After a series of humiliating incidents, Mike Huckabee has earned his reputation for knowing less about foreign policy than any credible candidate in either party. To help address his obvious deficiency, Huckabee wrote (or, more likely, someone on his staff wrote) a piece for the upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs, in which he criticizes the administration’s handling of Iraq, specifically lamenting Bush’s “arrogant bunker mentality,” which he described as having “been counterproductive at home and abroad.”
Assuming Huckabee read the piece, he had to realize there’d be at least some pushback. Mitt Romney was the first out of the gate, suggesting Huckabee sounded like a Democrat.
Romney kept this up on “Meet the Press,” saying the criticism is “an insult to the President and Mike Huckabee should apologize to the President.”
Oddly enough, Huckabee is already starting to back down, telling Wolf Blitzer that he’s the true Bush ally, not Romney.
“I didn’t say the President was arrogant…. I’ve said that the policies have been arrogant…. I’m the one who actually supported the President’s surge. I supported the Bush tax cuts, when Mr. Romney didn’t. I was with President Bush on gun control, when Mitt Romney wasn’t. I was with the President on the President’s pro-life position, when Mitt Romney wasn’t.”
As a rule, the GOP presidential field realizes that the president’s name isn’t supposed to be uttered at all. In this week’s Republican candidate, not a single Republican hopeful used the word “Bush” over the course of the 90-minute event.
And yet, now, two credible challengers for the Republican presidential nomination are anxious to align themselves with the least popular president in the modern political era. Great idea.