At Hugh Hewitt, "A Conversation With Mike Huckabee," including a text transcript of the entire interview. Governor Huckabee is promoting his new book, Do the Right Thing. The most interesting part of the interview, however, concerned his infamous remark suggesting Mormons view Jesus and Satan as brothers.
Huckabee defends himself by saying that the remark was innocent and uninformed, and that it was not intended to be the focus of the published story. He adds that he has great respect for Mormons and has frequently said nice things about the LDS Church on his television show:
But I on many occasions defended not only Mitt Romney's Mormonism, but more recently, the Mormon Church on my television show nationally, and in other printed material, when I talked about how that I felt like they were under persecution for having been willing and having the guts to stand up during the Proposition 8 debate in California. Thank God they were out there. And they've been a strong advocate for traditional marriage, and I think we ought to appreciate them for that.
The comment still rankles Mormons, and it's hard to accept Huckabee's disclaimers at face value. No candidate for the presidency regards remarks made in a convesation with a reporter as innocent. And Huckabee can hardly claim to be uninformed -- he has a degree in religion, attended the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary for one year, and is an ordained Southern Baptist minister (all this from his Wikipedia page).
On the other hand, he's trying very hard to be sincere in his repeated apologies and we should probably just let it drop. There is no shortage of players on the public stage who don't like Mormons -- it seems prudent to let Huckabee back onto the list of friends and sympathizers. From the transcript of the interview, here is Huckabee's full explanation.
Well, because it was a completely misrepresented issue. It was a conversation with a reporter. It was an 11,000 word story, or 10,000 word story, and there were 11 words in it that really was a question that came in the context of the conversation because he was explaining to me specific doctrines of the Mormon Church. He was quite familiar with it. I wasn't. And I asked him if that were in fact the doctrine of the Church. And the next thing is it ended up in the article as a part of it. The Associated Press lifted that out as if that was main focus of the conversation. I personally went to Mitt Romney in Des Moines, on a stage, looked at him in the face, told him I was sorry, that I would never had intended to have done something that would have been disparaging, and that it absolutely was not my intention to disparage any doctrine of his faith. And that's just the long and the short of it.
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This guy, Huckabee, is not to be trusted. He's only saying kind words at the moment because he's in hot water for recent comments. The rehashed bitter comments against Mitt Romney made him(Huckabee) more appaent as a loser. As soon as the heat is off him, he'll take back those nice comments about mormons in turn for some more bashing.
The only thing Huckabee has is a slick mouth.
I do not believe Mike Huckabee had any intention of insulting Mormons. He has been very complimentary of them on his show and in other statements. Even if he did mean what he said, to me this pales in comparison to the way in which Mitt Romney treated Huckabee and other candidates during the primaries. He did many under-handed things and launched negative, misleading ads about McCain and Huckabee.
I trust Mike Huckabee much more than I could ever trust Mitt Romney. Huckabee has been consistent in his positions over the years, while Romney has been caught in several lies and has changed his stance on very important social issues such as abortion and gay marriage.
I consider a flip flopper as someone who goes back and forth on issues. Mitt Romney has not gone back and forth as far as I know.
Huckabee has had a constant obsession with Mitt. It seems the obsession and bitterness stems from Mitt's wealth. Huckabee uses the flip flopper label as an excuse to mask his jealosy.
I wouldn't hold past positions on Mitt Romney because others like Ronald Reagan once supported abortion, too. The way Mitt Romney has live his personal life is more indicative to me of who he is than anything else.
Some of you people amaze me. Mike Huckabee along with the media is one the the sources spreading lies about Romneys changes on posistions. Every single one has been discounted. You can tell how honest some is in there thinking by how quick they believe something. Truth is, they want it to be true. Does everyone remember when Smuckabee went around making things up about Romney, saying "He believes in secret timetable to pull out of Iraq". allmost every anti Romney person I have had a deep conversation with really has a problem with Mitts religion. If Mike Huckabee did'nt know anything about the Jesus and Satan were once spirit brothers , then why did he know about it at a Baptist Conference in Salt Lake City, years ago. It was one the false Mormon doctrines discussed. Huckabee is the cheesiest guy ever. He needs to take that fake smile of his, with his little dimples on his chubby cheeks and stop wining about Romney. None of Mitts very gentle contrast adds in Iowa were distorted. Huckabees followers believe every word that comes uot of his mouth, rather than doing an honest investigation. This guy is no true Christian, he acts like a coward.
Huckabee has gotten what he wanted in even running for President, that is, to keep a very qualified Romney from being able to legitimize the Mormon church by virtue of his position.
You'll note that his original push in Iowa was almost exclusively directed at the religious community, having prayer breakfasts with pastors, urging evangelicals to fire up the church bus to bring people to the polls, repeatedly casting himself as "the Christian" candidate, producing a Christmas ad with a deliberate, but supposedly subtle cross image. This strategy might work in a few states' Republican primaries but is not going to get anyone near the Presidency in a national campaign.
Couple this with Huckabee's almost exclusive focus being on downgrading Romney and in making offhand comments intended to stir up anti-Mormon suspicions, such as his "Jesus and Satan / brothers" comment. In the south, it is well known that Southern Baptists deliberately spread misinformation about the Mormons. My local Baptist church hired a guy from Dallas to come in and preach against the Mormon faith -- it's a cottage industry. Huckabee is a former head of the Arkansas Baptist Convention and one of the keynote speakers at the annual convention meeting of the Southern Baptists in 1998 when the decision was made to hold the convention in Salt Lake City. One of the efforts of that conference was specifically to "witness to Mormons". Besides all of that, the "Jesus and Satan / brothers" comment is an old dig that's been in circulation for a l-o-n-g time, calculated to raise the eyebrows of non-LDS Christians.
Now are we to believe Huckabee, in the campaign interview with Zev Chafets of the New York Times Magazine, was so genuinely interested in expanding his knowledge of Mormon doctrine that he would ask the reporter such an offhand question, and in the gratuitous offhand way described by Mr. Chafets?
Still not convinced? Why did Huckabee continue to pummel Romney at every turn even after McCain had assumed frontrunner status, while giving McCain a pass? Why did the Huckabee-for-President Team become the Anybody-But-Romney-For-Vice-President Team after McCain got the nomination?
At this juncture, Huckabee recognizes that his actions might have nearly exposed his bigotry to the general population, so he's backing off a little. Plus, he needs to cover his rear-end if the issue of a Romney presidency surfaces for 2012. He's got to have something to point to to ward off criticism when he brings out the religion card again.
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