Mike Huckabee is scary for many reasons, not least among them that he’s charming and smart and popular and he can raise money and he doesn’t let things like facts or science get in the way of a good time.
Last week, he appeared to denounce the Birthers on ABC News. Monday he was a call-in guest on conservative radio host Steve Malzberg’s show.
Huckabee made the comments in an interview with conservative talk radio host Steve Malzberg, who asked the former Arkansas governor whether he thought it was troubling that “we don’t have a health record, we don’t have a college record, we don’t have a birth certificate” for Obama.
“I would love to know more,” said Huckabee, who is a Fox News host and is currently in the midst of a nationwide tour for his new book. “What I know is troubling enough.”
“If you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather,” Huckabee told Malzberg, “their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.”
At another point in the interview, Huckabee said, “one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American.”
Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 and raised there and spent several years in Indonesia. His father was from Kenya, but Obama did not travel there until later in life.
Huckabee’s people tried to backpedal somewhat after the interview, of course, a standard Right wing tactic that enables them to get their opinion out to the Base and then sort of correct it within earshot of the mainstream media. But this wasn’t a simple slip of the tongue. Huckabee has enough experience talking about this topic and if you listen to the clip he sounds like he knows exactly what he’s saying.
The Real American/Tea Party constituency has no problem denouncing the British Imperialists when they talk about the U.S. and independence, so this is an especially peculiar way for Huckabee to send his Base the message that he was just paying lip-service on ABC and that he’s really still one of them. See also: the origins of the name “Tea Party.”
Huckabee continued his book tour today, where he was back on the air with Bryan Fischer vehemently denying he’s a birther, but still unable to grasp that growing up in Hawai’i might bear some resemblance to growing up in the rest of the U.S.
“And I have said many times,” he later added, “publicly, that I do think he has a different worldview and I think it’s, in part, molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas.”
I’m too lazy to do a lot of historical research, but it would appear that the first Boy Scout troop in Hawai’i was founded by a British Scout leader in 1901, nine years before the Boy Scouts of America were incorporated. In fact, scouting appears to be very popular in Hawaii and there were actually 3 Boy Scout Councils in Hawaii at the time President Obama was growing up.
Yes, it’s true that President Obama lived in Indonesia for 4 years, from ages 6-10. He talks about that period of his life in his book, “Dreams from My Father.” That’s the book where he mentions that he was a Boy Scout. (Check page 50, Mr. Huckabee).
This whole thing is aggravating my Huckaphobia. I think I need to go check in with what Charlie Sheen is up to tonight.