WTF??

Huckabee’s bizarre comments to NRA members defy understanding. The 10-minute front-runner in this year’s Republican presidential contest went a long way with these words toward reassuring evangelicals reluctant to support John McCain that the old guy is probably their best Republican option after all.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak. Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

Several things jump out at you as you watch the video. First, how did he pop that out so fast? It was like he was waiting to say it. No pause, no hesitation. Did he put someone up to making the noise just so he could say this?

Second, how is this funny? What’s the joke here? “Somebody aimed a gun at him?” Does Huckabee realize how much danger Obama is in every second of every day in a country with gun nuts (a huge crowd of whom he was addressing) and religious wackos and racists? The Obama campaign met with the ugliest racism yet in the recent contests in Indiana and Pennsylvania, according to campaign workers.

Here’s the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into “a horrible response,” as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

“The first person I encountered was like, ‘I’ll never vote for a black person,’ ” recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. “People just weren’t receptive.”

For all the hope and excitement Obama’s candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed — and unreported — this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They’ve been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they’ve endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can’t fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president…

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: “It wasn’t pretty.” She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn’t possibly vote for Obama and concluded: “Hang that darky from a tree!”

And Huckabee thinks “Somebody aimed a gun at him” is funny?

Third, it’s almost surrealistic how Huckabee goes from this loutish remark to instantly falling back into the preacher holier-than-thou cadence as he declares “a democracy cannot operate in a moral vacuum” and calls “for us to live more honestly and more ethically.” Like starting with you, Mikey?

Huckabee’s “apology” was even lamer than his joke.

During my speech at the N.R.A., a loud noise backstage, that sounded like a chair falling, distracted the crowd and interrupted my speech. I made an off hand [sic] remark that was in no way intended to offend or disparage Sen. Obama. I apologize that my comments were offensive. That was never my intention.

So what was your intention, Governor?