Now that increasingly more people are objecting to Mike Huckabee’s vision of a grand, Christian nanny state, he has decided to change his tune. Where he argued only weeks ago in favor of a smoking ban in public spaces nationwide, he has now made a tremendous flip-flop. Instead of saying “I was wrong,” however, Huckabee argues that he really didn’t want such a bill to pass: he would only do it if he was forced to do so by Congress.
In its statement to The Hill, the campaign stated, “At a Lance Armstrong cancer forum last August, Governor Huckabee said that if Congress presented him with legislation banning smoking in public places, he would sign it, because he would not oppose the overwhelming public support that such a congressional vote would reflect. However, since such sentiment for federal legislation doesn’t exist at this time, and since he has said that the responsibility for regulating smoking initially lies with the states, the governor believes that this issue is best addressed at the local and state levels.”
Ah, yes, he didn’t want to, but if he was forced… As AP writes at Hot Air, “Huck supported the ban only because the public dragged him to it kicking and screaming? Here’s the clip. Judge for yourself how reluctant he is.”
Very reluctant indeed.
Huckasaint, some advise: when you flip-flop, do so before the campaign. Your flip-flopping is blatantly obvious now.
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No doubt it’s a flip flop and that Thompson and Romney will use it against him. Seems quite obvious that if he decided that he needed to back off of this stance, he could have done it in much smarter ways, or best approach of all probably would have been to keep the position but stop talking about it. When asked, defend it on the basis that it’s not nannystatism to regulate activities like smoking because of the documented evidence that second hand smoke harms others.
Agreed.