Beck Dissects Huckabee's Curious, Mysterious 'Booger Bears

On radio today, Glenn Beck responded to Mike Huckabee's scathing blog post in which he blasted Beck for calling him a "progressive" Republican. (We covered that part here, noting that it was originally a controversy drummed up by Media Matters.) And during the nearly 45-minute response, he reserved his most passionate words for Hucakbee's charge that Beck is looking for "booger bears."

In the beginning, Beck responded in part by saying he was set to invite Huckabee on to his radio show to respond to Beck's charges, but Huckabee took to his website before that could happen. Beck also defended his remarks by saying he didn't attack Huckabee personally, but rather went after his policies.

“First of all, I said that I don’t have a problem with Mike Huckabee as a person," Beck explained. "I don’t know him all that well personally.  I have met him once or twice. We’ve had a couple of conversations, maybe one long conversation, and that one was on air. You witnessed it. I spent an hour with him. He seems like a decent guy, a sincere guy. I have many friends who have friends of his. He is a spiritual guy.”

Like Huckabee, Beck didn't take too kindly to being accused of equating Huckabee to "cancer" or "Nazis," and said he's heard such twisting before:

“The only place that I’ve ever heard that kind of a smear is on George Soros’ website, Media Matters. Interesting how you would go to Media Matters’ talking points when you feel like it would benefit you, Mr. Huckabee. I’ve never said progressive is the same as Nazi. So, let’s not try to twist this into me accusing you of killing millions of Jews.”

Below are parts of Beck's reaction to the whole thing. The first clip is Beck's expanded explanation of Huckabee's "progressive" positions, while the second clip includes Beck dissecting Huckabee's curious "booger bear" charge:

Glennbeck.com has a more thorough rundown of Beck's response:

Earlier this week, Glenn said that he was not excited about the possibility of a Mike Huckabee presidency and said that he felt that politically, Huckabee was a progressive. Mike Huckabee did not take kindly to the comments, and responded to Glenn on Huckabee’s website. Glenn addressed those comments on radio this morning, and explained why he said what he said.

Glenn explained that during a discussion of Trump and possible GOP candidates, “I brought up Mike Huckabee, a guy I believe is probably going to be the early favorite for the Republican nominee.”

“I shared this because that’s what I do.  I share my thoughts on politics.  That’s kind of in my job description.”

“First of all, I said that I don’t have a problem with Mike Huckabee as a person.  I don’t know him all that well personally.  I have met him once or twice.  We’ve had a couple of conversations, maybe one long conversation, and that one was on air.  You witnessed it.  I spent an hour with him.  He seems like a decent guy, a sincere guy. I have many friends who have friends of his. He is a spiritual guy.”

“I also happen to think that he is a big government guy.  He’s a progressive.  And I’ve been telling you for how long now, three years, there are progressives in both parties.”

“Well, Mike Huckabee obviously didn’t take kindly to that critique, to say the least.  He sent me late one night, I think it was maybe Tuesday night, a nasty e-mail saying in part that I should have come to him and not talked about these things publicly.  The problem is I have a publicly broadcast national radio show and I don’t really do a show for a private audience of one on a telephone.”

“But as I said, I don’t have anything against Mike Huckabee. I just don’t want him to be our next President, although I did point out on Tuesday, he is absolutely, positively no Barack Obama. Very few are.”

Read more of his remarks here.