Mike Huckabee: ‘It’s Not My Nature To Be A Bully’

Former governor Mike Huckabee on Sunday told ABC News, “it’s not my nature to be a bully.” Just how demonstrably false is that claim?

Speaking with ABC News journalist Martha Raddatz on Sunday’s “This Week,” Republican former governor Mike Huckabee lamented the demise of chivalry in political campaigns against women candidates.

Radditz cornered the 59-year old ordained Southern Baptist Minister on his comments, originally made in a New Republic interview. 

“You said I’ve run twice against women opponents and it’s a very different kind of approach for those of us who have some chivalry left there’s a level of respect to treat some things as a special treasure, you treat other things as common,” Radditz reminded him. “What do you mean specifically by that?”

Huckabee’s response was insincere and insufficient.

“Well, I just mean that you always want to be respectful. You want to treat everyone with respect. But in the culture of the south, the culture that I grew up with, I think chivalry is still alive. There’s a sense of that you pay a great deal of respect and you don’t come across as a bully.”

Perhaps realizing his poor answer, Huckabee concluded, “It’s not an issue of sexism, it’s an issue of simply understanding that every opponent, whether it’s a male, a female, whether they’re from the Northeast or from the Southwest, everybody has different nuances, and you always have to — because I’ve been in a lot of races. I’ve been in politics for 25 years. I’ve run a lot of races as lieutenant governor, for U.S. Senate, for governor two different times and for president.”

In between those fumblings, Radditz asked Huckabee if he would “run differently against Joe Biden?” as opposed to Hillary Clinton.

His odd response: “it’s not my nature to be a bully.”

But let’s take a look at that claim.

Huckabee, despite what some in the media are recently claiming is a more tolerant potential 2016 candidate for the White House, has used the LGBT community as a punching bag for years.

In 2006 “Brokeback Mountain” won three Academy Awards. Huckabee used the groundbreaking film to ensure conservative voters knew where he stood on same-sex marriage. “Until Moses comes down with two stone tablets from Brokeback Mountain saying he’s changed the rules,” Huckabee quipped, “let’s keep it like it is.”

Fast forward to today.

Last week on his Facebook page, Huckabee pushed his latest book by telling followers, “I have a very special and personal favor. My new book ‘God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy’ releases next week on Tuesday, January 20. It’s already generated a lot of attention because I make the case for why those who live with traditional moral values and respect for the Constitution aren’t the outliers.”

But then, without mentioning gay people, he attacks them.

The book was written with vivid illustrations of bigotry toward Christians and in plain language. 

I detail the attacks on our friends like the Duggars, the Benhams, and the Robertsons of Duck Dynasty and provide many examples of the intolerance of the secular left, all delivered or course, in the name of “tolerance.”

In October, Huckabee put away his “chivalry” and “respect” he claims to show women, to rail against Houston Mayor Annise Parker, telling her to, “Keep your filthy government hands off of religious liberty.” It’s the only record we could find of Huckabee using the word “filthy” to describe a person – and in this case, a person who happens to be a lesbian.

That month Huckabee also posted an outlandish, false, fear-mongering, hate-filled, anti-gay warning on Facebook, and later Huckabee demanded the Republican Party “grow a spine” and not back down in their fight against same-sex marriage, or, he threatened, he would quit the party. 

The following month Huckabee compared Nazi Germany to America, and told a group of pastors that same-sex marriage will destroy the foundation of civilization.

Earlier last year, at the National Organization For Marriage’s rally in Washington, D.C., Huckabee wrongly told a small crowd that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have opposed same-sex marriage like he opposed Hitler.

These attacks are not new. Huckabee has a long and ugly history of bullying gay people and their allies.

In 2010 he compared legalizing same-sex marriage to legalizing incest, polygamy, and drug use. The following year he called same-sex couples parenting of children “experiments,” and their families “guinea pigs.” 

In 2008 he offered this theocratic opinion: “I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”

The following year he said he wanted to “isolate” HIV/AIDS victims. That same year he told Ann Coulter, “I am definitely not pro-sodomy. I promise. Scout’s honor.”

In 2013, Huckabee lamented he was forced to see same-sex couples on TV.

Claiming Chick-fil-A was being smeared by vicious hate speech and intolerant bigotry from the left, Huckabee in 2012 created National Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day, which he helped turn into a national attack on LGBT people. That year he also declared that the Boy Scouts – which at that point had decided to continue its ban on gay scouts – had done the right thing because, he claimed, gays abuse children.

In the series, “Before They Were Candidates,” the Concord Monitor profiled several 2008 presidential candidates. “‘Bullying’ gays wasn’t priority for Huckabee” before he ran for the White House, the Monitor reported. 

On gay rights, “Rita Sklar, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, said Huckabee’s rhetoric was often ‘extremely unpleasant or sarcastic.'”

“‘He is hardly ever outright nasty,’ Sklar said. ‘But he is suggestively nasty.'”

Clearly, presidential campaigns have changed that.

 

Image via YouTube