Mike Huckabee
Mike Huckabee
handed President Obama a cudgel first with his claim that, with the Iran nuclear deal, Obama "will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven," and then by
refusing to apologize because "I know what the oven door looks like." And Obama's administration
isn't hesitating to use it, not so much against Huckabee—why would Obama even bother with a minor Republican presidential candidate?—but against other opponents of the deal:
... with the job of selling the deal to Congress a top priority for their return home, Obama aides were eager to elevate Huckabee as an opponent, with White House press secretary Josh Earnest telling POLITICO he’s emerging as “a leading voice and face of the opposition to the Iran agreement.”
“The choice before members of Congress in both parties is stark,” Earnest said. “On one side, you have Republican partisans advocating a path that undeniably makes military conflict more likely. On the other are respected experts in both parties, like Brent Scowcroft, GOP Sen. Dick Lugar and Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn, who back the agreement and the use of diplomacy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
The Republican National Committee
declined to condemn Huckabee's remarks.
While Huckabee's historical comparison is especially grotesque, the choice at base really is between using diplomacy to make Iran less likely to ever get a nuclear weapon, or keeping war as the first-choice option, always and forever. The real historical precedent here isn't Hitler, it's George W. Bush.