Mike Huckabee the quote machine

Mike Huckabee has kicked off his campaign for president in his home town of Hope, Arkansas. And let me just say, as someone who monitors a lot of political events – you have no idea how refreshing it was to see the event opened by Tony Orlando.

And then, as you would expect from a candidate who titled his book “God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy” &#8212 he came out firing.

“I got my first BB gun at age five. I still got it,” Huckabee said.

And then came the sound bites. You could listen to a dozen Hillary Clinton roundtables and not come away with anything close to this.

“My friend, the Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being,” is one quote.

And then, “Hell will freeze over before they get a nuclear weapon.”

And another, “I promise you that we will no longer merely try to contain jihadism; we will conquer it.”

And this one about Obama, “When I hear our current president say he wants Christians to get off their high horse so we can make nice with radical jihadists…”.

Now I know there’s a temptation to nit pick. For example, on that last quote, the president didn’t exactly say that in his famous speech about Christianity. In fact, on the subject of jihadists, he said exactly the opposite.

“We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious, death cult that carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism,” Obama said.

It’s not quite making nice with jihadists, unless you count drone strikes as nice.

But, as they say in show business &#8212 never allow accuracy to ruin a good applause line.