The idea of Mike Huckabee channeling MLK is pretty repulsive, but that didn't stop him from trying.
During his appearance on The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer asked Mike Huckabee for his thoughts regarding Hillary Clinton‘s meeting with #BlackLivesMatter activists. Huckabee responded that he understood that people were passionate about racial justice, but was bothered with the single-ethnicity focus.
On treating people with respect, Huckabee said “you don’t do it by magnifying the problems, you do it by magnifying the solutions.” He continued by saying “when I hear people scream ‘black lives matter,’ I’m thinking, of course they do. All lives matter. It is not that any life matters more than another.”
Huckabee recalled threats he faced for integrating an all-white church as a pastor. Huckabee said that that Martin Luther King Jr. goal was in focusing on injustice over skin color, and that he would not approve of BLM’s actions.
“That’s the whole message that Dr. King tried to present, and I think he’d be appalled by the notion that we’re elevating some lives above others,” Huckabee said.
Yes, Mike. That's why he wrote this:
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action.
I'm pretty sure his reference to oppression and "the American Negro" is not focused on injustice for everyone, but specifically looking at how oppression affected Black people.
Huckabee's remarks prove that Republicans simply don't get it. Perhaps Huckabee should go back and read some of MLK's hate mail to see why they shout "Black Lives Matter."
