Huckabee Caught Lying on the Surge
Via Hot Air come these two videos, first one of Huckabee talking about the surge in January 2007, then one of yesterday’s debate. Huckabee caught telling a lie. Hm. :
“We have a Rudy Giuliani who supports the president’s plan on Iraq; we have Governor Mitt Romney who also supports a troops surge. How are you different from any of those candidates?”
Huckabee: “Well, I’m not sure that I support the troops surge if that surge has to come from our guard and reserve troops.”
But what did Huckabee say yesterday?
My, my. Liar, liar pants on fire!
Perhaps these two videos should get some play in the MSM. Guess they won’t though.
Disappointing, to say the least. I expected better from him.
Marc: I agree. You know, if he was a critic of the surge when it started, that’s fine. I was. Just say it. Instead he purposefully and consciously lies about it.
Hey now…don’t you think it’s fair to show the fact that Romney said he never supported a timeline for withdrawal, and yet here is a youtube video that says otherwise?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=eDKCDdevWnk
Instead you get on Huckabee who basically said he does support a surge, but just not it coming from guard and reserve troops.
It feels like the author of this blog is stretching things a certain way.
Daniel: thanks for finding that, I was wondering what that is all about. It seems like these are perfect examples of the distortions I was talking about in the other thread. Romney could very well have repeated what he said in that clip, that he never supported a public announcement of a timed withdrawal, and that would have been more accurate than saying he never supported timed withdrawal at all. And Huckabee should have said that he supported the surge in theory but had concerns about how it was going to stretch our guard troops too much- which again would have been more accurate and consistent with what he’d gone on record saying previously.
Daniel: several authors are writing for this blog, that’s one, and two is, blahblah.
Huckabee tries to present himself as the honest Christian leader. Good. Don’t lie then. O, and also don’t accuse someone else of flip-flopping when there’s proof that you’re quite a flip-flopper yourself.
Lastly, this thread isn’t about Romney, it’s about Huckabee. Nice try changing the subject though. That’s what Huckabee’s campaign constantly does, isn’t it?
Anyway, Christine: if you listen at what he says he says that he believes that there should be milestones. But not publicly announced withdrawal dates, indeed. And it’s clear that he doesn’t talk so much about “withdraw then and then” but about “set clear goals, try to achieve them, then pull out” (I remember this from last year - it’s wise to have a good memory before people post a 15 second video and cut out all the rest).
Should he have worded it differently during the debate? Yes, he should’ve. Was he dishonest? No. Was Huckabee dishonest? Hell yes.
O, and before this thread devolves into Romney-bashing - which is what Huckabee’s campaign constantly tries to do, McCain and his supporters the same thing by the way - if people try to hijack this thread, comments will be deleted. If you want us to spend attention to what Romney may have said back when, e-mail me or any of the other co-bloggers. If you’re not willing to do that, fine, but don’t hijack comment sections.
Defend your man, but don’t try to change the topic.
Oh come on, now, Michael, you can’t honestly be saying that Huckabee should be honest but Romney doesn’t have to be because he hasn’t played the Christian card as much. They should all stop twisting the facts about their own records and statements, and the records and statements of their opponents, period.
Christine, please read comment #5.
Michael, with all due respect, I feel you’re being too defensive. This criticism of Romney was completely relevant to the thread topic, and it’s facetious to say that McCain and Huckabee are constantly attacking Romney without acknowledging that Romney has done the same (in fact if I’m not mistaken, Romney went negative first and was not completely accurate in his attacks on Huckabee’s record.) There were numerous articles about it, and posts on factcheck.org, about the negative ads he’s run attacking Huckabee in particular.
Not being completely right is different than looking at someone and lying through your teeth. What Huckabee did wasn’t "not telling the entire truth" or "twisting the truth a bit" as politicians do, he was lying.
As he once said himself: if a person is dishonest going in, he’ll be dishonest on the job.
You know who rise in my opinion:
- Romney, because he didn’t lose his cool too much
- Thompson because he didn’t join the fun and decided to simply explain why he should be nominated
- Bloggers who call Huckabee and McCain out
The distinction you are making between the two distortions simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Huckabee’s position on the Iraq war in general all along has been hawkish, but he’s qualified that with criticisms of the way the war’s been conducted and with concerns about how our forces are holding up to the extended deployments. So I’ve already described how I think this went down and how Huckabee should have more accurately explained it: He’s supported the idea of the surge in that this is what he felt was needed but he also expressed concern about whether it was possible to do that without breaking our forces.
Similarly, Romney could have accurately defended the discrepency but he didn’t- instead, by the criteria you’re applying to Huckabee, he was "lying through his teeth" when he said that he never supported timed withdrawal. He too could have simply told the truth about what he did say, but he distorted it by saying he’d never supported that at all.
What is the problem with this statement? As a former governor, he is right to bring up the emphasis on Arkansas’ National Guard and Reserves. If we want to win a GWOT, then a larger national military should fight this, not weekend soldiers from Arkansas or Arizona. So maybe this is a matter of context, and not an outright lie. Speaking of lies, how does those Massachusett’s politicians go bird hunting without messing up their manicures and coiffed hair?
Under Clinton’s watch, the regular military was decreased 25%. Bush went to war with what he had. What he had was not enough. What did he do? The Surge. The Iraq war has put a HUGE strain on the Reserves from the very beginning.
Sounds to me that Huckabee approved of the Iraq initiative, but counted the cost to the Reserves. He didn’t say he was against the surge as much as he was concerned that the surge put an even greater strain on the Reserves.
I expect Mike Huckabee, as the Christian candidate, as my candidate, to be above reproach, insofar as is possible in politics.
So, Iafsmuch, I’d like him to say exactly what you wrote.
Do I care if Huckabee supported the surge before Romney? Not really.
John McCain was the only person on the stage last night who deserves any points for supporting the troop surge and he could have hammered that point home but did not.
Unfortunately there was no mention whatever about what the war is doing to our troops and their families. In many respects it doesn’t matter - they have a job to do and must get it done, regardless of the cost, and they know that.
Yet that cost cannot be ignored either. Sooner or later something has to give.