Mike Huckabee went on Hannity & Colmes to try and beat down the alleged controversy he caused by showing a group of reporters an attack ad on Romney that he had made but then decided not to run because he's so pure---though he played it for them anyway---so he could say he didn't---
"If a man's this dishonest to obtain a job---then he'll be dishonest on the job," Mike Huckabee from the ad that never ran.
Download Huckabee: Well, we didn't run the ad, Sean. What we did--we pulled it. I knew that if we said we had made one and didn't reveal that it existed there would have been the cynicism of the reporters that had said "Oh, you really didn't have one", but we did. And I don't know how you obtained that copy because we didn't give it to anybody. We had a box of CD's of em, we gave then to no one. We showed it in that room, for those reporters and the only way they could have gotten it would be to tape it---I guess off a camera from the screen...
Colmes: Is Mitt Romney too dishonest to be President of the United States?
Huckabee: You know, I think Mitt Romney has every reason to run for President, the voters are going to decide in Iowa and the rest of America. Who's consistent on issues like....
Colmes: I want to know if you stand by the words of that ad? Do you stand by the words in the ad?
Huckabee: I never retracted the words, but I pulled the ad because I felt like that it is the tone and the spirit of the ad that we need....(Colmes: You do stand by what that ad says?) I made it very clear that when you say things about an opponent's record that aren't true or say things about your own record which aren't true, I don't know how else you call that...dishonest...
Back to you, Mitt. Huckabee just called you a liar and unfit for office to your face. The copy on H&C just fell from the sky....He actually has the nerve to say that if he didn't show the attack ad then he would have been attacked for hiding it. I mean, how many Hail Mary's and Our Father's should he be required to say as penance for this nonsense?
And it's a nasty ad for sure. Listen, you only get criticized for your actions---not something you produced but then didn't run. If his conscience was bothering him so much then all he had to do was shelve it in silence. If any reporter got wind of it, just admit it existed and be done with it. The Preacher is probably trying to get as much publicity on the ad as possible because then he doesn't have to shell out the Romney bucks to air it.
UPDATED: And Benen catches this very important point:
About mid-way through the ad, during a litany of accusations against Mitt Romney, Huckabee criticizes his rival with this data point: "No executions." Apparently, Huckabee -- you know, the evangelical, pro-life Republican -- is going after Romney for not having executed any Americans during his gubernatorial tenure.
