Huckabee not all he appears to be

Conscience of a Conservatarian ^ | October 24, 2007 | Sturm Ruger

[Josh Painter]

Stronger than expected showings in the Ames Straw Poll and the Value Voters Summit Straw Poll have catapaulted former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee into the upper stratosphere of the latest political buzz. He's a likeable guy, he projects himself well and he said all of the right things to the summit and in the recent Florida GOP debate. Indeed, many social conservatives seem to be especially eager to annoint the one-time Baptist preacher as their choice for the GOP presidential nomination, given the recent difficulty the Christian Right has experienced in their quest for a white knight who will represent their interests. But before conservatives of any stripe peel off the backing of an "I'm fer the Huckster" bumper sticker, they should do a little homework.

Fortunately, some more thoughtful conservatives have been doing just that. There's been a flurry of research done on Huckabee, and the results are readily available on the web. Much of it tells a tale that is scarcely good news for conservatives. In my analysis of the findings, I've discarded all of the ad hominem attacks and any questions about the man's ethics. When you get into discussing a candidate’s ethics, the potential for smear increases geometrically, and besides, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm willing to give the bass-playing politician (Huckabee has a band called Capital Offense) the benefit of any doubt that he's a nice guy and a man of good and decent character. On the issues, however, I'm not quite so easy, and that's where the ammo against Huck can be found aplenty.

Let's begin with The Club for Growth, a well-regarded fiscally conservative interest group which is not impressed by the former Arkansas guv's record:

"Governor Huckabee says he is a fiscal conservative," Club for Growth President Pat Toomey said, "but his ten-year economic-policy record as the governor of Arkansas is mixed, at best. His history includes numerous tax hikes, ballooning government spending, and increased regulation. To be sure, Governor Huckabee's record displays an occasional deference to a pro-growth philosophy, but that is only a small slice of a much bigger picture. The Club for Growth feels citizens deserve a full picture of where Governor Huckabee stands on the critical economic issues of the day."

The Club is so concerned about Huckabee’s carefully planned re-invention of himself that it has put up a website, Tax Hike Mike, to warn voters not to be fooled by this "other" Man From Hope (also Bill Clinton’s home town).

What do Arkansas conservatives think of their former governor? Not much. The Arkansas Republican Assembly, an organization whose members are among the most fiercely conservative in the state, held a presidential straw poll at its annual convention in July. Huckabee was trounced in the poll by Fred Thompson, who received 86% (that’s right - 86%) of the votes cast by the ARRA delegates.

Freedom Works, the special interest group chaired by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey and dedicated to less government, lower taxes, and more freedom, has posted a video clip of an interview with The Incredible Huck from his appearance on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” In the clip, Freedom Works observes, Rev. Mike had “his anti-corporate, anti-wealth creation talking points” ready for the program’s mostly left-wing viewing audience. The blog post is titled “Huckabee sounds like a leftist on health care.”

On immigration, Huckabee is not quite the strict enforcement guy his campaign would like you to believe he is. As the Arizona Republic reported:

Gov. Mike Huckabee on Thursday heaped criticism upon immigration legislation in the Arkansas Legislature, describing it as "inflammatory . . . race-baiting and demagoguery." He also challenged the Christian values of its main sponsor.

Huckabee said the bill, seeking to forbid public assistance and voting rights to undocumented immigrants, "inflames those who are racist and bigots and makes them think there's a real problem. But there's not."

...Huckabee, also a Republican and a Baptist minister, said Arkansans should be welcoming hard-working immigrants of all races.

The organization English First reminds its members that Huckabee, in a 2003 radio address as governor, advanced the notion that Arkansas taxpayers should be generous to the offspring of illegal immigrants in their state:

"I looked into the eyes of immigrant Mexican children and was moved. These children often don't have enough to eat, don't have good clothes and don't have a dry place to sleep at night... And I was reminded we can give something back by offering a helping hand to those who follow the American dream along Interstate 30 and Interstate 40 into Arkansas."

By all means let's feed and clothe these children, and let's give them a warm and dry place to sleep as we provide them with free transportation back home. But let's allow charitable oranizations to do the feeding and clothing, because our rich Uncle Sam will have to pick up the tab for deportation of entire families because their parents chose to break the law and enter our country without going through the process that legal immigrants follow.

So far, not so good. But it gets worse...

You don't have to be a libertarian to find the CATO Institute’s evaluations useful on fiscal and federalist issues. Here’s CATO’s take on Huckabee:

“Thanks to a final term grade of F, Huckabee earns an overall grade of D for his entire governorship... Huckabee’s leadership has left taxpayers in Arkansas much worse off.”

Then there’s this excerpt from an Arkansas Leader editorial comparing and contrasting Huckabee and Hillary:

“It would be hard to separate the former Arkansas governor and the former Arkansas first lady on... education and health care...”

“You will remember that ArKids First, the great expansion of government-paid health insurance for children, was Arkansas Advocates’ suggestion to the newly sworn in Gov. Huckabee in 1996. He eagerly embraced it and calls it even today his proudest achievement...”

“As governor, Huckabee sought and won a federal waiver for a plan to have the federal government — that’s you — subsidize health insurance for poor adult workers. Other Republicans, including President Bush, are opposing that remedy as creeping socialism.”

Finally, Huckabee had his own Willie Horton moment, turning loose a monster on the public that even Bill Clinton wouldn’t pardon:

... there is one man Huckabee believed deserved a second chance, convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, who continues to haunt Huckabee’s burgeoning presidential campaign.

... Dumond - now dead - was paroled from an Arkansas prison, with then- governor Huckabee’s endorsement, only to sexually assault and kill a woman in Missouri.

“It was one of those things I just feel horrible about. You just ache all the way to the bone over what happened,” the former Arkansas governor said in an interview. “But nobody could know that” Dumond would attack again, he said.

Dumond’s case is notorious in Arkansas. In 1984, he raped a 17-year-old girl. While awaiting trial at his home, he was castrated by, he said, masked intruders. Later, after Dumond went to prison for life, some people in Arkansas saw the sentence as excessive, especially given his mutilation.

Huckabee was one, and, after becoming governor in 1996, he announced his desire to commute Dumond’s sentence. Dumond’s rape victim, Ashley Stevens, saw it differently.

Stevens, now 40 and living in the western United States, said she tried to persuade Huckabee not to shorten the sentence for Dumond.

“I told [Huckabee]: If you ever let him out, he’s going to do it again,” she said in an interview.

She was able to get a meeting with the governor - who, she said, had not spoken to her before announcing his intention to commute Dumond’s sentence - but realized Huckabee had “made up his mind.” So Stevens stood up, she said, walked over to Huckabee, who was seated on a sofa, squatted down and thrust her face inches from his.

“I said, ‘This is how close I was to Dumond’s face for an hour,’ “ Stevens recalled. “ ‘I’ll never forget his face, and you’ll never forget mine.’ “

The parole board - following a closed meeting with Huckabee - decided to let Dumond go. The following year, Dumond committed the Missouri slaying. He died in prison in 2005.

In the final analysis, Huckabee appears to be even more of a “compasssionate conservative,” big-spending, big-government guy and open-borders advocate than George W. Bush, without the dedication of the current president to lasting tax cuts.

Danger, Will Robinson, danger...

- Ruger

A tip of the Ruger cap to Tommy Oliver for his research in finding and making available the CATO, Arkansas Leader and Dumond pieces.

[Josh Painter]

Fredipedia: The Definitive Fred Thompson Quick Reference

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Well he only raised taxes 0.6 percent, to some people that is a tax cut!/S

[Fred]

The MSM is trying to paint the GOP race as a '5 MAN RACE'...they want to split the real republican vote across Huck, FDT and McCain. This is the way they want to insure a win by Rooty.

In the mean time, Huck will take what scrapes Giuliani will throw to him such as VP...may have already cut the deal...

[pissant]

Hey, we agree on something.

[383rr]

Ping

[daylilly]

Fred supporters probably agree with you on a lot of policy issues and Hillary and liberals and let’s not forget Rudy. Which is what this post is about, policy issues. I agree with you on policy issues and Rudy and....

[Politicalmom]

Wow.

[Eric Blair 2084]

Let’s save the pings for when there is a fool on the thread who actually thinks the Huckster is a Conservative.

[Eric Blair 2084]

Nice find. I only use the CFG for their ratings, not articles.

I hadn’t actually considered the leftist MSM conspiracy theory to have Huckabee steal some socon votes, thus depriving Fred of the nomination and ending up as Rudy’s running mate.

[NRA2BFree]

His latest slap in the face to Americans came this morning when he voted for the Dream Act to pass! THAT, initself is reason enough to vote against him!

[OB1kNOb]

Let’s save the pings for when there is a fool on the thread who actually thinks the Huckster is a Conservative.

Agreed.

[OB1kNOb]

What do Arkansas conservatives think of their former governor? Not much. The Arkansas Republican Assembly, an organization whose members are among the most fiercely conservative in the state, held a presidential straw poll at its annual convention in July. Huckabee was trounced in the poll by Fred Thompson, who received 86% (that’s right - 86%) of the votes cast by the ARRA delegates.

LISTEN UP FREEPERS!

Heed what your cohorts who've suffered under the Huckster's governorship have to say about him. They are waving the red flag in your face. HEED THE WARNING!

Need more convincing? Check out all the articles compiled on my profile page. If that doesn't convince you then all I can say to you is that none are so blind as those who will not see.

[Uncle Ivan]

What do Arkansas conservatives think of their former governor? Not much.

Not much is right.

I'm still pissed at Huckabee taking away the academic challenge scholarship after 9-11. Many of us that had worked to get good grades throughout high school to earn it for college were depending on it.

I understand budget cuts after 9-11, but he turns right around after he's brought it back a year or two later and wants to let illegals in on the same scholarship? No way.

I was through with the Huck from then on.

[Uncle Ivan]

... there is one man Huckabee believed deserved a second chance, convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, who continues to haunt Huckabee’s burgeoning presidential campaign.

... Dumond - now dead - was paroled from an Arkansas prison, with then- governor Huckabee’s endorsement, only to sexually assault and kill a woman in Missouri.

“It was one of those things I just feel horrible about. You just ache all the way to the bone over what happened,” the former Arkansas governor said in an interview. “But nobody could know that” Dumond would attack again, he said.

Dumond’s case is notorious in Arkansas. In 1984, he raped a 17-year-old girl. While awaiting trial at his home, he was castrated by, he said, masked intruders. Later, after Dumond went to prison for life, some people in Arkansas saw the sentence as excessive, especially given his mutilation.

Huckabee was one, and, after becoming governor in 1996, he announced his desire to commute Dumond’s sentence. Dumond’s rape victim, Ashley Stevens, saw it differently.

Stevens, now 40 and living in the western United States, said she tried to persuade Huckabee not to shorten the sentence for Dumond.

“I told [Huckabee]: If you ever let him out, he’s going to do it again,” she said in an interview.

She was able to get a meeting with the governor - who, she said, had not spoken to her before announcing his intention to commute Dumond’s sentence - but realized Huckabee had “made up his mind.” So Stevens stood up, she said, walked over to Huckabee, who was seated on a sofa, squatted down and thrust her face inches from his.

“I said, ‘This is how close I was to Dumond’s face for an hour,’ “ Stevens recalled. “ ‘I’ll never forget his face, and you’ll never forget mine.’ “

The parole board - following a closed meeting with Huckabee - decided to let Dumond go. The following year, Dumond committed the Missouri slaying. He died in prison in 2005.

Otherwise known as the "Dear Wayne" scandal. Huckabee actually wrote Dumond a couple of letters, telling him that he was on his side, and he would press for commutation of his sentence.

No, I'm not kidding. Our then-governor took the side of a rapist.

As for those "masked intruders", many people around here know exactly who did it. Dumond later got what he had coming, for the second time, in a Missouri prison.

[Josh Painter]

NRA2BFree wrote: “His latest slap in the face to Americans came this morning when he voted for the Dream Act to pass! THAT, initself is reason enough to vote against him!”

While I’m certainly no fan of Huckabee’s, how could he vote for The Dream Act when he’s not a member of the Congress?

[Imperial Warrior]

Mike Huckabee’s actual position on border security and illegal immigration is quite different from the current one he now portrays in debates and in his campaign ads. It was revealed that as governor Mike Huckabee lobbied for access and in-state tuition rates for illegal aliens attending Arkansas colleges and Universities who has previously attended taxpayer funded Arkansas public schools in an illegal capacity. This puts Huckabee’s pandering to illegal aliens above that of his own citizens and legal immigrants on par with what each and every liberal Democrat running for President supports and endorses and is analogous to the irresponsible and insane plan by the governor of New York to grant state driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, which like his education initiative was overwhelmingly rejected by both Republicans and Democrats and finally failed. Now however, Mike Huckabee is portraying his position on border security and illegal immigration as being second only to Tom Tancredo’s. Yet this can hardly be the truth when in his own words on a radio address in 2003, Mr. Huckabee had this to say about illegal immigration:

“For decades, we treated our state’s African-American population poorly. The Hispanic influx gives us a second chance to prove what kind of people we really are.”

Huckabee further compared the plight of illegal aliens to enslaved blacks and made a moral equivalency between securing national borders and enforcing immigration laws to the mistreatment of black slaves in a later address in 2006 before a meeting of the Political Animals Club in Little Rock:

“One of the great challenges facing us is that we do not commit the same mistakes with our growing Hispanic population that we did with African-Americans 150 years ago and beyond. We’re still paying the price for the pathetic manner in which the country handled that.”

Huckabee finished up with this incredible remark:

“I think frankly the Lord is giving us a second chance to do better than we did before.”

Huckabee’s remarks are not only ridiculously irresponsible and utterly nonsensical, but extremely insulting to both the descendants of negro slaves, but the honest, hard working, taxpaying, law abiding American citizens and legal immigrants that have struggled over centuries to make this country what it is today by respecting our laws, our culture, our traditions, and contributing to our society in a positive and meaningful way as assimilated American citizens, not separatist enclave building, assimilation resistant illegal foreign nationals.

For Huckabee’s detrimental and destructive ideology concerning border security, immigration, national sovereignty, and his bizarre and insulting analogy between comparing the desire for safe, secure borders and sane, rational immigration policy to the unspeakable brutality of chattel slavery, he will never, ever get my vote because this ideology is both borderline insanity as well as unbelievably and incredibly insulting to millions upon millions of decent, honest, and honorable people who struggle and strive to do the right things out of genuine respect and concern for what is truly fair, just, moral, and right for our country and its citizens.

[unspun]

Hit piece.