And we’re off for another round. With the 2012 presidential election approaching, the season of all kinds of gaffes about the American president is open. Now it’s Mike Huckabee — unlucky former Republican candidate, former Arkansas governor and current Fox News commentator who dreams of running in the next race for the White House — who committed his while making a most dubious remark about Obama’s imagined childhood in…Kenya.
“One thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, [is] very different than the average American,” he declared on the New York radio station WOR.
Some might have thought that they were hearing the other ultra-conservative, Newt Gingrich, who is also in the presidential race, and who set in motion a controversy last September after describing Obama as a “Kenyan, anti-colonial.”
The problem, obviously, is that Obama did not grow up in Kenya, but in Indonesia and Hawaii. It is his father who was Kenyan.
A spokesperson for Huckabee immediately announced that the former governor had simply misspoken. But one can express doubts about such a huge mistake. Especially since Huckabee also declared that he “would love to know more about where the president was born.”* (Hawaii, for those who still don’t know.)
For months before and after his election, Obama has been described as a Muslim by the American right, while he is in fact Christian. And today, more than 20 percent of Americans still believe this lie.
We’re eager to know what Sarah Palin’s next gaffe will be. She’s been keeping a low profile lately…
*Editor’s note: Huckabee’s actual quote is “I would love to know more,” which he said in response to an interviewer asking if he would like to know more about Obama’s origins.
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