Whether or not people in the audience laughed at the part of the joke about the gun is up for debate. But one thing's clear: Mike Huckabee has a pretty sick sense of humor (of course, we already knew that one).

There was quite a bit of chatter that he could be McCain's VP. He's obviously going after something in that video. Notice what he's talking about when he's not making the Obama joke: standard-issue libertarian-ese (is there a single book where they learn to talk like that about "the Founding Fathers were right" and small government and rights? Sure feels like it sometimes). "Tax Hike Mike" was more of a big-government Christian fundie Republican, not a simplistic libertarian-style Republican, so he's obviously fishin' to expand his base.

I'd say that his chances just went down the tube, but this is the modern GOP.

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Here's Pat Buchanan on the night of the West Virginia primary, channeling Geraldine Ferraro:

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It's funny that people (including myself) had more of a reaction to Ferraro making pretty much the same point: that Barack Obama is getting this election handed to him because he's Black, basic affirmative action dog-whistling with a subtext of "Black people can't ever succeed on their own merits." Even though Hillary ran a worse campaign than Barack, she's white, and so the election should have gone to her. Either that or they think people just feel compassion for black people in ways they don't for white people.

I guess a racist tirade out of Buchanan just doesn't surprise people anymore. So why is he still on MSNBC and PBS?

dnA at Too Sense has a good substantive response to Buchanan.

****

John Stewart and The Daily Show on West Virginia (yeah, racism still exists):

Also, John Stewart did an interesting interview with Bill Moyers about Jeremiah Wright a week ago: