Mike Huckabee. Image from http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42425.html
(This post originally published on OneWhiteDuck.com)
In a recent appearance on Pat Robertson’s evangelical The 700 Club, Mike Huckabee commented to host Pat Robertson that the reason he opted out of his then-expected 2012 presidential bid was because he disagreed with he level of “toxicity” garnered by his very own Right wing base. According to the former governor and Fox News contributor, the Republican Party is simply too “unrealistic” in its expectations of what the role of president should undertake. “I felt like the atmosphere right now is so toxic and part of it is that I think that many people in my party, the Republican Party, are unrealistic,” said Huckabee. “And what they want is something that no one can deliver, and that’s a candidate who is going to solve every problem in an election cycle.” Basically, Mike Huckabee chose, instead, to not draw the line of fire from his base and wait this one out.
On the surface his words may come across as an inkling of reason from a well-known persona in the Right-wing. However, it is rather ironic that his very reason for dropping out of the race is the same “toxicity” being hurled at our current President Barack Obama by those, like Huckabee, who would like to see Obama as a one-term president. From the early beginnings of the 2012 pre-election campaigns, every single candidate (Huckabee included) lambasted Obama for not “solving every problem” of which the president inherited from the prior Republican administration. Multiple wars, an economic collapse, broken fiscal policies in Congress, a corrupt health care system, inept energy policies, inadequate immigration policies, a deregulated financial system – all systematically “measured” by the Republican party as being evidence of failure by the Obama administration. Even before taking office Obama insisted, that while our current problems did not happen overnight, they cannot be solved overnight. Expecting such would be a recipe for disappointment.
George W. Bush increased the federal deficit by $5.6 trillion, sending the country on course for a devastating 14-month recession. He initiated two wars (one justified, one not so much) that cost American lives and tax payers trillions of dollars while simultaneously cutting taxes for the rich. The latter of which Republicans continue to hold over the President and Congress and criticize that the current President’s policies are ruining the country.
Obama’s perceived “negative actions”, like extending the wars in the Middle East, the Wall Street bail outs, the unemployment downspiral, and increasing the federal deficit, were all in response to the fiasco that was the Bush administration. Yet Huckabee and Romney, and Palin and Bachmann and all their minions, simply subscribe to the “Bush-era amnesia” approach of American political history. They depend on the ever-shortening memory of American voters to downplay the dramatic failures of virtually every Republican-stamped legislation in modern times. And instead hold Obama up to ridiculous expectations that no president, Republican or Democrat, would be able to solve in as little time and with even half the back-lash that Obama has experienced from the Right-wing. So where is the disconnect, Mike? Why is it okay to subject the current president to such unfair, one-sided scrutiny, yet a Republican candidate should remain exempt?
- Joe Ascanio, OneWhiteDuck.com
Edited By: Alexis Atherton
Very good article, and great questions. I wish we could actually ask these idiot’s these questions. And be answered.