SPOTLIGHT: The New York Times profile of Mike Huckabee — we mentioned it was in progress a week or so ago — appears today. It’s a balanced look at the former governor.

It comes with further reporting on the curious case of Eugene Fields, the wealthy Van Buren businessman freed early from a prison sentence on a fourth DWI thanks to a Huckabee commutation. NBC and David Sanders had reported the coincidence of that release and major Fields’ contributions to the Republican Party. The Times adds to the mix reported pressure by former Republican Party executive director Richard Bearden and an angry letter (yes, he’s written a few) from Huckabee to the head of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which criticized the help for Fields. It gets VERY personal in re Janet Huckabee.

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Days later, in a letter that he demanded be kept confidential, Mr. Huckabee sharply criticized Ms. Belew for going public with criticism about the Fields case. “I cannot understand why you sent the letter to news organizations,” he wrote. He suggested that MADD was simply trying to fan “the flames of controversy that have been stirred in this case by the unusual curiosity of certain media members.”

He also had a more political score to settle. It concerned his wife, Janet Huckabee, who in 2002 lost her campaign to unseat Arkansas’s incumbent secretary of state, Charlie Daniels.

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“You’ll further have to help me understand,” he wrote to Ms. Belew, “why you have been so public with this letter when during the last campaign season, MADD refrained from public comment regarding my wife’s opponent, a public official with several D.W.I.’s, one of which was in a state-owned car.”

RELIGION AND EGG ROLLS: On the road with Huck in Iowa, talks of Christmas past.

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ED ROLLINS, LIAR: It figures, but this is simply inaccurate in so many ways that you can only put it down to dishonesty.

You know one of the things that he had to do was fix the educational system. The state Supreme Court ordered him to raise $300 million to add an additional $300 million to education. The voters in the state had voted for a highway program that was totally unfunded. He went forth and made it an issue. And then the voters themselves voted for a three cent increase in taxes.

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He cut income taxes. At the end of the day the story that’s not told is this is a guy who inherited a $250 million deficit. And, at the end of the day, he left $850 million in the treasury.

The court didn’t order him to raise $300 million. The voters didn’t vote for an unfunded highway program. The voters didn’t raise gas tax. He didn’t inherit a deficit, because deficits are unconstitutional in Arkansas. He left money in the treasury only because the legislature didn’t spend it.

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CHURCH CASH: Politico says Obama and Clinton are doing better at raising money from preachers than Huckabee.

NOT A DITTOHEAD: The right is buzzing — and, sure, some are chuckling — about Rush Limbaugh’s attack on candidate Huckabee.

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Before today, radio host Rush Limbaugh has — in his own words — “studiously avoided” attacking presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. That silence ended today, after an anonymous Huckabee “ally” was quoted trashing Rush as a DC insider who is secretly rooting for a President Hillary Clinton.

“The Huckabee campaign is trying to dumb down conservatism in order to get it to conform with his record,” Limbaugh said today, during an extended session of Huckabee-bashing.

The Huckabee camp, perhaps inadvertently, set off the fire yesterday when Marc Ambinder published this quote from someone aligned with the campaign.

TODAY’S RANK PANDERING TO LOU DOBBS: Huckabee terms “absurd” the conviction of border agents who gunned down an unarmed immigrant, destroyed evidence and participated in a coverup. The U.S. attorney in San Antonio suggests its absurd to call these lawbreakers heroes. But, he’s not running for nomination in the Republican presidential primary. His job is to see that justice is done. You think Huck has read the case file? No matter. He’s ready to pardon these outlaws.

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