Huckabee's Resignation Letter From CMA Will Have His Haters Even More Ticked Off
Mike Huckabee just showed country music what class really looks like.
The former Arkansas governor, two-time GOP presidential contender, and protective father of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was already a lightning rod for the fury of the left because of the accomplishments of a lifetime.
But when he stepped down Thursday from the Country Music Foundation Association’s board of directors after backlash from some industry loudmouths who objected to his conservative views, Huckabee had to have infuriated his critics even more by proving he has two things the liberals who infest the entertainment industry in America never will — a rock-solid belief in his own convictions, and the courage to carry them out.
“If the industry doesn’t want people of faith or who hold conservative and traditional political views to buy tickets and music, they should be forthcoming and say it,” Huckabee wrote in a resignation letter published on his website, under the apt title “Hate Wins.”
“Surely neither the artists or the business people of the industry want that.”
Maybe some do.
The announcement of Huckabee’s appointment to the CMA Foundation’s board Wednesday stirred an immediate outcry from vocal elements inside the industry over his well-known conservative views.
Jason Owen, a high-powered manager in the country music world with clients like Faith Hill and Little Big Town – and a homosexual who happens to be “married” to another man – called the appointment “grossly offensive.”
“Huckabee speaks of the sort of things that would suggest my family is morally beneath his and uses language that has a profoundly negative impact upon young people all across this country,” Owen wrote in an email to the CMA’s CEO and the foundation’s director, according to The Tennessean.
“Not to mention how harmful and damaging his deep involvement with the NRA is. What a shameful choice.”
Actually, what was shameful was the overwrought reaction from liberals like Owen and his ilk.
While Huckabee’s credentials as a social conservative are unquestioned – he’s a strong Second Amendment supporter and is not afraid to call out gay “marriage” for the mockery it is – his record in more than two terms as the Razorback State’s governor includes support for exactly the kind of music education programming the CMA Foundation supposedly exists to support.
But Huckabee critics, hung up a political agenda that often amounts to a fetish for gay sex under the guise of matrimony and restricting the constitutional rights of American citizens, think that record isn’t good enough.
Or, as Huckabee put it in his letter: “Now someone who has never met me threatens to wreck valuable programs of the CMA Foundation because of a personal contempt for my faith and politics.”
It’s a disgraceful state of affairs when one of the leading institutions of country music, a genre born in the deeply Christian culture of rural America, bows to the shrill protests of a vocal minority at the cost of losing the services of a man with a record like Huckabee’s.
As Lauren DeBellis Appell, a one-time deputy press secretary for conservative Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum and former communications director for the Senate Republican Policy Committee, wrote in a commentary piece for Fox News:
“What’s ludicrous is that Huckabee’s role on the CMA Foundation would have had nothing to do with his conservative views. It would have had everything to do with his passion for music and how it shaped his life, and how he wanted to help kids use music to do the same in their lives.”
Of course, the liberal outcry over Huckabee’s appointment had nothing to do with his passion for music and everything to do with his conservative views – views that would have been absolutely normal in the country music world until about the day before yesterday.
But for Huckabee’s haters, the most infuriating part of his bow-out had to be the quiet nobility that came at the end. They’re the words of a man who knows what his principles require, and has a record of taking action because of it. Huckabee helped countless Arkansas children get an exposure to music they might otherwise never have received, but it’s not good enough for some liberal loudmouths in country music today.
“I wish you nothing but good will and success at reaching students across America who need music as much as I did,” Huckabee wrote. “At the end of the day, I’m not worth the fight, but the kids are. Never stop fighting for THEM!”
That’s what class looks like. And there was a time not so long ago, when country music didn’t need to be shown it.
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