said.
"Reid and Pelosi," they added.
And that is my on-scene report from a Republican political rally at Simon Park in downtown Conway on Monday afternoon.
Running for office as a Republican in Arkansas right now is as easy as calling the hogs. "Obama" is "wooo." Reid is "pig." Pelosi is "soooie." Then you jump up and down.
Practically every major statewide Republican candidate--all but Asa Hutchinson--assembled for this "Freedom Rally." The purpose was to try to save French Hill from the ignominy of losing to a Democrat when that hardly seems possible in Arkansas.
Former North Little Rock Mayor Patrick Henry Hays is about to drive the banker Hill to distraction in the 2nd District congressional race. Hays is doing so with a mix of positive and negative ads, even one lately talking about his proud ownership of guns. As you know, that is not permitted of a Democrat, who is supposed to go to the wuss corner and stay there.
So Leslie Rutledge, the comic character contending somehow seriously to be attorney general from the Republican ticket--while also contending seriously to match Hill's amazing feat of conceivably losing--got up in front of the gathering of literally dozens and said ... oh, heck, I don't remember.
Tim Griffin, running for lieutenant governor because he doesn't have time for a real public office while he makes a lot of private-sector money, got up next. He said French Hill would go up there to Washington and put Pelosi in her place and straighten that mess out.
Then he extolled the massive crowd, which it wasn't.
Then Tom Cotton spoke stiffly and said some words. Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, I think they were.
Then U.S. Sen. John Boozman spoke softly and said it'd be swell if Reid were no longer majority leader.
Then Hill himself spoke and told a thud of a joke about the late Frank White once mishearing his wife Gay and telling her he hated her, too.
The joke Frank used to tell on his own hearing loss was that Gay told him she was so proud of him and he told her he was so tired of her, too. You see: Proud and tired sound somewhat alike. Hill can't take a stand on the minimum wage ... and he can't tell a joke.
Then came the featured speaker, Mike Huckabee, straight from the Fox studio by way of the Redneck Riviera, and practically a liberal Democrat on economic policy compared to Cotton and Hill and Griffin and all the others he extolled.
But Huckabee is not squeamish about imaginative rhetoric. You get the idea he could lead an Episcopalian service at 9, regale the Methodists at 10 and get down and dirty at 11 with his original Baptists.
Huckabee said Cotton would put Reid on the back row where he belongs. He said Reid's desk was Washington's biggest fire hazard because of all the good Republican House bills that are stacked up there. He said Obama and he said Reid and he said Pelosi and he even once said Hillary, just to warm up for post-Obama superficiality.
It was a pleasure afterward to spend a moment or two sparring like old times with Huckabee. I said it had been too long; he said not long enough.
I wondered how he could so warmly embrace Cotton when Cotton is the Manchurian creation of the ultra-right and anti-government Club for Growth. That's the rich guy's outfit that abhorred Huckabee's moderate spending habits as governor of Arkansas and fiercely opposed his presidential run in 2008, and which Huckabee, in turn, aptly and memorably called the "Club for Greed."
Huckabee didn't miss a beat in rewriting history entirely. He said the Club for Growth only opposed him because it never bothered to look at his real record of staunch conservatism. He said it simply had members who favored other presidential contenders.
Just for the record: As governor, Huckabee raised sales taxes and income taxes and motor-fuel taxes and lathered the tobacco-settlement manna on public health spending. He consolidated schools and yielded to the tyrannical courts--also known as the rule of law--to centralize education governance at the state level.
Huckabee said with a grin that it was a testament to Tom Cotton that he could finally bring Mike Huckabee and the Club for Growth together.
Clever, huh?
It's mostly show biz. Huckabee is simply more straightforward about that and better at it.
But there simply is no excuse for any Republican to fail to perform well this season. The script is short and sweet, easily memorized and mastered.
"Obama" is the first line.
"Reid and Pelosi" is the second line.
There isn't any third line.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 10/30/2014