Is it only GOP rhetoric that is the problem?

When speaking last week at the Kansas Agri Business Expo in Wichita, talk-show host and 2008 GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (in photo) blamed the GOP’s loss this election on the harshness of Republican rhetoric, not on the party’s underlying message. Huckabee has been more sensitive about issues of poverty and race than many Republican leaders. But is it really only the tone that is the problem, not the message – particularly on immigration and women’s issues? At a book-signing event in Kansas City, Mo., this past weekend, Huckabee criticized “the Republican Party’s complete abandonment of Todd Akin.” Huckabee stood by Akin after the Missouri congressman said that victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”