Ezra Solway
It has been an eventful week for Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and current Republican presidential candidate. While Donald Trump has basked in the political media spotlight, Huckabee has been plotting in the shadows, searching for more ridiculous ways to garner eye-catching headlines. At that, the former governor, who stands at 5 percent in a recent CNN primary poll, has undoubtedly succeeded.
However, in some cases, bad publicity is just bad publicity.
About a month ago, Huckabee made a tactless remark comparing President Obama to Hitler, saying he was marching Israel to the “door of the oven” by supporting the Iran deal. While this was not one of his better moments, his small group of supporters still stuck by him, probably enamored by his hyperbolic language. Since that time, he has lain relatively low until his remarks last week trying to defend Kim Davis.
On Tuesday, he announced he would be willing to replace the Kentucky county clerk in jail. His claim stemmed from her supposed courage in trying to uphold her religious ideals after denying same-sex couples their right to marriage licenses. The fact of the matter is that what she did was illegal. More vexing, though, is Huckabee’s adamant support of Davis. It is morally wrong as a presidential candidate in this country to use religious ideology, to which not everyone subscribes, and claim it supersedes the Constitution. I’m pretty sure that is not what the founding fathers had in mind.
To put icing on the politically incompetent cake, on a radio show Thursday with host Michael Medved, Huckabee asserted that “the Dred Scott decision of 1857 still remains to this day the law of the land, which says that black people aren’t fully human.” The Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 — common knowledge for anyone remotely familiar with United States law. But that does not seem to matter to Huckabee. It seems in his world, he wants to preserve some sort of religious utopia that exists through the doors into Narnia. His rhetoric resembles a fashionista pouting over the fact that corsets and pompadour hairstyles are not in season.
Nevertheless, Huckabee’s antics echo a bigger and more important theme of the GOP race thus far. Candidates are constantly looking to make the biggest headlines instead of the most impactful difference. If Huckabee really wants to be the commander in chief, why is he wasting his time extolling a woman who broke the law? There are countless better ways to spend your time on the campaign trail than spewing racist fallacies. For instance, making higher education affordable, fortifying the middle class and counteracting terrorism would all make much more productive headlines. Mike Huckabee does not posses any of Donald Trump’s braggadocio, which has appealed to a large base of Republicans. My advice, then, would be for him to deal with the issues that matter.
