(CNN) – Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee says that President Barack Obama has a "different world view" that was "molded out of a very different experience" because "most of us grew up going to boy scout meetings, and, you know, our communities were filled with rotary clubs, not madrassas."
The 2008 GOP presidential candidate, who's considering another run for the White House, made his comments Wednesday on talk radio host Bryan Fischer's program "Focal Point," on American Family Radio.
Huckabee used his appearance to fire back at critics, who blasted him for earlier this week confusing Indonesia, the country where Obama spent part of his youth, with Kenya. Saying that the problem with reporters may be that they "can't read," Huckabee admitted that he misspoke when characterizing President Obama's childhood in Kenya, and clarified his comments. "I said Kenya when I should have said Indonesia," he said.
Huckabee took as stand against what he called a "popular position with conservatives" and declared that "What I've never done is taken a position that Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia, or anywhere other than Hawaii, where he was born."
When asked by Fischer to comment on the idea that there may be "some fundamental anti-Americanism in this president," Huckabee said of Obama, "that's exactly the point."
"I'm quoting a British newspaper…really we're expressing the outrage of the Brits for that bust being returned and the point was that they felt like…due to Obama's father and grandfather it could be that his version of and view about the Mau Mau revolution was very different than most of the people that perhaps would grow up in the United States.
"I have said many times, publicly, that I do think he has a different world view, and I think it's in part molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to boy scout meetings, and you know, our communities were filled with rotary clubs, not madrassas."
In the book "Dreams of my Father," Obama discusses the absence of his father during his childhood, when he was raised by his mother and his grandparents in Hawaii. Though Huckabee references "madrassas," a term used to refer to a Muslim school, Obama attended an international school while living in Indonesia, not a madrassa.
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"When asked by Fischer to comment on the idea that there may be "some fundamental anti-Americanism in this president," Huckabee said of Obama, "that's exactly the point."
What a truly awful man Huckabee has become . . . hiding behind his fake facade of Godliness. I doubt there is a person in this country who isn't fully aware of what Huckabee is referencing when he speaks of President Obama, boy scout meetings, and rotary clubs. How sad that a man of God can be so willing to lie and deceive for nothing more than the need to feed his own over inflated ego such as Huckabee is now doing. Obama has been President for 3 years . . . it's time quit beating the dead horse and finally put the Kenyan – he isn't one of us – talk to rest. This continual abuse of President Obama is anti-American, and serves no purpose.
First rule of holes is:
STOP DIGGING
And that, boys and girls, is the problem with politics today. Even though Huckabee KNOWS President Obama did not attend a madrassas, he still gives the imression that Obama did. May not be lying, but it sure is close.
all of this citizenship mes is just racism, racism is like the aid virus, it may lie dormant for a few years, but manfestation is inevitiable, and a man of the cloth of all people
This guy is as looney as Charlie Sheen. Seems his one intent is to perpetuate "the big lie" about Obama's origin. There's a large segment of the American population that cannot bring themselves to accept the fact that a half African-American was legally elected to the highest office in the land (They never mention the other half of his family– a typical "American" white family–and the values, character, etc, that he likely picked up from them since he spent all of his developmental years with them. To acknowledge that would blow their lie out of the water.). It is blatant racisim. The result has been from the time he announced his run to the present to demonize him in every way possible, facts be damned. There's a cottage industry in this country whose sole purpose is to write fiction and fantasy about the Obamas and to spread it as widely as possible. And there are millions of people only too willing to accept it at face value. A really sad state of affairs today. And Huckabee is only too willing to use it for his benefit.
Why can't he admit that he was mistaken. He does not know the president personally or was a witness to his youth so why is he speaking about it? How can he or anyone else associate being in the scouts as a requirement for being president?
Flat out wrong on EVERY front. We are 3 years into the Presidency of Barak Obama – get over it.
Stop catering to the fringe elements. Our President is doing a good job – much better than Bush.
"He didn't grow up like the rest of us" that means like us whites! I am hispanic and I know that many of us didn't grow up with
boy scout meetings. We can read between the lines Huck and that is why we didn't vote for you. We wanted someone with life experiences more like ours and not like spoiled little white kids. We have a vote just as well and your thinking is not the same as everyone else's in this US of A... it's a f**king felting pot! Get over it and stop trying to speak in code... dumb A**
Boy, he's sure right about how strongly Americans feel about the Mau Mau revolution. That involved kittens, right? Or that cat character from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood?
Can any one man be more of an idiot than this guy?
governor huckabee shame on you. you grew up in hope, arkanas around a lot of black people. you know you are pandering to the racists in your party. stop it and regain your integrity as a minister at least.
Huckabee is pandering to the family values ultra-conservative wingnuts in the GOP/Tea Party. The GOP/Tea Party will pay the price in the future as the racial and ethnic make-up of the US population becomes more diverse. The racial and anti-immigrant rhetoric of the GOP/Tea Party will not play well.
fat red neck clown
Hey Huckabee, Baptist Minister, Jesus had a different world view, he never went to the Chamber of Union Bustin' Commerce or a Rotary Club, of Boy Scouts. Put that in you pipe and smoke it, you are certainly on something and it sure the hell ain't Christianity, Oh Yeah, I forgot you're just trying to impress the tea baggers, Go ahead, smoke their dope, it will make you as doppy as they are. Self Serving, all about me, to hell with everybody else, tea baggers.
Funny. In my neighborhood I'm a lot more likely to run into someone like Obama than I am someone like Huckabee. I guess I'm not American.
Typical white Republican politician: "Most of us grew up going to boy scout meetings". Huckabee applies his experience to all Americans – most of whom didn't go to Boy Scout meetings.
Mike doesn't believe in evolution. Judging by his comments I'm beginning to agree with him on that...
suggesting that some people can be more ameriacan than others is one of the most un-american things you can do.
its hackabuck lets past the buck and not own up to what I meant just look at what his back pedaling statement says in one word madrassa and he is a preacher for who the K.K.K.
Huchabee makes it look like this is his week to portray as stupid, out of touch with reality and not a presidential stuff.
If CNN's reporting is accurate, Huckabee is still tap dancing around the code words of the extreme loony-right wing. He backs away from saying he's a birther but continues to drop loaded words like madrassas and hints that Obama may be "anti-American" or have a different "world view" - in other words, he's NOT one of us.
PLEEZE, talk about how you might run the nation differently instead of continually diminishing the President. I want to vote FOR the best candidate, not for the LEAST BAD candidate.
This is what has happened to the Republican party, and I hope that the moderates of the party (if there are any left any more) are paying attention...
...the party is so out of whack with reality that to get the party's support you have to descend into the nether-netherworld of vivid and racist imagination. If you don't then you lose the nomination, if you do then you've just alienated about 75% of normal Americans who will not vote for a crazy person...
...so it's a catch 22 for Republicans and may their wicked spirited party never recover...
For shame Mr. Huckabee, in your heart, I think you are probably a better person than your comments attest. So the only people who should be in power in the USA are those that "... grew up going to boy scout meetings, and, you know, our communities were filled with rotary clubs...". This is really at the heart of the far right's angst over Obama, the fear of the "other".
One would think that a good Baptist preacher would be very careful not to violate hte commandment against bearing false witness. But then again, the man is a Republican, so he gets to pick and choose the Christian values he wants to follow.
- "You shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
Isn't Huckabee's comment in the first paragraph a little wood to stoke the fire!