I had a back and forth with Ben Smith earlier at Greg's place about whether Mike Huckabee's fictional biography of Obama growing up in Kenya was an appropriate line of inquiry, but Huckabee's appearance on the Bryan Fischer show basically throws the entire conservative base under the bus (via Kyle at Right Wing Watch):
Huckabee: And it's really an indication of just how pathetic some of these folks are who claim to be journalists and reporters and have failed to do a decent job. You know, I admitted that I misspoke on that, but I corrected it. But what I have never done is taken to position that Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia or anywhere other than Hawaii where he claims to have been born. Frankly Bryan, that is not a popular position with conservatives but it is the position I have consistently taken and I just am very amazed at the firestorm this has caused, especially in light of the fact that the talk show host himself has said there is nothing to it.
So Huckabee clarifies beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is not a birther. And in doing so, he concedes that believing that Obama was born in the U.S. is "not a popular position with conservatives."
Remember that according to Karl Rove, birtherism is a "trap" made up by the White House to make conservatives look bad, a manufactured controversy meant to make conservatives look crazy. But according to Huckabee, it's actually politically risky for a Republican to admit that Obama was born in Hawaii, and he's going out on a limb by doing so.
