Today, the country is focused on the President using the N-word in a broader context and various GOP presidential candidates accepting donations from the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the white supremacist hate group that inspired Dylann Roof to kill. What isn’t being covered is that pundit and presumptive Presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, was once a “well received” voice of the CCC and that he used ties with the group bolster his campaign to be elected Governor of Arkansas in the 1990s.
According to a 2008 article written by Max Blumenthal for the Huffington Post:
Indeed, well before he was a nationally known political star, Huckabee nurtured a relationship with America's largest white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens. The extent of Huckabee's interaction with the racist group is unclear, but this much is known: he accepted an invitation to speak at the group's annual conference in 1993 and ultimately delivered a videotaped address that was "extremely well received by the audience."
Blumenthal goes on to recount how Huckabee said in his speech that he would absolutely be present at the next year's conference and how that conference was scheduled in Little Rock, the capitol of the state Huckabee governed, in order to facilitate his presence. Ultimately, Huckabee withdrew, seemingly because it would look bad to be on the same stage with Kirk Lyons, a scheduled co-speaker who felt Hitler was the most misunderstood man in history.
Other sources, including Wiki, also recount Huckabee's involvement:
In 1993, Mike Huckabee, then the Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas, agreed to speak at the CofCC's national convention in Memphis, Tennessee in his pursuit of the Governorship of Arkansas. By the time of the CofCC convention, Huckabee was unable to leave Arkansas. Instead, he sent a videotaped speech, which "was viewed and extremely well received by the audience," according to the CofCC newsletter. However, following his success in the election, in April 1994, Huckabee withdrew from a speaking engagement before the CofCC. He commented, "I will not participate in any program that has racist overtones. I've spent a lifetime fighting racism and anti-Semitism."
Mind you, Huckabee delivered, by videotape, a speech that was "very well received" by CCC members the year before. Was he ignorant of the mission and purpose of the CCC when when he gave that address? I doubt it. The CCC is what rose from the ashes after civil rights legislation caused an earlier supremacist and pro-segregation organization, the Citizen’s Councils of America, to wane. Despite initially trying to be “mainstream”, preferring suits and ties to white robes, the CCC has always been proudly and avowedly racist.
And this begs the question: What exactly did Huckabee say that was so “extremely well received” by members of the CCC? Members that:
• Oppose “all efforts to mix the races of mankind”
• Refer to black people as "a retrograde species of humanity"
• Consider immigrants from our southern border to be a "slimy brown mass of glop"
• Whine about “Jewish power brokers”
• Characterize the LGBT community “perverted sodomites”
• Call arch-segregationist Lester Maddox the "Patriot of the Century"
On Sunday, Chuck Todd had Mike Huckabee on as a Meet The Press guest. During the show, Huckabee was specifically asked whether or not he supported flying the Confederate flag in public places.
“Let me just ask you this personally,” [#ChuckChuckTodd] queried. “Are you comfortable displaying the Confederate battle flag in public?”
“I don’t personally display it anywhere, so it’s not an issue for me,” Huckabee replied. “And so that’s an issue for the people of South Carolina. Do you display it? I doubt it. Does anyone on your panel display it? I doubt it. For us it’s not an issue.”
Nice dodge, Uncle Sugar.
Why don't you release the speech you gave to the CCC to let us all be the judge of how much that flag and what it represents is "not an issue" for you.