Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee dinged Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Thursday morning as the Kentucky lawmaker has showcased a more aggressive interview style with reporters.
Paul, who announced this week he is running for president, twice Wednesday rejected reporters’ questions and implicitly accused both of his interviewers, NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie and the Associated Press’ Philip Elliot, of failing to conduct themselves in a professional manner.
For Huckabee, himself a likely contender in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, Paul’s aggressive and combative interview style is not becoming of a candidate seeking the highest office in the country.
“I think the questions are fair. When you’re running for president, all is fair in love and war. This is war. This is the big leagues. You’re going to have to expect that you’re going to have a lot of fastballs that are going to be aimed at your nose, and how you handle them is part of the process. It’s part of the game, if you will. Any question is fair, it’s how you handle it,” Huckabee said Thursday morning in a Fox News interview. “The pitcher can throw what he wants. The question is, can you either put it in the third deck or do you rush the mound and take the pitcher on?”
It’s not a great shock that the former Arkansas governor and longtime pastor, who has long been considered the “nice guy” of the Republican Party, should have some criticism for Paul’s handling of the Guthrie interview.
“If you come across as harsh, unwilling to answer the question, the viewer is going to see that as running away from being forthright. If you’re simply trying to make your position clear, they will see that as being bold,” Huckabee counseled. “Again, the line is sometimes difficult to know, but it is part of the process.”
However, others suggested Thursday that Paul’s rejection of reporters’ supposedly “editorialized” questions is a move well calculated to position the Kentucky Republican as the candidate who is tough on an increasingly distrusted and unpopular media.
“Rand Paul seems to be positioning himself as the anti-media candidate to bolster street cred among the base for primary,” the Media Research Center’s Tim Dionisopoulos suggested Thursday on Twitter.
