Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has once again compared politics he doesn’t like to the Holocaust.
In an interview with Breitbart published Saturday, Huckabee said that President Obama, as part of the agreement between six Western powers and Iran to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, would “take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”
Lest anyone think he had misspoken in comparing the diplomatic breakthrough with the World War II genocide, Huckabee’s Twitter account tweeted a bold image illustrating his analogy.
Tell Congress to do their constitutional duty & reject the Obama-Kerry #IranDeal –> http://t.co/SaIyuq4w01 pic.twitter.com/2rFJgdDHhV
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 26, 2015
Huckabee is no stranger to Nazi analogies. BuzzFeed found him comparing President Obama, gun control, and Planned Parenthood to the Third Reich and the Holocaust.
The Israeli government strongly opposes the Iran deal, fearing that its failure would embolden Iran to finally seek a nuclear bomb and thereby imperil the Jewish state. Huckabee’s comment was clearly aimed at die-hard pro-Israel voters, many of whom tilt conservative against the overall Democratic leanings of Jewish Americans.
AIPAC, the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. and a fierce critic of the deal, did not respond to a request for comment about Huckabee’s remarks.
The former governor’s Holocaust metaphor met with widespread condemnation, including by many of Israel’s staunchest defenders, like the Atlantic commentator Jeffrey Goldberg.
https://twitter.com/JeffreyGoldberg/status/625483758112632832
President Obama responded to Huckabee’s comment during a news conference in Ethiopia. Huckabee’s rhetoric, the president said, was “part of a general pattern that would be considered ridiculous if it weren’t so sad.”
The governor responded to Obama’s criticism on Twitter, reiterating that the Iran deal was a bad idea but not addressing his Holocaust analogy.
What’s “ridiculous and sad” is that @POTUS does not take Iran’s repeated threats seriously.
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 27, 2015
Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)
