GOP debate: Mike Huckabee accidentally compares Kim Davis to Ft. Hood shooter, Gitmo detainees

He likely didn't intend to associate the ferocity of her faith with the militancy of followers of radical Islam

Published September 17, 2015 1:16AM (EDT)

Moderator Jake Tapper asked former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee about what, last week, he called "the criminalization of Christianity" at the rally for Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis.

After a brief discussion about what "Jefferson called 'judicial tyranny'" and the separation of powers, Huckabee noted that the United States government made "accommodations" allowing the Ft. Hood shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, to grow a beard, and for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to do likewise, but "you're telling me that we cannot make an accommodation for an elected Democrat from Rowan County, Kentucky?"

"What is it," he asked, "if not the criminalization of her faith and the exultation of everyone else who might be a Ft. Hood shooter or a detainee at Gitmo?" He probably didn't intend to associate the ferocity of her faith with the militancy of followers of radical Islam, but he clearly did.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush agreed with Huckabee's sentiments -- if not the manner in which he delivered them -- saying that the United States should be able to make accommodations for people of faith, and that it should be done from the local level.


By Scott Eric Kaufman

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