Gov. Mike Huckabee hasn’t gotten much speaking time so far this debate but he did manage to give a lengthy and impassioned response to a question posed by Jake Tapper about the criminalization of Christianity.
Huckabee recently held a rally for Kentucky clerk Kim Davis who was imprisoned for refusing to issue marriage licenses in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
“You’ve called what happened to Kim Davis, that clerk, an example of the criminalization of Christianity,” Tapper said. “There are several people on the stage who disagree with you. Gov. Bush, for example, says that clerk was sworn to uphold the law. Is Gov. Bush on the wrong side of the criminalization of Christianity?”
Huckabee quickly dismissed the opening to attack Bush and instead transitioned to an answer about the Supreme Court overreaching.
“I am here to fight for somebody who’s a county clerk,” Huckabee said, “elected under the Kentucky Constitution that 75 percent of the people of that state had voted for that said marriage was between a man and a woman.”
“The Supreme Court,” he continued, “decided out of thin air that they were just gonna redefine marriage … I thought everyone here passed ninth grade civics. The courts cannot legislate.”
“If the Court can just make a decision and we just all surrender to it we have what Jefferson said was judicial tyranny,” Huckabee said, as Tapper tried to cut him off.
Huckabee wrapped up by pointing out that the U.S. made an accommodation to the Fort Hood shooter by letting him grow a beard.
“We made accommodation to the detainees at Gitmo,” he continued, “to the Muslim detainees who killed Americans. You’re telling me that you cannot make an accommodation for an elected Democrat county clerk from Rowan County, Kentucky? What else is it other than the criminalization of her faith and the exultation of the faith of everyone else who might be a Fort Hood shooter or a detainee at Gitmo?”