Mike Huckabee Doubles Down: Obama Has A “Different Worldview” From The Rest Of Us
A day after apologizing for an odd comment about the President's upbringing, Mike Huckabee now feeds into the conservative myth that Barack Obama isn't a real American.
Fresh off apologizing for his odd assertion that Barack Obama was raised by his father and grandfather (who, again, died before Obama was born) in Kenya, Mike Huckabee showed up on Bryan Fischer’s radio show and doubled down on the right-wing meme that Barack Obama just isn’t one of us:
Huckabee: And it’s really an indication of just how pathetic some of these folks are who claim to be journalists and reporters and have failed to do a decent job. You know, I admitted that I misspoke on that, but I corrected it. But what I have never done is taken to position that Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia or anywhere other than Hawaii where he claims to have been born. Frankly Bryan, that is not a popular position with conservatives but it is the position I have consistently taken and I just am very amazed at the firestorm this has caused, especially in light of the fact that the talk show host himself has said there is nothing to it.
Fischer: Well Governor, what got lost in all the shuffle was the legitimate point that you were making which is that we may have a president who has some fundamentally anti-American ideas that may be rooted in a childhood where he had a father who was virulently anti-colonial, hated the British – might have something to do with the President returning the bust of Winston Churchill back to England. You know, I was struck by the fact that when he made his tour to Indonesia, he made a point of going to an Indonesian memorial that celebrated the victory of Indonesians over British troops – again, part of that anti-colonial thing. And so I’d like you to comment on that; you seem to think that there is some validity to the fact that there may be some fundamental anti-Americanism in this president.
Huckabee: Well, that’s exactly the point that I make in the book and I don’t know why these reporters – maybe they can’t read, I guess that’s part of it because it’s clearly spelled out and I’m quoting a British newspaper who really were expressing the outrage of the Brits over that bust being returned and the point was that they felt like that due to Obama’s father and grandfather it could be that his version and view of the Mau Mau Revolution was very different than most of the people who perhaps would grow up in the United States. And I have said many times, publicly, that I do think he has a different worldview and I think it is, in part, molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas.
I’ve never quite understood why the right has always been so obsessed over the President’s decision to return a bust of Winston Churchill that had only been in the Oval Office since 2001, especially since replaced it with the bust of Republican President Abraham Lincoln. After all, isn’t it better to have one of America’s greatest President’s represented than a foreign leader? Can someone explain that one to me?
Huckabee’s is merely expressing publicly something that has been roaming around the undercurrent of American conservatism for two years now, and which only really started to surface when Dinesh D’sSouza published his foolish thesis that the President has a “Kenyan anti-colonialist worldview,” an idea that Newt Gingrich quickly picked up and ran with. As I noted at the time:
The idea that Barack Obama, who was educated for all but five years in American public schools, attended American universities, and only saw his father once after his parents divorced in 1964 is somehow guided in life by the dreams of the Luo tribe from the 1950s-era movement for Kenyan independence from Great Britain is, quite honestly, absurd.
I can honestly think of only one reason for Gingrich and D’Souza to say stuff like this. It’s not racism per se so much as it is a desire to feed into the idea that Barack Obama is not a real American. Why else emphasize his ties to a country he’s only visited twice in his entire life and to an era of history that most Americans have no connection to at this point ?
It’s cheap, and it’s cynical.
And, it appears, Mike Huckabee is playing the same game now.
And I have said many times, publicly, that I do think he has a different worldview and I think it is, in part, molded out of a very different experience.
Different from yours, Huckster? Definitely. That’s a good thing.
After all, isn’t it better to have one of America’s greatest President’s represented than a foreign leader? Can someone explain that one to me?
Also, the Churchill bust was a loaner. He wasn’t rejecting a gift, as they like to claim.
Smells like Huck is sticking with the media gigs and not running for pres.
Churchill applauded one of Obama’s freedom-fighter relatives being whipped by the mustache-twirling British, no?
Also, isn’t America at its core an anti-colonial nation? You know, seeing as it was born as a struggle to break free from an empire?
Basically, if you support Huckabee as president, you are an objectively bad person who needs serious therapy.
The most plausible explanation is that the maneuvering has begun to become Fox’s Loon in Chief once Glen Beck’s head explodes. Huckabee is making his move.
You know, some of us were saying Huckabee was a nut four years ago, and gasp, we’re rightwingnuts.
Of course Obama has a different world view then the people Huck is addressing. We can be very thankful for that otherwise we would be back calling Iraq a Crusade and putting a cross on the flag while trying to figure out where Egypt is on a map.
It gets worse, Doug. Apparently next week Barack Obama is visiting a city that was the site of one of the most visible anti-British colonial protests in history.
When will the madness end?
I think this means he is thinking about running again. This stuff plays very well with the Tea Party, at least the Tea Party sites I read.
Steve
whocouldanode… the founding fathers were “anti-colonialist”???
Whocouldanode… they were NOT very fond of the British????
Who could have knowed?
i find it a bizarre sentiment that a parochial worldview and a lack of urbaneness is seen as a mark of quality. (this is obviously aside from the fact that obamas “kenyan upbringing” is a complete fabrication) but then again, he has a book to sell and as they say: any publicity is good publicity.
IMO the coming presidential season is going to be stranger than fiction..
I wonder if Huckabee is really stupid enough to believe what he’s saying, or if he’s just playing cynical politics.
America has long had a strain of populism that disdains education, worldliness, and so forth, and fueled by anger and resentment. The difference now is that information technology as used by people like Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, and Huckabee is energizing and organizing it. The irony is that this mirrors inner city culture where education is also disdained.
I do hope someone asks Huckabee to explain why anti-colonialism was good in America and bad elsewhere just to see the verbal gymnastics he would undertake. I think he and Palin are going to find that ideas like this which get whoops of approval to their core constituency is going to be a problem when they participate in national debates with a broader audience.
It’s telling of the republican attitude toward women that they completely disregard any possibility Obama’s beliefs were shaped by his mother.
Apparently only a man can teach a child anything of value.
I wonder if Huckabee is really stupid enough to believe what he’s saying, or if he’s just playing cynical politics.
Isn’t it more logical to just assume he’s being paid to say these things?
He looks like a Koch Whore to me.
“But what I have never done is taken to position that Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia or anywhere other than Hawaii where he claims to have been born. Frankly Bryan, that is not a popular position with conservatives”
Well, at least he realizes that many conservatives are crazy
If Obama made a “point of going to an Indonesian memorial that celebrated the victory of Indonesians over British troops”, then according to these morons, Obama better not go to the bridge at Concord or to Boston’s Bunker Hill monument or NewOrleans Jackson Square because they have monuments that commemorate kicking the shite out of (say it with me wingnuts) THE BRITISH.
Is there no end to their insanity?
This is just deeply offensive. I had bought into the notion that Huckabee was at least a kind of reasonable guy, but that was obviously an illusion. I mean, the Mau Mau Revolution vs. the Boy Scouts and Rotary. Could this be any more racist of a comment?
Huckabee is clearly saying that you’re less of an American than he is if your background is at all different or not what he considers typically American. Shame on him.
And Bryan Fischer–Indonesia was a Dutch colony; they didn’t win liberation by defeating British soldiers. Show your ignorance, why don’t you?
Obama visited the Indonesian military Kalibata Heroes Cemetery, where the Indonesian War of Independence casualties and veterans are buried, while on a state visit last year. Fischer thinks this reveals his anti-British attitude. I guess if a foreign head of state visited the Revolutionary War Cemetery in Salem while in the US, Fischer would think it was due to anti-French sentiment, or something.
Honestly, I think these guys are just stupid.
> It’s telling of the republican attitude toward women that they completely disregard any possibility Obama’s beliefs were shaped by his mother.
Especially when you consider he spent almost no time with his father…
Obamatep….Obamatep….Obamatep…..
Reagan went to Bitburg. Does that mean he was a Nazi?
(Although I don’t hold this against him. Just about the only good thing to come out of his administration was that Ramones song…)
Bamp bamp, ba bamp, ba bamp bamp, ba bamp, I wanna be sedated…
I am stilling waiting on a conservative to explain why we should be friendly to a country (the United Kingdom) that releases a prisoner that was responsible for the murder of 189 Americans so said country could secure an oil deal.
Hey hey, someone with a good point…..
Any of you well read people read anything Obama had written for him by William Ayers? You know, his books. Obama can not write but judging by his use of a teleprompter he can read. Carter ver. 2.0 will follow in the footsteps of the original. Lefties just don’t understand America and cling to stupid Marxist ideas which have never been proven to work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6GzVCYqoyY
Oh, Wiley.
Give it up.
Obama beat McCain and what’s her name by over 10,000,000 votes.
And now the Republican Kapos have decided to stab their fellow middle and working class Americans in the back at the behest of the billionaires who run their nut house.
Look for Obama to beat whatever Koch Whore the Republicans prop up against him by a Reaganesque margin in 2012.
@The Stoned One
“Any of you well read people read anything Obama had written for him by William Ayers? You know, his books. Obama can not write… Lefties just don’t understand America and cling to stupid Marxist ideas which have never been proven to work.”
This is what comes from smoking the stems and not the leaves.
I’ve read a lot about how conservatives are poorly represented in liberal arts faculties. By and large, it’s true. If you want to know why, read Huckabee’s statements about Obama, our Mau Mau president. Or Huckabee’s views on evolution. Or any speech by Sarah Palin. Or the article in today’s New York Times about the demonizing of teachers by Republican governors like Walker and Christie. I could cite examples like this all day.
Reading present day speeches or online comments by Republicans is like listening to George Wallace ranting about welfare queens or reading Father Coughlin’s fan mail. Huckabee is more benign, but he’s cut from the same cloth, or, worse, he feels he has to act like a yahoo to be politically relevant in his party. It’s depressing and it’s hateful, and I can’t imagine what thoughtful conservatives like the people who run this blog think about their party.
How exactly is that racist again? Your version may be, but not in the context of Huckabee’s statement, unless you have a very narrow world view. There was a Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya in the 50’s against the British. It likely did have an affect on anyone living there (Obama’s father and Grandfather). It’s a stretch to say how much this influenced the President, but that’s not racism. Huckabee’s views being influenced by the Boy Scouts and Rotary aren’t isn’t racist either.
@rodneydill. Yes, it’s racist. The Mau Mau uprising was one the first violent mid-century movements in which black people wnnet out and killed white people. It scared the crap out of whites. In fact, Tom Wolfe and others used the term “mau mauing” in the Sixties to describe making whites very uncomfortable and frightened.
Gop Dictionary:
“Different Worldview”; 1. Negro.
@Mr. Prosser,
No, the comment from DRF inferred that Huckabee’s comment was extremely racist (as per “Could this be any more racist of a comment?”). Huckabee’s comment in it self wasn’t racist. I made no reference to either side being right or wrong in the Mau Mau Revolution.
@Mr. Prosser, If Huckabee had used the term in this manner, and President Obama, had no relatives that were actually in Kenya at this time, and possibly influenced by the actual revolution, then it would be just a derogatory reference to his African heritage and I would agree that it would be racist.
Personally, I believe Huckabee was blowing the whistle. He knows very well the president did not learn a thing about Kenya at his father’s knee, particularly any tales about the Mau Mau uprising. But older people (such as me, 65 yoa) do know of the uprising and anything that ties the president to a word like Mau Mau most definitely reminds them that the president is African-American and his family comes from a country which once killed and tortured whites.
That’s true but at the same time I suspect Huckabee is unaware of or unconcerned by the fact that loyalists were also killed and tortured in the American Revolution.
@Rodney –
Would it be then fair to mention that the KKK (which was surely operating in the 50’s and 60’s in Arkansas and has ties to both Southern Protestantism and, in particular Southern Baptists) at the same breath as Mr. Huckabee? As in: Huck’s from the deep south, and came of early age during the 60’s, his view of the KKK (and segregation, the Conferderacy, etc) is fundamentally different than other people in the US. I mean the KKK had uniforms, did woodcrafts, and made fires like Boy Scouts … right?
Perhaps we could argue that this wouldn’t be *racist* per sea, but that doesn’t make it fair, correct, or excusable.
I agree to the point that Obama didn’t learn much about Kenya from his father. Mentioning the Mau Mau uprising in the manner he did, didn’t press any buttons for me, but I’m only in my mid-fifties. My knowledge on the uprising comes from Wikipedia, which is not always the best source. I’m sure the Mau Mau’s felt justified in kicking the British out, as much as the British probably felt justified in trying to put down the rebellion. If Huckabee was using this as a moment to rally racists I think he sort of failed, though it may provide some insight as to how his upbringing influenced his own world view.
I didn’t see the comment as racist so much as the sort of ideological caricature that appeals to the Huckabee/Limbaugh/Beck/Palin base. In reality Mau Mau wasn’t part of the global communist or leftist movement but I suspect that Huckabee doesn’t know much about it.
As a backstory, there is a growing literature on the human rights abuses the British used to counter it. There are few good guys in insurgency and counterinsurgency, just varying degrees of bad.
@matt b, Actually I would think it fair to mention any ties Huckabee had to the KKK. Any relative he had that was involved with the KKK in the past. This certainly would affect his view. It may make him more or less racist today. I really don’t have an opinion on Huckabee on whether he actually is racist or not.
For perspective Obama’s Kenyan ties (just as much as his Indonesian and Hawaiian ties) as I understand them today, may well influence his world view, and this doesn’t give me any negative impressions of him due to this.
Timothy Watson, Our allies make mistakes as we do. You judge your allies bit by those singular mistakes but by the sum of their virtues and mistakes. Great Britain is our ally for it’s sum.
Our president most definitely has a different world view than those who came before him and nearly all of America. Deciding if that’s good or bad depends on your own values but it is true. Heck, people raised in Hawaii have a different world view than those raised in Oklahoma. More importantly than where is by whom. His mother and grandparents seemed to be out on the fringes of leftism and I’m sure that had an influence. Again, good or bad is dependent on who you are.
To be honest I see Obama’s fatherly influence to be more of a manufactured thing to boost his image in the liberal circles in which he roamed. Not a big deal either way.
bit = not.
Plunk — The only peoople manufacturing a fatherly image are the right-wing schnorrers like DeSouza, who is cashing in by riling up the rubes.
More bullshit with absolutely no proof or relation to reality to back it up…
To be honest I see Obama’s fatherly influence to be more of a manufactured thing to boost his image in the liberal circles in which he roamed.
What fatherly influence, exactly?
Excuse me, didn’t Obama’s book manufacture the image of fatherly influence. You know, the with the title “Dreams of my Father”. The book in which Obama’s father wasn’t there but he put an image together from what he was told by his mother and grandparents. The book served as an introduction of a carefully manufactured image.
AIP, I challenge you have no proof to back up the assertion contrary to mine. Actions in foreign policy speak louder than words and the President’s apology tours show me he has a different world view.
“Apology tours” joins “Obama is a socialist” as those things that have been repeated so often that those who say them have completely lost sight of the fact that they’re utter BS. Through repetition, they have taken on the psychological characteristic of facts.
Excuse me, didn’t Obama’s book manufacture the image of fatherly influence. You know, the with the title “Dreams of my Father”. The book in which Obama’s father wasn’t there but he put an image together from what he was told by his mother and grandparents. The book served as an introduction of a carefully manufactured image.
First of all, tell us what you think Obama’s fatherly influence was. That was my question.
Second, why do you use the word “manufacture?” Is that the term you use to refer to all autobiographical works?
Actions in foreign policy speak louder than words and the President’s apology tours show me he has a different world view.
I don’t see you offering any examples of Obama apologizing on this thread, where Doug addressed the absurdity of that wingnut meme. Why don’t you read it and try now?
@Mr. Prosser
Off the top of my head, I think only a dozen or so whites were killed by the Mau Mau, on the other hand, they killed at least a thousand British-friendly blacks.
On the contrary, you are the one who has come up with the original bullshit claims, so the onus is on you to prove them, and “apology tours” doesn’t cut it as proof…
The Mau Mau revolution was overwhelmingly carried out by the Kikuyu tribe which is 22% of the Kenyan population, the largest ethnic group. They were the tribe that suffered most from British land grabbing. Obama’s forebears come from the second largest group, the Luo, presently 13% of the population (they’re also in Uganda and Tanzania). The Luo had little if anything to do with the Mau Mau revolt.
Huckabee’s statement is as dumb as saying that the Hausa and Fulani of Northern Nigeria supported the secession of Biafra from Nigeria back in the 60’s. It’s just plain idiotic.
But it was never intended for historical accuracy. For Huckabee, the fact that you know the history just shows that you’re not a “real” American.
@rodney
Considering that the only connection that can be drawn is that the Grandfather was a member of the political organization which the Mau Mau’s spun out of, and that he was held by a repressive colonial regime (which had swept up a lot of people) and eventually deemed to be “not involved” it seems to me that this argument is based primarily on the fact that they were *present* in the country at that time. Further given the limited exposure that Obama had to father or grandfather, then the connection stretches even farther.
Put a different way, given the activities of both the KKK and segregationists in Alabama, and the co-presence not only of multiple generations of Huckabee’s (including the man himself) I think it’s fair game to mention their potential ties to the KKK and how that shaped his worldview about race (and inter-religious relations).
BTW, the above statement was sarcasm… Though I’m still working to try and forget about the cookin’ squirrel in popcorn popper’s aspect of Huckabee (but that’s my big-city bias).
> Huckabee’s statement is as dumb as saying that the Hausa and Fulani of Northern Nigeria supported the secession of Biafra from Nigeria back in the 60′s.
Well Jan you know how it is. They all look alike…