Birther alert!
GOP presidential wannabe and Fox News shill Mike Huckabee went on Steve Malzberg's radio show Monday and did what he does best: his folksy, gee-whiz, aw shucks bullshit routine, this time alleging that Barack Obama grew up in a country he didn't even visit until he was in his 20s. That country, of course, is Kenya, the favorite target of xenophobic, race-obsessed right-wingers everywhere, who seem certain the African nation is the cradle of Marxist, Socialist, Communist Fascism, or something they just know is bad, bad, bad.
Straight out of the GOP playbook, Huckabee soon claimed he "misspoke."
From the Los Angeles Times:
Mike Huckabee made a slip of the tongue when saying in an interview that President Obama lived in Kenya, a spokesman for the possible GOP presidential contender said Tuesday. "Gov. Huckabee simply misspoke when he alluded to President Obama growing up in Kenya. The governor meant to say the president grew up in Indonesia," said J. Hogan Gidley, who works for Huckabee's political action committee. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, seemed to be adding fuel to the apparently never-ending brushfire over the president's origins in a Monday interview with a conservative radio host when he suggested that "having grown up in Kenya" Obama would view the British as imperialists. Huckabee said that he "would love to know more" about Obama, adding "what I know is troubling enough." In that same interview, Huckabee said Obama had lived in the African country with his "father and grandfather" — and he didn't appear to attempt to put the issue of Obama's birthplace to rest, saying that "the only reason" he was not confident that there were improprieties about the president's birth certificate is because Hillary Clinton had not been able to uncover anything about it during the 2008 presidential campaign.
More here.
And Salon.com has this:
The problem here is that Huckabee didn't just say that Obama was raised in Kenya -- he made specific reference to the Mau Mau Revolution, claiming that Obama, by virtue of his upbringing, would have a very different understanding of it than Westerners. That's much different than accidentally saying "Kenya" when you meant to say "Indonesia."
And the birther issue is a red herring. This story isn't about whether Huckabee specifically subscribes to the view that Obama wasn't born in the United States; maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. The issue here is that Huckabee has just demonstrated that his main critique of President Obama's foreign policy is rooted in a belief that is demonstrably and laughably false. What other objections to Obama's policymaking does Huckabee have that are based on beliefs like this?
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1 comment:
The truth is that Huckabee didn't mispeak but instead that he is intellectually lazy. He could have envoked the same irrational fears in the Tea Party numb nuts by simply getting the facts right and correctly stating that the youthful years Obama spent living in Indonesia would influence his world view. And he would have likely been right to some extent as life experiences do shape the person. Much as Mike Huckabee's many years as a South Baptist have helped fortify his unwillingness to fact check or be intellectualy curious. Remember he actually believes the Earth has only been in existence for 6,000 years.
TBLMISBT
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