The more I get to know about Mike Huckabee the creepier he seems. He reminds me of those smarmy preachers who live anything but pious lives while they quote unctuously from the Bible. If you grew up in rural Jamaica as I did, I’m sure you know what I mean.
Huckabee (photo, above, left) has bared his soul in a newly published book, “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy,” and – from what I’ve been reading – his soul is not a pretty sight.
I haven’t read the book (it’s to be published later this month) but there’s quite a bit about it in the news. It’s that kind of book.
I’m sure it will be a best seller and make Huckabee a mint. And it will give the Arkansas preacher turned Fox News host the name recognition to make him a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination.
He could even win the White House. This is America, after all, and there are a lot of Americans who still fall for the kind of mush that Huckabee is peddling.
From what I’ve read so far, he is appealing to the holier-than-thou crowd who tut-tut when a woman’s hemline creeps above her knees. And he doesn’t mind using racist dog whistles to do it.
In an excerpt published by U.S. News and World Report, for example, he compares Beyonce (pictured with husband Jay Z above, right) to a prostitute and suggests Jay Z “is arguably crossing the line from husband to pimp by exploiting his wife as a sex object.”
He chides the President and First Lady for their relationship with the hip-hop couple.
“How can it be that the Obamas let Sasha and Malia listen to that trash? Apparently they do,” he writes.
Obviously, I don’t know what Mike Huckabee does behind closed doors, and I don’t think you care. But I know some of his political positions – vociferously anti-immigration reform, anti-choice and anti-same sex marriage, for example.
More than any other serious presidential contender in 2016, he represents the discredited ideas and phobias of yesteryear.
Unfortunately, there are still a lot of voters who yearn for the days gone by and shrink from the increasing diversity and tolerance of today’s America.
Unlikely as it might seem to you and me, the former Arkansas governor is a genuine threat. And I can only imagine what America would be like with a Republican Congress, Republican state legislatures and Huckabee in the White House.
