Will the Real Mike Huckabee Please Stand Up?

This complete story appears at the Huffington Post.

Des Moines – Mike Huckabee began a bold denunciation of gay marriage in Ames, Iowa, Wednesday night, but quickly checked himself with stuttering caveats:

“We have to also realize that the strength of our nation really does come down to our families, and that’s why, without apology — I’m, I’m not mad at anybody and I’m, I’m not against anybody — but folks, we have an obligation to preserve the integrity of, of what family, what marriage means. Again, not to, not to try to put others down, but to lift that institution up.”

The former Arkansas governor returned to Iowa this week as the new frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination. He has been selling himself as a kinder-and-gentler conservative, one who’s “just not angry about it.” How different is the aw-shucks Huck who spoke in this Iowa college town than the culture warrior who wrote in 1998: “It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations — from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia.” This quote turned up by David Korn at Mother Jones is one of the many Ghosts of an Angry Huckabee Past that haunted him the week before Christmas.

One of Huckabee’s main challenges during the final stretch to the Iowa caucuses is preserving his sunny image under intensifying scrutiny.

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