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Mike Huckabee, Southern Baptist preacher, former Arkansas governor and one-time GOP candidate for president, came to the campus of TCNJ a few days ago to give a $25,000 speech. He also agreed to sit for an interview for the student newsmagazine, The Perspective for a piece cross-posted at Blue Jersey by editor Michael Tracey. And that's where things started to unravel for Huckabee, who maybe thought he was talking to simpler people than he was. Because now Huckabee's made some national news, claiming Tracey "grossly distorted" his views. Huckabee's big problem? Tracey has audio, and transcript.
Huckabee answered questions about scandal-plagued RNC Chair Michael Steele, disparaged his rival Mitt Romney and dropped a number of colorful, outrageous and nonsensical quotes about gay people, marriage equality, Don't Ask Don't Tell and gay adoptive parents. "Children are not puppies," he said. "This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?" Huckabee compared same-sex marriage to drug use, and to incest.
Huckabee released a statement claiming Tracey "grossly distorted (his) views", took exception to Tracey's claim that he "ripped into" Steele, claims his own views of marriage are "hardly unusual" and accuses Tracey of sensationalizing and hyper-focusing on them.
Well. Tracey answered in The Perspective, calling Huckabee's words an ad hominem attack and taking issue with Huckabee's casting doubt on the credibility of his publication. The controversy escalated to Huffington Post, and to the Washington Post's blog 44. But worse for Huckabee than the national coverage is that The Perspective has now widely published both an audio recording, and a transcript of the interview.
In the statement on his website, Huckabee called attention in a diminishing way to Tracey's age, and said "the young college student hopefully will find a career other than journalism". Funny. I'm thinking just the opposite. Here's the audio; decide for yourself:
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