Mike Huckabee was on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show last week and was asked for his thoughts on the Denver City Council’s denial of a permit for Chick-fil-A at Denver International Airport because of its owners’ beliefs on gay marriage. Huckabee proposed an idea: have the Department of Justice investigate the city council for unconstitutionally blocking free commerce. He also had some strong words for the “tolerant” left:
HUGH HEWITT: Governor, I mentioned at the start of our conversation I’m at Colorado Christian University, and it’s right outside Denver. In Denver last week, the city council voted to put on hold a Chick-Fil-A restaurant at the Denver International Airport because of the religious beliefs of the founders, and I’m sure you know them, and their support of traditional marriage. They said you know, we’ve got to, we can’t let them have a Chick-Fil-A in here. We’ll put it on hold. And you know, that’s as blatantly unconstitutional as it gets. What do you think about that action? And how would you respond if you were the president?
MIKE HUCKABEE: Well, I think if I was the president, I would ask the Justice Department to go and investigate the complete denial of the Constitutional rights of free commerce. This is outrageous. This is what was going on when you had Rahm Emanuel in Chicago saying that no Chick-Fil-A was going to come to Chicago, even though same sex marriage was voted down in Illinois. This is what happened when Tom Marino was mayor of Boston, and he said that Chick-Fil-A was not welcome to do business in Boston. You know, here’s the thing. On the left, we as conservatives, we don’t mind not only tolerating, but even doing business with people whose political positions we don’t agree with. If I order something of Amazon, I’m not buying the politics of Jeff Bezos. And if I get a cup of Starbucks, I’m not accepting that I agree with Howard Schultz on politics. I find it just outrageous that the left wants to make sure that we’re totally tolerant of what they stand for, but they are utterly intolerant, even to the point of being brutish when it comes to a person having a belief. And what’s really tragic about this, Chick-Fil-A is not a publicly-held company. It’s a privately-held company. And it’s not that Chick-Fil-A as a restaurant has an official position of marriage. It doesn’t. It doesn’t matter who you are. You go to a Chick-Fil-A restaurant, you’re going to buy chicken, not to buy a view of marriage. The CEO of the restaurant in the past has been supportive of traditional marriage. Unfortunately, he has backed off of any public support of those marriage organizations, because he’s been intimidated not to do it anymore. And he’s still getting in trouble, which leads me to think he should have never backed off, because it doesn’t ever end the attacks from the left.
HEWITT: All right, now let me turn to your old friend, Hillary Clinton, and I say that, you know, you worked together on a few things. You know, it’s an interesting relationship you have with the Clintons. But yesterday in Cleveland, she said the most astonishing thing about the pro-life positions of the GOP field. Let me play it for the audience. This is Hillary Clinton yesterday. (BEGIN CLIP) Extreme views about women, we expect that from some of the terrorist groups. We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world. But it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States. (END CLIP)
HEWITT: Now do you believe she compared you to a terrorist group there, Mike Huckabee?
HUCKABEE: I do. I think it’s just amazing. If any Republican had said anything even like that, that those who support Planned Parenthood, for example, are like terrorists, because after all, terrorists do destroy people. They cut their heads off. Planned Parenthood cuts the arms and the legs and the heads off of unborn children. My gosh, we’d never hear the end of it. I think somebody needs to really challenge Hillary Clinton, and I certainly hope I get the opportunity to do it. I’ve battled the Clintons my entire political life. They’ve campaigned for every opponent I ever had. Every election I was ever involved in, I was campaigning against the political machine they had built, so I know them very well. And I’d love to be able to say Mrs. Clinton, you claimed to have never seen the Planned Parenthood videos. I’d just like to ask could you tell me at what point, if ever, is it wrong to hack into pieces an unborn child. Would you tell me at exactly what point you would find that objectionable?
HEWITT: Well, of course, she opposed the ban on partial birth abortion, so I’m not sure she has an answer to that, Governor.
HUCKABEE: Well, I think her answer is she has the view that a lot of people on the left do, that the right to have an abortion is stronger than the right to protect the rights of the unborn child. Hugh, I think we should invoke the 5th and 14th Amendment and give protection, due process before the life or liberty is deprived of an individual, equal protection under the law under the 14th Amendment. The left should be playing defense, not us. And we should make them show some reason why this is not a person, and we should operate from the principle that that is a human life.
Thomas Valentine is a researcher for APIA and a junior at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
