It’s not unusual in an election cycle for national candidates to pick some fights. Usually, though, candidates are strategic about the confrontations, taking on primary rivals, the other party, occasionally a critical news outlet, etc.
Leave it to Mike Huckabee, however, to start a feud with a bag of chips. Time magazine reported yesterday:
At 3% in national polls, Mike Huckabee faces an uphill fight against more than dozen Republican candidates for the presidential nomination. But that hasn’t stopped him from adding another opponent in recent weeks: a bag of rainbow-colored chips.They’re not just any chips. They’re a limited edition Doritos product called “Rainbow Doritos,” presented as a partnership between Doritos’ parent company Frito-Lay and the It Gets Better project. Donate $10 or more to the It Gets Better Project, an organization dedicated to fighting anti-LGBT bullying, and you get mailed a bag of Rainbow Doritos. The campaign was so popular that Frito-Lay is already out of Rainbow Doritos.
The Republican presidential hopeful, however, isn’t happy. Huckabee has urged Frito-Lay to distance itself from the It Gets Better Project — the former governor is particularly outraged by sex columnist Dan Savage’s role in the project — and according to Time‘s article, he also “called on Christians to boycott all snacks made by the company.”
Just at face value, Huckabee’s priorities seem odd. When a candidate for the nation’s highest office is outraged by bags of snacks, it’s probably time for a shift in focus.
But just below the surface, there’s an even more striking problem.
Right Wing Watch noted yesterday that when Chick-fil-A faced criticism from the left, and some LGBT groups and their allies organized boycotts, Huckabee condemned the moves as “economic terrorism.”
He added that there are many companies that are led by executives with whom he disagrees, but Huckabee said he’d never call for a boycott of those businesses.
Evidently, the GOP candidate saw multi-colored Doritos and had a change of heart.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."