Many partisans may think this is cute, fun and effective but I’m betting a lot of independent voters are going to be turned off by language aimed at Presidential candidates that don’t really have to do with strong language about their policies or ideology — but just, basicallly, lash out, name calling hate language. And we saw prime example of one: a fundraising letter under the name of GOPer Mike Huckabee.
The problem for the Republicans who sent it out: Huckabee insists he not only did not write it, he didn’t know about it and he is demanding it be pulled. The Politico:
Mike Huckabee is firmly denying that he approved a fundraising letter which refers to President Obama’s advisers as “morally repugnant political whores.”
“This was a complete surprise to me,” Gov. Huckabee said in a statement to POLITICO, sent via a representative. “I most certainly did not approve such language and would never have used that kind of repulsive rhetoric. I repudiate that language, find it offensive to me, and have ordered that it be pulled immediately.”BuzzFeed obtained a hard copy of the letter [GO HERE to see it], which has Gov. Huckabee’s letterhead, and posted it to its website earlier today, claiming that it was sent to supporters of Citizens United, the conservative nonprofit organization. The article quoted Huckabee as writing, “President Obama has surrounded himself with morally repugnant political whores with misshapen values and gutter-level ethics.”
An update was later added noting that Jeff Marschner, a spokesman for Citizens United, “categorically denies” the letter was sent by his organization.
UPDATE: Citizens United spokesman Jeff Marschner emails to say the letter “was a test”
If it was a test, then Citizens United flunked.
And Mike Huckagee gets an “A.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.