Huckabee, Beck At Odds Over Anti-Obesity Campaign

By Rachel Christiansen

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee didn’t take kindly to controversial cable host Glenn Beck calling him a “progressive” while on the air Tuesday, and is fighting fire with fire. 

Beck’s comments were spurred by Huckabee’s support of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign to fight childhood obesity.

Huckabee said that Beck misrepresented this support, “either out of ignorance” or to “create another ‘boogey man’ hiding in the closet that only he can see.” 

Huckabee noted that the hard-line conservative Beck has previously said the term “progressive” denotes the “cancer of America” and the Nazis.

“What did I do that apparently caused him to link me to a fatal disease and a form of government that murdered millions of innocent Jews?” Huckabee wrote on his website Thursday.

The First Lady’s campaign has been harshly criticized by other members of the Republican party, such as former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who denounced the anti-obesity campaign as a step toward a “nanny state.” 

Huckabee said Obama’s approach “is about personal responsibility, not the government literally taking candy from a baby’s mouth.” 

“[Beck] ought to clean his gun and point it more carefully lest it blow up in his face like it did this time,” Huckabee added.