Mike Huckabee has eyes set on the 2016 GOP nomination but likely isn’t too happy with an early misstep. Of course the media begins by trying to paint Huckabee as a hate monger, but he didn’t do himself any favors by completely dropping the ball on a question about gay marriage. How should he have answered?
Below is a rough transcript of this segment:
GLENN: Mike Huckabee is not off to a good start on his campaign. He was on CNN this weekend and he was asked a question, and in fairness, nobody on the left is going to be asked, but he was asked how he feels about gay friends.
VOICE: Given that, how do you square that religious conviction with being open to having gay friends?
HUCKABEE: Well, people can be my friends who have a lifestyles that are not necessarily my lifestyles. I don't shut people out of my circle or out of my life because they have a different point of view. I don't drink alcohol, but gosh, a lot of my friends, maybe most of them do. You know, I don't use profanity, but believe me, I've got at lot of friends who do. Some people really like Classical music and ballet and opera. It is not my cup of tea. I would like to think there's room in America for people to have different points of view without screaming and shouting and wanting to shut their businesses down.
PAT: All right so he's got friend who are gay, some who drink, some who swear and some actually watch ballet?
GLENN: What are the odds that Mike Huckabee has one friend that swears, drinks, watches ballet and is gay?
PAT: It's probably pretty good. I think I probably know someone like that.
GLENN: When I'm thinking about a presidential campaign, I'm my thinking to myself this is the way I want it to start.
PAT: It's hard, though, because they consider him to be this deeply Christian guy. He's going to run into all kind of this stuff and they are going to ask him questions that they won't ask anybody else, like you said. And they know the hottest topic there is that could burn somebody who isn't on board with gay marriage necessarily is to ask them about gay marriage. And they are going to do it repeatedly.
GLENN: Over and over and over again.
PAT: Last year, Hillary Clinton was still not in favor of gay marriage.
GLENN: May I just suggest that's the way to answer this. You know the president had -- was against gay marriage four years ago. Hillary Clinton last year came out and said she was for gay marriage. Last year. The country is moving in one direction and I'm not quite there yet. Maybe that's what you say. Maybe that's how you say it. If you're Mike Huckabee, that's what you say. Me, I say you want to get married, go get married. Why is the state involved in gay marriage.
Out of all the things that we have to talk about, why is the state involved in this? I'll tell you why, because it's a way to control and manipulate things. Let people decide. Let this all be decided in the churches, let it be decided in your local communities. Why is the state involved at all?
PAT: I will say every year on our anniversary, the governor of Utah who was in office at the time my wife and I were married comes and celebrates with us on our anniversary?
GLENN: Really?
PAT: Yeah. Kind of special. Norm Bangerter. He comes down, no matter where we live, just because -- he does it with everybody who got married in that state at that time. Yeah. Kind of cool. I think that's added a lot to our marriage.
GLENN: I think so too. I look at the marriage certificate we have from the state. Oh, my gosh, I cherish that.
PAT: Do you?
GLENN: I do. I have keep it handy and there someplace --
PAT: It adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the marriage.
GLENN: I look forward to it. I'm not married until I get the official declaration from the state. When the state says I'm married --
PAT: Then you are married. You aren't married until the people taking half of your salary from your paycheck --
GLENN: So you could answer it that way or you could say I have friend who like ballet.
PAT: And some of those are gay as well.
GLENN: Maybe. Maybe not. I have friends who are gay, some of them swear. I think that makes you so relevant.
PAT: That's a weird answer.
GLENN: Can I tell you something Daddy-O? It makes you today. So now here's some more from the hipster, Mike Huckabee, when he's on radio. 24 you thought the I have friends who like ballet was a good answer listen to this. He's on radio, and he's talking about the decay of our society.
VOICE: Given that, how do you kind of square --
GLENN: No. Not that one.
VOICE: I was shocked that you go into New York -- it's one of those things, you are in a business meeting you might have in the south or in the Midwest there in Iowa, you would not have people who would just throw the F bomb and use gratuitous profanity in a professional setting. In New York, not only do the men do it, the women do it. You say my gosh, this is worse than locker room talk. This would be considered totally inappropriate to say these things in front of a woman. And for a woman to say them in a professional setting, we would only assume this is a very, as we'd say in the south, that's just trashy.
PAT: Where does this -- where has this guy lived the last 50 years? What he's saying, all of us should have better language than we do right?
GLENN: I agree with --
PAT: Where have you been since 1938?
GLENN: Well, that's just trashy. I've never heard that said in the south. I live in the south.
PAT: Women have sworn in the south in a long time, in business settings too.
GLENN: I have had really nice southern belles tell me off, using some really trashy words, and it just sounds so sweet, like the tea they're making. I will tell you that this is not the winning -- not a winning strategy.
PAT: No, it is not.
GLENN: He's never heard women swear before, and you go up into New York, and wind say things that they don't say in the south.
PAT: And I saw one of them smoking a cigarette, and it wasn't a Virginia Slims. It wasn't one of her own cigarettes. It was a man's cigarette. I was aghast.
GLENN: Now, again, I agree with his desire for us --
PAT: Yes. To be a more gentile society?
GLENN: We should be. I would like for us to be a less trashy society, but this shows him as really Mr. 1956. I don't know where he's living. What America is he living in? You are stunned by this? It's not like -- and I was in a part of New York and a guy came in with a gun and just blew his head off after killing four other people.
Even that, you are kind of like yeah, okay, I have seen that. Yeah all right. Not everybody has seen that, but I have seen that a couple of times. It's not like she said the F word and S word. I was horrified.
PAT: Horrifying. What kind of freak would say something like that?
GLENN: I don't know. So there's Mike Huckabee, your choice for 1956. It's not going to go well.
PAT: I don't think it is. I hope it doesn't. I have don't want the guy --
GLENN: He's a Progressive.
PAT: He is, on political issues. Yes, he's a social conservative but he's a social conservative who was in favor of Common Core?
GLENN: This is, again, why conservatives get a bad name, why I don't want to be known as a conservative, because I have those same values but I am not Mike Huckabee. I don't want to live in that world, but I'm not Mike Huckabee and what is Mike Huckabee? He has those values then will institutionalize those values. He will try to regulate through law, he always does. He's a huge fan of a lot of the things that this president has done. I'm not interested. Thank you.
PAT: He's an interesting conundrum. He will be in favor of some policies like, as he did when he was governor, granting amnesty to prisoners, then the Michelle Obama dictates on lunch for the government telling our kids what they can and can't eat at school. What conservative is in favor of that? And then there's Common Core. And people always call and say no, he was in favor of Common Core, but then he said he's not. He said change the name of it. Don't backtrack on it, but change the name.
GLENN: That is the progressive answer. That's what Progressives do for everything. Change the name.
PAT: And it works for them.
GLENN: It does.
PAT: They changed pro-abortion to pro-choice. That's a much nicer feel, right? You are not pro-death.
GLENN: You change classic liberalism, which means freedom, means the opportunity to chart your own course, to be your own man, to stand up on your own two feet, to be free. Classic liberalism, you change that to progressivism. When progressivism dies, you have now erased what classic liberalism means and you become liberals, so you just take away that choice. That's what they do. They always just change names.
Featured image courtesy of the AP