(I promise, I am about to get this out of my system).
Mike Huckabee was on Joe Scarborough’s show and has views similar to what I was getting out on Tuesday regarding Wright (especially the bolded part):
HUCKABEE: [Obama] made the point, and I think it’s a valid one, that you can’t hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can’t. Whether it’s me, whether it’s Obama…anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.
Now, the second story. It’s interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you’d say “Well, I didn’t mean to say it quite like that.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH: But, but, you never came close to saying five days after September 11th, that America deserved what it got. Or that the American government invented AIDS…
HUCKABEE: Not defending his statements.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I know you’re not. I know you’re not. I’m just wondering though, for a lot of people…Would you not guess that there are a lot of Independent voters in Arkansas that vote for Democrats sometimes, and vote for Republicans sometimes, that are sitting here wondering how Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor would call the United States the USKKK?
HUCKABEE: I mean, those were outrageous statements, and nobody can defend the content of them.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: But what’s the impact on voters in Arkansas? Swing voters.
HUCKABEE: I don’t think we know. If this were October, I think it would have a dramatic impact. But it’s not October. It’s March. And I don’t believe that by the time we get to October, this is gonna be the defining issue of the campaign, and the reason that people vote.
And one other thing I think we’ve gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say “That’s a terrible statement!”…I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told “you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus…” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.
The video is here (starting at about 3:30):
h/t: Jim Henley
Transcript via: Daily Kos
Stuff like this is why I liked Huck in the first place. A very reasonable fellow.
Very good to remember these things when thinking of Wright and what he said - that while what he said may be an overreaction, there is something there for him to react against. Conservatives need to remember racism has been and continues to be a real problem in this country.
Comment by B. Minich — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 9:15 am
I see his point but again Obama was in this congregation for 20 years and had a very close relationship with this guy, Wright was even a member of his campaign. It was not like a loose endorsement from some group or person that really has no contact with a candidate or campaign, but Wright is a person that has played an integral role in Obama’s life. If it come out that McCain or Clinton has affiliation with some wacky group it too need to be an issue, which you know they both do. The sad thing is I have known about the Obama/Wright stuff for over a year and just now this is coming out, where has the media been vetting these candidates?
Comment by CV — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 9:41 am
Oh, Steven: what’s the Tost-o-meter say these days? The Democrats seem to be untoastable this cycle. As soon as one seems to be toast, the heat goes on another.
Maybe they are both that weird white stale toast that happens when you don’t leave the bread in the toaster long enough.
Comment by B. Minich — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 10:15 am
Oh, how I wish we could have a 4-candidate contest (under majority rule) in November: Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Huckabee.
Huckabee is showing here the extent to which he represents a very different coalition than the one that has sustained the national Republican party, just as Obama has been doing the same on his side.
There is no good reason why we should let a minority of the electorate in winter and spring whittle these four down to two in the fall contest.
Comment by MSS — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 10:29 am
B.: I have been intending to return to the T-o-M, but time hasn’t been there for it.
CV: The Wright stuff has been in the press before (indeed, the fact that you knew about it for over a year proves it). The exact reason it has blossomed now I do not know.
And really, I am not 100% sure what your point is here and on my other Wright posts. I am not defending the statements, but I am interested in understanding them. And Obama is taking a political hit from all of this, just as McCain would if one of his associates said things that were offensive to a significant number of persons.
I do think that there is an important discussion about race that is relevant here that goes beyond the inflammatory and even off-the-wall (IMHO) things that Wright said.
MSS: Indeed. I would radically prefer a far different system.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 10:39 am
We should draw a very clear distinction between Falwell and Wright, and not conflate them, as does all the above.
As I understand them–and I don’t claim to know the statements of either man in their full context (nor do I wish to)–they said utterly and importantly different things.
One said that G-d punished America (and not only one said that; McCain’s friend, Hagee, has said something similar). The other said that 9/11 was blowback for American government policy abroad.
I would hope we could tell the difference here.
Comment by MSS — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 10:42 am
I will confess to mixing and matching here.
My point is that Wright has said that God should damn America for things that it has done (mostly in terms, if I understand the comments properly, in the context of race).
Falwell specifically stated that God did, in fact, condemn/judge (indeed, damn, as defined in another post) America for its sins (as he saw them).
I am actually not explicitly comparing the two 9/11 statements, but am drawing comparisons on the issue of condemnation of America (albeit for different reasons).
Along these same lines, when I noted that many white pastors had condemning America for abortion, I think it is a clear parallel to some of Wright’s statements.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 10:46 am
To be clear, by “all of the above” I meant the Scarborough-Huckabee exchange. Sloppy on my part, I know.
Comment by MSS — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 11:00 am
“just as McCain would [take a political hit] if one of his associates said things that were offensive to a significant number of persons.”
So, when will McCain take a hit from his embrace of Hagee? I don’t think I am on the fringe as someone who finds his statements offensive. And I don’t see McCain having addressed the matter in any satisfactory way, or having been demanded to do so.
I see a double standard here. And it might even be racist.
(Just to be clear: “here” does not mean PoliBlog.)
Comment by MSS — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 11:06 am
The distinction to be made there (i.e., Hagee) is that McCain isn’t a two-decade member of Hagee’s church (indeed, he isn’t a member at all). As such, it isn’t exactly the same.
I have seen him take criticism for Hagee and for another pastor he was campaigning with (I forget the name).
BTW, for what it is worth, I, to put it politely, no fan of Hagee (and I have been aware of him for some time).
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 11:12 am
It isn’t membership in a church that I care about. It is the political implications.
And it looks to me like these associations have been mostly negative for Obama and positive for McCain.
OK, I think this is my last comment on this issue. (Famous not-last words…)
Comment by MSS — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 11:20 am
Lets talk about the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. I am sure that will get some good posts.
Comment by CV — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 12:07 pm
I think the dynamic here is quite interesting.
When the comprehensive immigration package was being discussed last year Bush, McCain and others went to great pains to shoot down the idea that it was an amnesty. However each time they told folks that it wasn’t an amnesty more people believed that it was. ‘Amnesty’ was a gut level charge against the package, no 4 point defense would ever dismiss the charge, no matter how many subpoints or the elegancy of the delivery.
Obama is in the same fix. Each time he defends the idea that his spiritual advisor isn’t really a racist demagogue, he further plants the idea that his spiritual advisor is a racial demagogue. Each time the question comes up the interviewer has to play “God Damn America” and “US of KKK-A” to give proper background. That kills the academic debating points of Jerimiah’s use of a bronze age reference to the word ‘Damn’. Sorry, this isn’t an academic debate. It’s a visceral rejection of loud racial demagogues. Not something that can be done in a 4 point Lincoln-Douglas debate format.
No doubt Don Imus could give a good academic defense of his reference to ‘nappy headed hos’. And Obama can give a good defense — I didn’t say it, I reject the statements, etc. But he’s confusing the visceral with the academic.
Visceral always wins.
Comment by Buckland — Thursday, March 20, 2024 @ 3:01 pm
No doubt Don Imus could give a good academic defense of his reference to ‘nappy headed hos’.
In honesty, I think he would (and did, in fact) have a hard time giving a defense, let alone an academic one, for the comment in question.
Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Friday, March 21, 2024 @ 6:46 am
[...] See Also: Huckabee Sticks His Neck Out For Obama, Obama, Wright, Huck, and The Pulpit: What’s Right? What’s Wrong?, Huckabee understands Rev. Wright?, Huckabee on Wright, One Last (Maybe) Wright Post (Huckabee on Wright), Huckabee on Obama and Wright, Huckabee Defends Obama … and the Rev. Wright, and God Bless Mike Huckabee. [...]
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