Mike Huckabee Defends “Renting” His Email List to Quacks
GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has said some remarkably idiotic things over the past several years, but this is mind bending.
Yesterday, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Huckabee about the propriety of “renting” his email list to an advertiser peddling a “cancer cure” hidden in the bible (as reported in The New York Times earlier this year). He responded:
My gosh, that’s like saying, ‘You run some ads on CNN. Do you personally agree with all the ads that run on CNN?’
I doubt you do. I’m sure there are some for maybe, I don’t know, catheters or adult diapers. They’re not products that you use or that you necessarily believe in. I don’t hold you responsible for that, and in that same way I don’t think that people that understand how advertising works would hold me responsible for something that I didn’t personally sign up for or endorse.
Let’s take a look at the MAJOR problems here, shall we?
A) There is an ENORMOUS difference between selling products that are medical supplies and allowing an advertiser access to your supporters for the purposes of claiming passages in the bible can cure cancer.
B) Jake Tapper is not CNN. However, Mike Huckabee is Mike Huckabee. When you are a public figure who has had a career as a Southern Baptist minister, it is not unreasonable for a supporter to assume a product with a biblical tie-in is being implicitly endorsed when the pitch comes directly from Mike Huckabee.
C) Huckabee has, in fact, personally endorsed similar quackery…a “weird spice, kitchen-cabinet cure” for diabetes. Here is a still shot from his internet infomercial, also passed along to his email list.
The word “renting” is in quotes in the title of this page, because what he really did was SELL charlatans a chance to reach a large number of gullible idiots…namely his own political supporters.
This type of disgusting behavior would disqualify this man from seeking public office ever again as a member of a respectable political party. Fortunately for him, he is a Republican.
