Huckabee: I didn’t punt on Confederate flag

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) is pushing back against assertions he punted on the Confederate flag debate and is asserting that more religious “conversions” can help battle racism in the wake of the shooting deaths of nine people in a historically black church in South Carolina.

{mosads}“I keep hearing people talk about, ‘We need more conversations about race.’ Actually, we don’t need more conversations, we need conversions,” he said on “Fox and Friends” Tuesday.

“The reconciliation that changes people is not a racial reconciliation, it’s a spiritual reconciliation when people are reconciled to God. We saw it in those church members — when I love God, and I know that God created other people regardless of their color as much as he made me, I don’t have a problem with racism.”

The GOP presidential candidate praised South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) for her call on Monday to take down the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds after the killings in Charleston. Pictures of the suspect, Dylann Roof, posing with the Confederate flag have been released over the last few days.

“That’s where this issue should be, and it is being settled,” Huckabee said.

“It shouldn’t be settled by The New York Times or a bunch of talking heads from a Washington roundtable, it ought to be decided by the people that live in that state.”

The issue has forced the GOP presidential field to take the stand on the issue in a state home to one of the first presidential nominating contests. Most candidates evoked the states’ rights argument.

Huckabee also asserted that he didn’t “punt” on the national debate on the Confederate flag, arguing that national leaders shouldn’t tell states whether to fly the flag. He also questioned the motivations behind the debate.

“I think we missed the real point of this, and when I’m asked that question as a presidential candidate, what I’m being baited for is, ‘Is South Carolina a racist state?’ ” Huckabee said.

“As a frequent visitor to South Carolina, I look at this objectively. You’ve got a female governor who is of Indian descent. You have the only African-American U.S. senator in the South from a state of 4.8 million people elected by people that are mostly white. That’s not racism.”