Mike Huckabee: Dumber than Birthers?

Former Gov. Huckabee of Arkansas, currently on a book tour while testing next year's electoral winds, claims not to be a "birther." His joking rationalization is that, had there been solid evidence proving that Barack Obama had not been born an American citizen, the Clintons would have used it against the Illinois senator during the 2008 Democratic primaries. Unfortunately, his otherwise healthy dismissal of the birther psychosis has made Huckabee neglectful of those details of the President's biography with which many birthers and most sane people are actually quite familiar. On a radio talk show today, Huckabee made a spectacular display of his ignorance by criticizing what he takes to be Obama's un-American anglophobia and blaming it on his embittered upbringing by an anti-imperialist father and grandfather in Kenya.

One can imagine the birthers scoffing: "Huckabee, you fool! He was born in Kenya, not raised there!" But Huckabee's was not merely a wrong guess. What should be noted for future reference is that the Arkansan has apparently absorbed, if he hasn't fully digested, Dinesh D'Souza's crackpot notion, also endorsed by could-be candidate Newt Gingrich, that Obama somehow inherited his Kenyan father's leftist hostility toward the West despite barely knowing the man. If I'm correct about this, Huckabee can almost be excused for filling in the obvious blank in D'Souza's account by assuming, if not imagining, that the future President spent time learning the Mau Mau doctrine at his father's feet. Common sense would almost require a reader of D'Souza to do such mental work, if it didn't compel the reader to throw the book out a window. The worst it could do in that case is give someone a concussion. I'm afraid the damage to Huckabee has been worse.