Whenever a Republican presidential candidate prepares to campaign in Iowa, he or she will inevitably start putting in appearances on “The Steve Deace Show.” Ben Carson recently chatted with Deace about why Congress should remove judges from office if they rule in favor of marriage equality; Bobby Jindal used his appearance on the program to promote the “no-go zone” myth and deride Democrats as weak on security issues; Ted Cruz told Deace that civil disobedience may be necessary to stop gay rights; and Rick Santorum even guest hosted Deace’s show.
Yesterday, Mike Huckabee, another likely presidential candidate, spoke with Deace about his new book, “God, Guns, Grits and Gravy.”
Deace asked Huckabee if he could win a general election since he is currently seen as a far-right conservative who, just like Dan Quayle after he made speeches attacking fictional TV character Murphy Brown, will be stuck talking about his criticism of musicians like Beyoncé.
Huckabee said he will win because more people live in the “flyover country” than the “bubbles” of Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles, citing the commercial strength of films like “The Blind Side” and “American Sniper” as proof that conservatives represent an electoral majority.
Oddly, he used the two films, both distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, to attack Hollywood and allege that the entertainment industry doesn’t understand Americans and is more interested in producing “bombs” like “Noah” (which in fact was a box office success).
The former Arkansas governor said he will win the presidency by securing support from conservatives, whom he suggested were uninspired by Mitt Romney’s milquetoast social conservativism.
“I just don’t agree with the assessment that we’re on the losing side of history,” he said. “I keep hearing that my strong adherence to biblical marriage is ‘on the wrong side of history.’ I don’t really think so. My ‘view of life is outdated.’ I don’t think so. Am I going to carry New York or the District of Columbia or California? Probably not. But guess what, no other Republican is either. The question is: do we have somebody who can rally the people and get that mass of voters who do live in flyover country to show up? Because if Mitt Romney had four percent more of just evangelical voters — don’t even include the middle-class economic voters or pro-life Catholics —four percent more, he would’ve been president.”
Huckabee told Deace that that the country is polarized between “Bubbleville” and “Bubbaville,” or real America, and he intends to rally “Bubba” voters all the way to the White House.
He said conservatives understand that liberals in “Bubbleville” have an “irrational, illogical way of looking at life” and are determined to make sure that businesspeople are “forced either to make decisions that they don’t want to make morally or fined or threatened with jail time because they don’t want to make a gay wedding cake.”
“When people in ‘Bubbleville,’ when they say ‘diversity,’ what they mean is ‘uniformity’; when they say ‘tolerant,’ what they mean is ‘intolerant,’” Huckabee said. “This is the ultimate example of how we have really come to the Orwellian, 1984 newspeak of 2015.”
