Huckabee Refuses To Say Palin Is Qualified To Be President
Reported by Ellen - June 27, 2010 -
I think we can chalk up Mike Huckabee as another Fox News colleague not so impressed with Sarah Palin’s punditry. Huckabee appeared on Fox News Sunday today to discuss his potential 2012 presidential run. Huckabee said he won’t make a decision until after the 2010 elections which he said, is “where our focus needs to be.” That was a neat way of keeping open both his options and his well-paying PR perch in the form of a Fox News television show. I mean, just think how much he’d have to pay for that kind of candidacy-building exposure if Fox News weren’t paying him already! Near the end of the interview, host Chris Wallace asked “lightning round” questions about the other potential GOP candidates: Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush. Palin was the only one Huckabee suggested was not qualified.
At about 8:20 into the discussion, Wallace asked, “Sarah Palin… does she have the experience, does she have the knowledge to be president?”
Huckabee answered, “She’s got the fire, the energy and I think there are a lot of Republicans who love her, would support her and she would be a very strong presence in a presidential primary.”
Huckabee didn’t say a thing about her experience or her knowledge.
Huckabee is only the latest in what is becoming a fairly long line of Fox News pundits whom Palin has failed to win over as an analyst. Most recently and most notably, Bill O’Reilly destroyed Palin when he pushed her to offer alternative solutions for the BP oil spill disaster. Prior to that, Fox News contributor Bernard Goldberg went out of his way to suggest Palin had been untruthful when she had claimed 60 Minutes had not offered her a chance to respond to criticisms leveled against her. Chief political analyst Brit Hume damned her with faint praise on one occasion. On another, he outright disputed one of her attacks on President Obama.
