Hucksterbee
On CBS's
Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer did a horrible, no good, rotten thing. He asked part-time Jesus and Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee why he had done commercials for a company
touting an exceedingly sketchy "cure" for diabetes.
“If that’s the worst thing that somebody can say to me, is that I advocated for people who have diabetes to do something to reverse it and stop the incredible pain of that, then I’m going to be a heck of a good president,” the former Arkansas governor said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
But of course that's not the worst thing someone can say about him. The worst thing someone can say about him is that he took money to tell diabetic Americans that a "
weird spice, kitchen cabinet cure" would reverse their disease despite that not really being a thing. And even that pales in comparison to flooding supporters emails from companies that purport to be able to cure your cancer using a Bible verse.
Obviously, this mildly impertinent line of questioning by a member of our national media could not be allowed to stand. It was left to Fox News to correct this fact-based assault on Huckabee's character, and it was specifically left to the network's single least fact-based program, Fox & Friends. Fox & Friends can be considered an anti-news program, or even more accurately can be described as the conservative movement's immune system; wherever there is accurate but unpleasant news in the world, Fox & Friends will eventually ooze their way over to it and cover that news with a thick protective coating of anti-intellectual pus.
And so it fell to Brian Kilmeade, aka Not Steve Doocy, to explain why Mike Huckabee selling quack cures to desperate sick people is not just fine and dandy, but is what the almighty Ronald Reagan himself would do.
I thought he gave a pretty good answer for that. He says I'm not embarrassed to say if something could help you with diabetes, I'm going to support it. Plus you're in the free market. I believe there's guys like Ronald Reagan who advertised for a few products in between becoming governor and president and when he was an actor.
That's Mike Huckabee, a man so brave he's willing to stand up and tell you he'll cure your diabetes even when he probably can't—just as the free market and Ronald Reagan intended.
The good news for Mike Huckabee is that while peddling scam products may raise the eyebrows of the fussy "establishment," it's not likely to damage him among people who think he might make a good president. This is because, as Fox & Friends so ably demonstrates, those people are rubes.