Las Vegas Sun: Is Romney Calling Huckabee a Terrorist?

February 16, 2008 | Filed Under Democrats/Leftists, Elections, GOP, Media Bias, News, President, Publius Contributor, Security/Safety, Society/Culture, War on Terror, Warner Todd Huston |

-By Warner Todd Huston

Sometimes a paper puts out an editorial that is so absurd that it makes your head spin. The Las Vegas Sun wins the prize this week for a surreal ability to read something into nothing. The Sun took Mitt Romney’s CPAC concession speech and turned it from a gracious and inspiring address into a screed where the Sun amazingly heard Romney call Mike Huckabee a terrorist! It just makes ya go “HUH?”

In an unsigned editorial, the Sun gives us “Romney’s twisted world,” but it seems to me that what is twisted is the mind of the Sun editorial board. To have gotten the interpretation they got out of Romney’s speech is one for the ages, but they are positive, it seems, that what Romney said is “dangerously irresponsible.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, in announcing last week that he would no longer seek the Republican presidential nomination, said something so ridiculous and dangerously irresponsible that we couldn’t let it pass without comment.

Wow. Quite a claim, isn’t it? So, ol’ Mitt is being “dangerous,” eh? Wait until you see how…

Mitt said in his speech that he was suspending his campaign because we are a nation at war. He felt that he should step aside and let McCain take the lead so that we might coalesce behind a candidate that might be good for the war effort. For stepping aside Romney said, “And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

And here is how the Sun turned that somewhat selfless desire not to be a candidate of division and to bow out gracefully into a claim that everyone else are terror lovers:

Come again?

Does that mean Mike Huckabee, who has decided to stay in the race, is somehow furthering the cause of terrorism? For that matter, are the good people of Kansas and Louisiana who voted in their presidential nominating contests and provided Huckabee with wins in both states aiding and abetting terrorism because John McCain’s coronation as the Republican nominee has been postponed for a few weeks?

In Romney’s world, the Kansans who voted for Huckabee, 60 percent of the state’s Republican caucusgoers, are nothing better than fellow travelers of al-Qaida. And, if Romney had his way, all the Republicans in the other states who have not yet had a chance to vote would be denied a choice.

I am not kidding! This is what the Sun imagined that Romney was really saying! Come on. No one could have listened to Romney and imagined he is saying anyone that doesn’t vote for McCain is a terrorist. It is just an absurd limb to climb out upon.

Then the Sun went on to make the claim that “Bush diverted his attention from the real war on terrorism, which was located in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan” when he went into Iraq. This claim shows that the Sun has little grasp on why Bush went into Iraq in the first place. One can certainly say the policy was not a good one, but one cannot say that it had nothing to do with the Global War on Terror.

In any case, I am no Mitt Romney fan but this twisting of his words is way off base and makes the editorial board of the Sun look a bit foolish.

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston