Four times media lost their minds over remarks by likely 2016 GOP candidates

Intense media scrutiny has made off-the-cuff quips more rare, as potential candidates avoid unscripted comments. But with primary season approaching and a press hungry for tantalizing headlines, even mostly harmless remarks can be spun as “gaffes.” More than a few supposed 2016 contenders have found themselves the target of media criticism for supposedly saying the wrong thing.

Here are four recent examples of Republican presidential hopefuls becoming the center of controversy due to allegedly questionable remarks.

1. Mike Huckabee, women and bad language

In response to a question in January about his experiences at Fox News and whether he, a former governor from the Deep South, experienced any “culture shock,” Huckabee replied in the affirmative.

“Absolutely a cultural shock. … I thought, man, this is a different planet. And I came more and more to realize that the cultural divide is significant. It’s one of those things where in a business meeting that you might have in the South or in the Midwest there in Iowa, you would not have people who would just throw the f-bomb and use gratuitous profanity in a professional setting,” he said.

Huckabee, who is currently exploring a presidential bid, added that everyone in New York City seems to behave in this fashion.

“In New York, not only do the men do it, but the women do it. And you know, you are just looking around, saying, my gosh, this is worse than locker room talk. This would be considered totally inappropriate to say these things in front of a woman, and for a woman to say them in a professional setting, we would only assume that this is a very, as we would say in the South, that’s just trashy,” he said.

Newsrooms, including Fox’s, responded immediately to these remarks, with many of them dinging Huckabee for supposedly singling out women for using bad language and behaving poorly.

2. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and religion

The Wisconsin governor and highly favored potential 2016 candidate caught grief in February not so much for what he said about the president, but for what he didn’t say.

When asked by a Washington Post reporter whether he believes the president is a Christian, Walker said, “I don’t know.”

“I’ve actually never talked about it or I haven’t read about that. I’ve never asked him that. You’ve asked me to make statements about people that I haven’t had a conversation with about that. How [could] I say if I know either of you are a Christian?” he asked.

The response to Walker’s decision not to answer the question was not well received in the press, and Walker was in the unique position of getting in trouble for not avowing his faith in another person’s faith.

3. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and the disabled

Rand Paul came under fire in January when he suggested that more than half of American collecting disability benefits are gaming the system, with many newsrooms accusing the Bluegrass State lawmaker of being insensitive to the disabled.

“What I tell people is, if you look like me and you hop out of your truck, you shouldn’t be getting a disability check. Over half of the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts — join the club,” Paul said. “Who doesn’t get a little anxious for work and their back hurts? Everybody over 40 has a back pain. And I am not saying that there are not legitimately people who are disabled.”

He made it clear that he was directing his comments at those who are gaming the system.

“[T]he people who are the malingerers are the ones taking the money away from the people who are paraplegic, quadriplegic,” he said. “You know, we all know people who are horrifically disabled and can’t work, but if you have able-bodied people taking the money, then there is not enough money for the people who are truly disabled.”

His remarks were met with pushback from a press that accused him of “attacking” the disabled. “Fact checking” groups, including CNN, the Washington Post and PolitiFact, were quick to jump on the comments.

Paul later clarified his remarks to the Post, offering two separate data points that show that “27.7 percent of disabled beneficiaries are diagnosed as having ailments related to ‘Musculoskeletal system and connective tissue’ and that 14 percent have ‘mood disorders.'”

4. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and a world on fire

The Texas firebrand, who formally announced Monday that he will be competing in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, said during an address in New Hampshire in March that the White House’s failed foreign policy has set the world “on fire.”

In response to Cruz’s imagery, a three-year-old girl in the audience asked her mother whether the world really was on fire. The crowd laughed softly and Cruz responded to the girl, “The world is on fire, yes.”

“Your world is on fire. But you know what? Your mommy’s here and everyone’s here to make sure that the world you grow up in is even better,” he said.

Left-leaning blogs, including Raw Story, Daily Kos and the New Yorker’s Daily Intelligencer, responded to the moment in New Hampshire by accusing Cruz of “scaring” a little child.

National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke was unimpressed with this attempt to turn Cruz’s remarks into an issue, writing at the time, “[T]he idea that he crossed some line here is dishonest in the extreme. Clearly, Cruz’s critics would like their readers to believe that the man wanted to upset this child — or, perhaps, that the girl’s reaction was in some way illustrative of a regrettable extremism on his part.”

“It wasn’t,” he wrote. “Adults were talking; a child failed to understand the conversation. Grow up.”

Honorable Mention: Mike Huckabee (again)

Sometimes, a potential presidential candidate can become the center of controversy for saying something he never said.

The former Arkansas governor was pilloried in Jan. 2013 for supposedly making a crack about women’s libidos during an address at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting.

Problem is: The controversy arose from reporters misreporting what he actually said.

Referring to the so-called “war on women,” Huckabee argued that it is the Democrats, and not Republicans, who are demeaning women.

“Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women. That’s not a war on them, it’s a war for them. If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it,” he said.

He added that women are much stronger and more independent than Democrats portray them to be.

But somewhere between the words leaving his mouth and reaching the ears of MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt and CNN’s Dana Bash, something got lost.

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Hunt and Bash’s version of events was widely reported, and even remarked on by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, before the official transcript of Huckabee’s remarks was made publicly available, showing that they had misquoted him.

Following the release of the former governors’ full remarks, Hunt and Bash both corrected their initial reporting of the event.