He gives a good speech, but he’s loose with the facts. He called Abraham Lincoln the “founder” of the Republican Party. Nope. Lincoln was not the founder of the party; he wasn’t even the first Republican nominee (John Fremont was, in 1856). Lincoln was, of course, the first Republican to be elected president.
Second, Huckabee said this about John McCain’s time as a prisoner of war:
He could have eased his own pain and even cut short his imprisonment by uttering a few simple words renouncing his country. But he loved his country and knew that to return with honor later was better than to return without it now.
Here, too, Huckabee got his facts confused. Like every long-term POW, McCain did renounce his country — after being horrendously tortured. And there is no shame in that. The true story is that McCain refused early release because he thought it would be dishonorable to leave ahead of those who had been captured before him. That story is remarkable enough; it didn’t need the embellishment Huckabee gave it.
