early and often

Huckabee Joins McCain in Supporting Obama’s Wright Defense

McCain Huckabee

Wow, it’s really black in here.” “Yeah, you’re right. We’re both wearing black, too.” “Hmmm.” “Maybe we should say something nice about Barack Obama.”Photo: Getty Images


Yesterday and today, Republicans John McCain and Mike Huckabee both stood up for Barack Obama concerning his relationship with controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright. On Morning Joe today, Huckabee candidly said, “Obama handled this about as well as anybody could.” He laid out his argument pretty simply:

You can’t hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do,” Huckabee says. “It’s interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what … Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable, years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Rev. Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you’d say ‘Well, I didn’t mean to say it quite like that.’”


Whoa, that sounds like a pretty firm defense.

Republican nominee John McCain, on Fox News, said the following:

I think that when people support you, it doesn’t mean that you support everything they say. Obviously, those words and those statements are statements that none of us would associate ourselves with, and I don’t believe that Sen. Obama would support any of those, as well … But I do know Sen. Obama. He does not share those views… I know that, for example, I’ve had endorsements of some people that I didn’t share their views, but they endorsed mine. And so I think we’ve got to be very careful about that part.


Granted, both McCain and Huckabee have some preachers on their sides who have been known to say some pretty excessive things. But will this attitude of understanding on the GOP side last through the general election? Somebody should write these quotes down, quick!

Huck Defends Wright [Politico]
Driving Conservatives Crazy? [Politico]

Huckabee Joins McCain in Supporting Obama’s Wright Defense