I watched Mike Huckabee’s South Carolina concession speech in its entirety on video here. Governor Huckabee’s reference to losing with honor rather than winning with dishonor is intentionally ambiguous — an ambiguous but somehow honorable attack, I guess, on the purported dishonor of comparative or negative campaigning. It is prefaced, however, by tributes to Senator McCain’s campaign. In context, the dishonor to which Huckabee refers appears to be imputed to Senator Thompson and/or Governor Romney.
If called on it, Governor Huckabee’s ambiguity allows him to resort to the kind of irony Mark Antony employed in the Shakespearean funeral oration on Caesar’s death. Governor Huckabee can deny he was referring to anyone specifically and assert that “Governor Romney is an honorable man. So they are all; all honorable men.”
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