South Carolina is not a state ruled by racism, Mike Huckabee insisted Tuesday, and he believes Gov. Nikki Haley and other leaders are handling the controversy over the Confederate flag hanging on state property admirably.
"You've got a female governor who is of Indian descent, and the only elected African-American U.S. senator in the South, elected largely by people that are white," the former Arkansas governor and 2016 presidential candidate told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" program.
"That's not racism."
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And while the Confederate flag is an important issue, "I don't think the president of the United States needs to be picking the symbols that fly on state capitol grounds," Huckabee continued. "I didn't punt, didn't squirm on it."
Huckabee lauded Haley for
speaking out against the flag, saying she "took leadership of her state... that's what governors do."
"She was accompanied by the congressmen, by the senators, by the leaders of the House and Senate," said Huckabee. "That's where this issue should be settled and is being settled. It shouldn't be "The New York Times" or people sitting around a roundtable."
Huckabee also said she agrees with Haley and others in South Carolina saying that the talk about the flag is a distraction that inflames people.
"We don't need more conversations," said Huckabee. "What we need is conversions. Reconciliation that changes people is not a racial reconciliation, it's a spiritual reconciliation. When I love God and know God created good people regardless of their color as much as he made me, I don't have a problem with racism. It's solved."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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