Huckabee: Reagan Would Have A ?Very Difficult, If Not Impossible Time? Getting Nominated Today
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on May 7th, 2011 4:35 am by HL
Huckabee: Reagan Would Have A ?Very Difficult, If Not Impossible Time? Getting Nominated Today
ThinkProgress has spent the past two years documenting the GOP’s ideological lurch to the right under President Obama, as evidenced most recently by last night’s GOP presidential debate featuring mostly fringe candidates and a pre-debate rally sponsored by extremist groups like the Oath Keepers militia and the paranoid anti-communist John Birch Society. Meanwhile, a heightened demand for ideological purity has forced GOP leaders to kowtow to an increasingly relevant and legitimized fringe. The result is a conservative agenda that is far more radical today than it was decades ago.
Potential presidential candidate Mike Huckabee acknowledged this shift on Fox News today, telling host Bill Hemmer that even former President Reagan, the great conservative icon, would likely be unable to win a GOP primary in the current Republican “atmosphere”:
HUCKABEE: Ronald Reagan would have a very difficult, if not impossible time being nominated in this atmosphere of the Republican party.
HEMMER: How come?
HUCKABEE: Because he raises taxes as governor, he made deals with Democrats, he compromised on things in order to move the ball down the field. As president, he gave amnesty to 7 million illegal immigrants. There were many things that would have been anathema. People speak of Reagan as if he was absolutely steadfast. He was in his convictions, but you have to govern in a way that is different that is different than the way you campaign.
Watch it:
Huckabee’s comments also reflect the fact that the Reagan conservatives speak of today never really existed. The “Reagan Myth” ignores much of the Reagan reality that conservatives would find “anathema,” as Huckabee says, including Reagan’s vigorous support of unions and his vast expansion of the federal government.
In February, former GOP Sen. Bob Bennett (UT) — who lost a primary to a tea party candidate last fall — echoed Huckabee, saying, “Ronald Reagan would probably not recognize the description of Ronald Regan that is coming out of a lot of the tea party blogs.”
Rep. Allen West Falsely Claims China Controls The Panama Canal, Calls It A ?Serious Threat? To U.S.
During a Fort Lauderdale town hall last week, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) warned his constituents about “serious threats to our country,” including Iran and Hezbollah. However, one of the examples West used repeatedly, was not just overblown; it was demonstrably untrue.
Warning the crowd about the economic and national security dangers that China poses to the United States, West declared – twice – that “China is in control of the Panama Canal”:
WEST: I had the opportunity to go down to the United States southern command which is headquartered in Miami, Florida. There is a huge threat coming up out of South America through Central America, through Mexico, and into the United States. Iran is in South America. Hezbollah is in South America. I already talked about how China is in control of the Panama Canal. And even about 50 miles away from here in the Bahamas, building a port there. You know, there is some serious threats to our country.
Watch it:
The notion that China controls the Panama Canal is patently false. The United States handed control of the canal over to Panama on December 31, 1999 and it has remained in Panamanian hands ever since. This false claim was even debunked by the conservative news outlet Newsmax back in 2006. In fact, rather than owning the Panama Canal, China is currently proposing a rival railroad in Colombia that would allow goods to bypass the canal.
West is certainly no stranger to outlandish statements. He made a name for himself over the past year with comments like endorsing the censorship of news agencies that “enabled” Wikileaks, arguing that nobody is getting laid off in Washington D.C., saying that liberal women are “neutering American men,” and calling President Obama a “low level Socialist agitator.”
