“Ridiculous.” “Unacceptable.” “Just wrong.” All words used to describe GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s recent comparison between the Iran nuclear deal and the Holocaust.
But while Huckabee’s controversial comments may have attracted stern rebukes from the likes of President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and Republican rival Jeb Bush — to name a few — the former Arkansas governor could end up proving that at this stage of the 2016 election, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
“We’re living in the age of Trump, so it’s very hard to break through right now,” GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak told msnbc. “If [Huckabee] just came out and said, ‘Listen, I oppose the Iran deal, it jeopardizes the state of Israel,’ we wouldn’t be talking about it.”
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To say that Huckabee went a little further than that would be an understatement. In an interview with Brietbart News Saturday, Huckabee called the international nuclear agreement with Iran “idiotic” and likened Obama to a Nazi executioner.
“[H]e would take the Israelis and basically march them to the door of the oven,” Huckabee said of the president. “This is the most idiotic thing, this Iran deal. It should be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by the American people.”
The nuclear agreement, signed two weeks ago in Vienna and endorsed by the U.N. Security Council last week, caps off a decade’s worth of negotiations between Iran and world powers over the Islamic republic’s nuclear program. In addition to limiting Iran’s nuclear production for 10 years, the deal would cut off the country’s access to nuclear fuel and equipment for 15 years — all in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in sanctions relief. Sanctions would remain in place, however, until Iran proves to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it has met its obligations.
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President Obama has repeatedly hailed the agreement as the best way of ensuring that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. But since the framework debuted in April, critics have blasted the deal for giving Tehran far too much wiggle room to undermine IAEA scrutiny, as well as leaving out Americans still detained in Iran. Opponents also worry the deal will allow more money to flow to Middle Eastern groups bent on the destruction of Israel.
Congress has until Sept. 17 to either approve or reject the agreement, and many Republican lawmakers have been vocal with their concerns. The entire Republican presidential pack, too, has spoken out against the deal — some with more fanfare than others. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, for example, called President Obama the “Neville Chamberlain of our time,” referencing the British prime minister whose policy of appeasement allowed Hitler to flourish in the leadup to World War II. And Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said the deal would “without exaggeration” transform the Obama administration into “the world’s leading state sponsor and financier of radical Islamic terrorism.”
But even by those standards, Huckabee’s graphic “oven” remark stood out as over-the-top and inappropriate.
“The particular comments of Mr. Huckabee are, I think, part of just a general pattern that we’ve seen that would be considered ridiculous if it weren’t so sad,” Obama said Monday during a press conference in Ethiopia. He added that “[t]he American people deserve better.”
Hillary Clinton also weighed in, saying Huckabee’s comments have “no place in our political dialogue.”
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“I’m disappointed and I’m really offended personally,” the former secretary of state told reporters following an energy speech in Iowa. “I know Gov. Huckabee, I have a cordial relationship with him, he served as the governor of Arkansas. But I find this kind of inflammatory rhetoric totally unacceptable.”
Even fellow Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, who’s no fan of the Iran deal, said it was time to “tone down the rhetoric.”
“Look, I’ve been to Israel probably as many times as Mike Huckabee, who I respect. But the use of that kind of language in — it’s just wrong,” the former Florida governor said at a pastors meet-and-greet in Orlando Monday. “This is not the way we’re going to win elections, and that’s not how we’re going to solve problems.”
Mackowiak believes Huckabee’s rhetoric stems from a genuine and deeply felt concern for the fate of Israel. “Keep in mind,” he said, “Huckabee is probably the strongest pro-Israel candidate we have.”
But even so, as a presidential candidate eight years ago, Huckabee struck a far more moderate stance — at least outwardly — on U.S.-Iranian relations. In a 2008 Foreign Affairs article entitled, “America’s Priorities in the War on Terror,” Huckabee argued that diplomacy was better than a military option and said it was incumbent on the U.S. to reach out to Iran.








