{"id":14281,"date":"2008-01-18T12:50:39","date_gmt":"2008-01-18T17:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14281.html"},"modified":"2008-01-18T12:50:39","modified_gmt":"2008-01-18T17:50:39","slug":"huckabee-appeals-to-south-carolinas-squirrel-eating-constituency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/huckabee-appeals-to-south-carolinas-squirrel-eating-constituency\/","title":{"rendered":"Huckabee appeals to South Carolina’s squirrel-eating constituency"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend dnA<\/a> emails this morning, “Don’t tell me you’re not going to comment on Squirrel-Gate!” Well, if the story has earned a “-gate” suffix, I suppose I can’t very well let it go unmentioned.<\/p>\n

Mike Huckabee is very competitive in South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary, and for the better part of the week, he’s tried to shore up support by appealing to cultural touchstones. After all, he’s a southerner, and this is the first major southern contest on the primary calendar. It led him yesterday, for example, to use some rather colorful language<\/a> to defend South Carolina’s use of the Confederate battle flag.<\/p>\n

But on MSNBC, Huckabee sought to connect with South Carolinians by emphasizing regional cuisine.<\/p>\n

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For those of you who can’t watch clips online, the video shows Huckabee explaining<\/a>, “South Carolina’s a great place for me. I mean, I know how to eat grits and speak the language. We even know how to talk about eating fried squirrel and stuff like that, so we’re on the same wavelength. Mika, I bet you never did this. When I was in college, we used to take a popcorn popper, because that was the only thing they would let us use in the dorm, and we would fry squirrels in a popcorn popper in the dorm room.”
\n
\nRush Limbaugh, who’s made no effort to hide his disdain for Huckabee, used the comments for additional mockery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I got a note. My North Carolina mistress is upset with me, can’t tell you why, because I never know why. I just know she’s upset. This is a very snarky e-mail: ‘What’s the difference between frying squirrel in a popcorn popper and killing a mouse in a garbage can while spraying Pam on it like you did?’ Very simple. I didn’t eat the mouse.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t want to appear culturally insensitive. How Limbaugh kills a mouse in his home is pretty much his business. But he used a Pam on a mouse? What<\/i>?<\/p>\n

As for Huckabee, I’ll let a TPM reader<\/a> have the final word: “So it’s ok to slather a squirrel in oil and fry it on a popcorn popper, but not to marry and have sex with it? That hardly seems fair.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend dnA emails this morning, “Don’t tell me you’re not going to comment on Squirrel-Gate!” Well, if the story has earned a “-gate” suffix, I suppose I can’t very well let it go unmentioned. Mike Huckabee is very competitive in South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary, and for the better part of the week, he’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}