2016 is right around the corner, election-wise, which means the breathless profiles of potential presidential candidates are upon us. This week Mike Huckabee gets the will-he-or-won’t-he treatment, which he took as an opportunity to suggest that political candidates of the female persuasion require courtliness and even “sense of pedestal.”
Knight errant Mike Huckabee believes in chivalry, you see.
The former governor and current conservative media star sat down with the New Republic and, when the topic of his potentially running against onetime Arkansan Hillary Clinton came up, he busted this out:
“I’ve twice run against women opponents, and it’s a very different kind of approach,” he tells me. Different how? “For those of us who have some chivalry left, there’s a level of respect. … You treat some things as a special treasure; you treat other things as common.” A male opponent is “common,” a woman requires “a sense of pedestal.”
“I’ll put it this way,” Huckabee says. “I treat my wife very differently than I treat my chums and my pals. I wouldn’t worry about calling them on Valentine’s Day, opening the door for them, or making sure they were OK.”
HOOOO boy.
It’s true that Hillary Clinton has, throughout her long tenure in the public eye, often been dragged through the mud and criticized in hateful, gendered ways that you wouldn’t see with a male candidate. It would be lovely if we could side-step all that in 2016.
But she doesn’t need fucking chivalry. She needs respect. Mike “Uncle Sugar” Huckabee might want to give a little thought to the difference if he plans to make a play for the presidency, which generally requires female votes.
(h/t Talking Points Memo)
Photo via Getty.
