Posted on 01/23/2014 3:56:59 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I’ve looked for a transcript but can’t find one so I’m forced to rely on HuffPo’s account of what he said. On the one hand, they’re a lefty news site, doubtless eager to put his quotes in the worst possible light. On the other hand, their reporter is Jon Ward, who used to work for the Daily Caller and is respected in the field. On the other other hand, the rhetoric sounds kind of Huck-ish, doesn’t it? With some pols, you can look at a quote that’s attributed to them and say, nah, no way. With Huck, you never know when a curveball’s coming. And this subject, the perils of the “RINO” label, has been on his mind lately.
Has it come to this?
“Let’s stop calling each other somehow less Republican than someone else. Be for the person you’re for,” Huckabee said.
He said that he will be traveling to Auschwitz next week for the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp, and noted that the horror of the Holocaust began with the devaluation of people.
“It all started when people were devalued, when people were deemed ‘less than someone else,’” Huckabee said. “We look back on that time in history and we think, ‘How can educated people, university trained, how can a nation like Germany with all of its resources, with its vast level of its population with higher education, get to a place where they can do something so heinous?’ You realize that the only way you can end up there is when you start with the idea that people just aren’t as valuable as you are.”
The clear implication by Huckabee was that those within the GOP who make a habit of demeaning others as not conservative enough are flirting with behavior that can have grave ramifications down the road. It was a serious charge…
“And if I accept that for the great human family, and I’m willing to value every human life as having worth and intrinsic value, then surely I’ll be able to value the life of those who voluntarily join me in a party that I joined when I was a teenager,” he said.
Ward was challenged on his description on Twitter. Here’s his rough transcript of what Huck said:
Jon Ward ✔ @jonward11 Follow Here's full context of Huckabee's holocaust quote from my notes. http://huff.to/1dYRSaC
3:28 PM - 23 Jan 2014
4 Retweets
Assuming that’s accurate, he’s saying … what? That the path to Auschwitz runs through calling him a RINO? No, c’mon. All he’s saying, I think, is that using purity tests to “devalue” others is harmful and apt to lead to purges, whether at a silly trivial level like “RINO” or a grand sinister one like calling Jews “vermin.” He’s not equating the two. Which is fine, except that all political self-identification is inherently exclusionary. If you support single-payer and abortion on demand and call yourself “Republican,” you’re apt to catch some flak — including from Mike Huckabee, I’d bet. The best you can do to redeem his argument is say that ultimately he’s calling for more civility: When you shoo a liberal out of the party, there’s no need to demean him by slapping a pejorative neologism on him. Call him what he is, a liberal Democrat. (For example: “Mike Huckabee, liberal Democrat.”) Okay, but that’s an awfully basic point to require illumination with a Nazi analogy.
In fact, if he’s going to do that, why not use Nazi analogies to discourage all bad practices? E.g., “My three-year-old lied to me about sneaking a cookie from the cookie jar last night, so I reminded her that Hitler told many Big Lies en route to the Final Solution.” “My husband put a ‘Huckabee 2016′ bumper sticker on our car yesterday so I reminded him that Goebbels too used propaganda to hand power to a lunatic.” The punchline here is that Huck’s pushing this dumb anti-RINO campaign because he wants to get tea partiers and libertarians off his back if/when he runs again in 2016, but going Godwin on them just means they’re going to be more antagonistic. Imagine the historical lessons they’ll have for him about the perils of, say, supporting bigger government to “do good.”
Exit question: Second look at Rick Santorum as designated social-con champion in 2016?
I’m sure he was thinking of terms like “tea baggers” no doubt.
Hey—Does the Huckster have anything to say about Cuomo’s comments on “extreme Republicans” in New York, or does he agree with the pr!ck?
We need extreme tea partiers bad...stop the overthrow now...
huckaby doesn’t rate RINO, he’s a damn socialist!!!
Heh. And, all the while Huckabee "demeans" the Republicans who "demean" him. I have always found this guy to be an outrageously hypocritical huckster [no pun actually intended, the word just fits].
That he has survived this long as a topic on conservative websites is inexplicable.
I just can’t believe what is happening to our country. People have this idea that the right side is going to save us. Everything is so messed up in this country and I do not see anyone running to a microphone all the time of the problems going on in this once “Great Nation”.
How can anyone tell me that their is a left and a right, or right and a wrong in this country when their is no one fighting for the peoples rights? With all the corruption happening out of the White House alone makes me wonder why they have not been frog marched to prison. Yet, I am suppose to believe that my Congressman or Senator has my back? These same people that say one thing and do another? Our saviors the Republicans?
How can anyone tell me that they are for me and what I stand for when they don’t stand for nothing. How much garbage have these Republicans put through themselves that take our rights away and then tell us it was the Democrats?
Every day a new form of corruption is found and I hear crickets from our side on how bad it was. That tells me alto.
The next election should be a shoe in for the right yet they talk about keeping Obamascare and and allowing 20 million illegals in our country when we are near collapse? 93 million people are out of the workforce and they find a need to add to that? Does that make sense to anyone? If these same people are for what we want and are against what is going on in our Government, why do we not hear them speaking? Why is their no investigation on all this?
I am sorry, I have no hope for what options we have now. What is happening to our country and finding the major stories are of Duck Dynasty and Justin Beiber and not of the corruption and downfall of a great nation.
/end of rant.
RINOs devalue themselves.
Things looked hopeless in 1980 also. Keep the faith, I think the Lord will straighten this out in the next few years.
I remember when Christians were actually Conservative...
He's not a RINO, he's a CINO.
Huckabee is responsible for four cop deaths. Directly - by releasing that murderer on “humanitarian grounds”
Huckabee needs a tank photo op like this guy:
Caption: "Hi Huck, I see the scumbags you furloughed went on to kill people to."
Huckleberry Godwinned himself!
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