skippy the bush kangaroo: huckabee's foot hearts huckabee's mouth

Thursday, December 27, 2007

huckabee's foot hearts huckabee's mouth

mike "the huckster" huckabee fumbled two points as well the image that he knows anything about foreign policy today in response to benzair bhutto's assassination. cbsnews:

with about 150 supporters crowded around a podium set up on the tarmac of orlando executive airport (and about 20 ron paul supporters waving signs outside) mike huckabee strode out to the strains of “right now” by van halen and immediately addressed the bhutto situation, expressing “our sincere concern and apologies for what has happened in pakistan.”

[**update: the huckabee campaign later clarified the last quote, telling cbs news: "gov. huckabee while speaking at a campaign event earlier this morning in florida intended to extend his deepest sympathies to the people of pakistan when he used the word 'apologies.' he is outraged and saddened by the attack and the loss of a world leader whose life he believes was a profile in courage."] …

he made a bad choice of words when saying the u.s. needs to consider “what impact does it have on whether or not there’s going to be martial law continuing in pakistan.” he should have said whether or not martial law will be reinstated – it was lifted nearly two weeks ago. a minor slip, maybe, but not a subject he wants to mess up on when he is already considered weak in the area of foreign policy.

[**update: the huckabee campaign later clarified this last point, telling cbs news: "governor huckabee firmly believes that emergency rule/martial law in pakistan, as a practical matter, should not be viewed as having been completely lifted until the restrictions imposed during that period on the press and judges are removed. although general musharraf let the pendulum swing a little more freely in the last few weeks, the overall policy, which is what the governor was addressing in his comments, has been, and continues to be, repressive."]

in our opinion, he not only made a bad choice of words, he made a bad choice of campaign songs for his base. seriously, how many southern baptists rock out to van halen? just askin...

not that we care what the atlantic thinks (andrew sullivan and matt yglasias never linked to us, and megan macardle stopped linking to us way back when she was still jane galt, blaming her co-blogger for the linkage problem), but marc ambinder shows how the establishment hearts to hate huckabee:

it's not the mistake itself that will raise eyebrowses -- it's huckabee's lack of intellectual ease, his lack of felicity, with foreign policy at a critical moment when everyone is paying attention.

mitt romney, for example, may have the same degree of experience, but he's boned up and is much more comfortable answering complicated questions about foreign policy.

we don't heart huckabee either, but we heart watching the hardly-ever-right wingers hoist themselves on their own petard of the huckenstein monster they created in the last 8 years as it rises up to throw off its chains and fight its craven masters, if we can mix metaphors so badly as to lose all of site our original meaning by the end of the sentence, which is coming up shortly; ah, here it is, now.

Labels: foreign policy, huckabee, pakistan, prez campaign, violence