The WIngnuts Think They Should Keep Saying the Same Mean Things in a Nicer Way: Huckabee Edition!

Mike Huckabee and Ted Nugent on Fox, natch.

One of my favorite inevitable wingnut debate moments is when they say mean, bigoted, horrific stuff about people, but they try to say it in a nice way. Common variations of this theme include "I'm not calling anyone names" or "I'm not knocking anyone for their lifestyle choices" or "I still love sinners." They pile up the dead bodies that result from the implementation of their policy, but they put a nice bouquet of roses on top to cover the smell of rotting flesh and make it look like they really care for the people who perished due to lack of health care, persistent poverty, gun violence, ectopic pregnancy, or wars we were lied into. But, hey, if they could just find the right guy to put a good spin on the destruction, it will make them look like the steel-spined authority figures who do the hard things we must.

Today's installment focuses on Reince Preibus (take out the vowels and you get RNC PR BS), who perpetuates the GOP myth that bigotry toward gays is a great policy position, as long as you put a big, fat, smiley face on it, because, you know, "tone."

Republican National Committee chairperson Reince Priebus said on Friday that former Arkansas governor and far-right culture warrior Mike Huckabee (R) should be the example by which all Republicans should abide with regards to LGBT rights and marriage equality.

The Raw Story mentions several examples of Huckabee's happy-happy-joy-joy version of loving the sinner but hating the sin. He's got a million of them. Here he is being nice to gay people:

"I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk."

See what he does there? It's not you nice, kind, gay people who are aberrant, unnatural, and sinful. It's your lifestyle! Here's another example, where he was asked if homosexuality is sinful:

Well I believe it would be -- just like lying is sinful and stealing is sinful. There are a lot of things that are sinful. It doesn't mean that a person is a horrible person. It means that they engage in behavior that is outside the norms of those boundaries of our traditional view of what's right and what's wrong. So, I think that anybody who has, maybe a traditional worldview of sexuality would classify that as an unusual behavior that is not traditional and that would be outside those bounds.

You're not a horrible person! You're just out of bounds! And don't get him started on abortion, because you're not really evil, you're just making a deadly choice for that little globular-cell-person your rapist blessed you with because it's convenient:

[Civilization cannot survive if] "one group of people have life and death control over another for no particular reason other than their own conveniences and, in that case, prejudices."

Mikey no likey, on Fox, natch, via Slacktivist.

He was saying abortion was like slavery, because it gives someone ownership of someone else, as if wanting to rid the growth of cells in one's uterus is like owning the slave you beat to death. But the way he cross dresses his desire to force rape victims to have their rapists' babies in the language of the abolitionists makes him a much better choice to be the person who will have to explain this to the rape victim as she is being forced to give birth. This seems to be the suggestion from the RNC PR BS ideology generator, anyway.

His capacity to forgive (as long as there's a better target to blame) seems almost limitless. After the Newtown school massacre committed by a disturbed kid with his mother's weapons that had no trigger locks, Huckabee found it in his enormous heart to not blame the shooter, or the mother, or the lack of a trigger lock law. No, Mike has bigger fish to fry: he blames all us heathens who don't want our kids to have to stand in the hall while the teacher leads a Christian prayer:

We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools... Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?

Of course, I always wonder what these guys would say when the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist children want to pray in school. More diverse schools would have to add an hour to the school day just to get through them all. Or, we could just replace biology class with prayer.

My real fascination with the man (who, if Intrade was still around, I would put a little on to win the GOP nomination in 2016) is with his faulty logic that leads him to beliefs so heinous that smiling while he says them, or phrasing them in kind terms, just makes it seem that much more horrific.

I don't think the issue's about being against gay marriage. It's about being for traditional marriage and articulating the reason that's important. You have to have a basic family structure. There's never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived. So there is a sense in which, you know, it's one thing to say if people want to live a different way, that's their business. But when you want to redefine what family means or what marriage means, then that's an issue that should require some serious and significant debate in the public square.

Notice how politely he re-frames the gay marriage issue into a fight for the very survival of our civilization? See how he's just fine with you sodomites going about your unnatural, sinful, unhealthy business, so long as you don't drag our whole society to ruin by asking for the same rights as, say, interracial couples did before Loving v. Virginia?

Another problem here isn't with Huckabee per se, it's with the reporters who don't keep him talking about the really interesting points, like, well, there's never been a civilization that survived, period. They all collapse, and the fallacy (argumentum ad ignorantiam!) of blaming the redefinition of marriage, which has, thank goodness, been done many times since Biblical times, is fascinating to me. And yet I can find no instance of a reporter having drilled down on that point. Does Huckabee really think that passing laws that say rapists can't force their victims to marry them, or soldiers can't force the woman they just widowed to marry them, are the reasons those societies collapsed? Does he have examples of civilizations that survived because they allowed polygamy and all the other kinds of Biblical marriage to continue?

From the Washington Post 

Somebody please keep this wingnut talking about these things. Potential GOP voters have the right to know!

Maybe if you put on a happy face while you discriminate against gay people (note that gays decided the election for Obama), lie us into war, support the killing of innocent people with the death penalty (his answer on whether Jesus would be for the death penalty is quite telling), and force rape baby births, people will like you more! After all, when you're down this low, there's nowhere to go but up, right?