Potential presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has a tendency to conjure the Holocaust when he's trying to make a political point. Speaking last week in Pittsburgh, he recalled a visit to a Holocaust museum in Jerusalem with his daughter, then 11, who wrote in the museum's guestbook, "Why didn't somebody do something?"
Huckabee was talking about the national debt when he summoned the museum anecdote, which drew a rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman, who initially accused Huckabee of trivializing the Holocaust. Someone else may have been annoyed by the Huckster's comments: Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback.
Salon yesterday posted a story about Huckabee deploying his Holocaust museum memory in the days leading up to the 2007 Iowa Republican Straw Poll.
... Huckabee, the old Baptist preacher, delivered a rousing, emotionally powerful speech aimed straight at the hearts of the (many) cultural conservatives in the crowd. He saved abortion for the end, reminding attendees that "we are a people of life." Then he slowly launched into a story about a visit to Israel that he'd taken with his daughter when she was 11 years old.The story brought down the house, and Huckabee went on to finish second in the straw poll.
Huckabee's strong showing effectively ended the presidential aspirations of Sam Brownback, then a U.S. senator. Brownback was counting on Iowa's religious conservatives to legitimize his candidacy. But it was Huckabee, the minister turned governor with the very wise daughter, who filled that space. "Within weeks," writes Salon's Steve Kornacki, "Brownback was out of the race and Huckabee's steady climb to the top of the polls in Iowa was underway."
As for Huckabee's most recent reference to the Holocaust, the candidate and Foxman have apparently come to an understanding. Huckabee released a statement on Thursday:
I'm happy to report that after a personal phone conversation with Mr. Foxman, it was revealed that he had not heard my actual speech, but depended on news reports. Upon his review of the speech, he agreed that my comments had not certainly trivialized the Holocaust. I'm grateful that the ADL has reviewed my comments and understand that news reports were not entirely accurate and that I remain a steadfast supporter of the state of Israel and its right to an indigenous homeland.
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End Timers squabble over apocalypse .... the difference? Huckabee believes the crapola, Brownback uses it to defend the rich filth like the Koch brothers. LMAO!
He also conveniently "forgets" about the Palestinian people who were already living there. What about their homeland?
I remain a steadfast supporter of the state of Israel and its right to an indigenous homeland
So, uh, Mike? How is it the Israelis have a right to an indigenous homeland but Native Americans don't?
"[Huckabee] offered an anecdote that seemingly compared silence in
the face of mounting debt in modern America to those who said nothing
about the rise of the Nazis. ... his young daughter ... wrote in the guest book: "Why didn't anybody do
something?" "Let there never be a time in this country when some father has
to look over his daughter's shoulder and see her ask the haunting
question, 'why didn't somebody do something?'" he said."
Why didn't somebody do something? You mean like raising taxes on the rich or ending george w. bush's War Of Terror or cutting military and "intelligence" spending? Yeah, why doesn't somebody do that? These republican assholes keep saying there's a debt crisis, but they refuse to look at the REAL problems and only fixate on ways that they can fuck over the democrats.
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