Posted on 09/29/2007 9:00:44 AM PDT by jdm
Mike Huckabee has decided to make a clean break with the Bush administration on foreign policy. In a speech yesterday, Huckabee supported the surge in Iraq but came out against the White House on most other foreign-policy issues, including the conduct of the war on terror:
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee ripped the Bush administration's war against terrorism Friday, delivering a bold and potentially risky speech that could establish the former Arkansas governor as the maverick among top Republican candidates and test his party's loyalty to President Bush.
"This administration's bunker mentality has been counterproductive both at home and abroad," Huckabee said in opening a broad indictment of Bush's style and policy.
The speech came after several top Republican candidates started distancing themselves from Bush, vowing change on such issues as illegal immigration and federal spending even as they endorsed Bush's foreign policy.
By going much further than his rivals have in attacking Bush, Huckabee could draw attention to a campaign that's inched up in polls in recent months but still lacks the money and organization that can compete head-on with better-known, better-financed candidates such as Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.
His speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies puts an interesting twist on Huckabee's campaign. He's generally been seen as the most personable candidate of the Republican flock, but perhaps he feels he's been a little too nice. Huckabee may want to show a little flash and fire to let people know that he's got enough flint to be a Commander in Chief.
McClatchy's Steven Thomma believes that Huckabee wants to wrest the "maverick" role away from John McCain, and perhaps some of the straight talk label as well. McCain himself has criticized the Bush administration on foreign policy in the past, but not quite in these terms, and he definitely doesn't counsel closer relations with the mullahcracy in Iran. Huckabee told the CSIS yesterday that the US could turn Iran away from nuclear weapons through the promise of better relations and economic support.
We have tried that approach in the past, though, and it never works. Reagan, Bush, and Clinton all attempted outreaches to the Iranian mullahcracy, and all efforts failed. The Iranians may have seen al-Qaeda as a Wahhabi threat to its own vision of a Shi'ite Caliphate based in Teheran when it offered to assist us in beating back the Taliban and AQ in Afghanistan, but they have no interest in helping us protect our assets in the Middle East or anywhere else. The fantasy that 9/11 represented a unique opportunity to engage with the Iranian mullahs is just that -- fantasy. They want Israel destroyed and the US completely out of southwest Asia and North Africa. That's their end game, and it won't change until the Iranian people finally jettison the mullahcracy and replace it with responsible self-government.
His criticism grew especially harsh when he discussed the aborted mission into Pakistan that intended on capturing Ayman al-Zawahiri. Donald Rumsfeld called it off when the support group got so large that it would have required coordination with the Pakistani government. Huckabee promised that he would not have let his Defense Secretary make that call had Huckabee been President. "Did the President even know about it? ... When I'm president, I will make the final call on such action, not my secretary of defense." That one will sting.
We'll see if it gains Huckabee anything other than headlines. In a general election, these positions would almost certainly boost a GOP nominee. In the primaries, though, it may have the opposite effect.
LOL, astute analysis.
Adios Mike.
Wow do I dislike Huckabee. He was a tax-raiser in Arkansas and now he undermines the war on terror.
Wow do I dislike Huckabee. He was a tax-raiser in Arkansas and now he undermines the war on terror.
Hucksterbee and Paulnuts. Candidates for those who wish Pat Buchanan was running.
Huckabee is triangulating a bit and trying to thread the needle. Huckabee seems like a good man but I don’t see him going far in this race. A southern fundie doesn’t appear to match the mood of the country (unfortunately).
Whether Huckabee is right is not the issue, the break with Bush’s foreign policy is.
Bush and Cheney have done the Nation and the Republican party a huge favor by stepping out of the race for President.
Now, each candidate can address the issues clearly, without having to defend the President’s policies.
From this will come a clearer statement of each candidate’s views, and a better foreign and domestic policy.
Huckabee’s irrelevant.
Well, Mike is well known for his support of the fair tax. but this:
“the US could turn Iran away from nuclear weapons through the promise of better relations and economic support.”
shows he doesn’t understand the Iranian government. you cannot negotiate with the mullahs because there is no word for ‘compromise’. You go straight to the Iranian people!
Right now running as a Bush-alike is good for fund raising. However, if troops are still getting killed in November 2008, then running as a Bush-alike will be a load. The surge is the key.
The only military force that brought down a plane on 9-11 was the unorganized militia. The force that brought in the DC sniper was the unorganized militia. The force that stands the best chance of securing our schools to avoid a Belsen massacre here in the US is the unorganized militia. The force that stands the best chance of ridding ourselves of illegals and Islamic subversives is the unorganized militia.
The Second Amendment is PRECISELY the correct tool to manage the domestic side of the WOT. Border enforcement and better inspection of containers is the Federal side and it is woefully lacking. That mismanagement of priorities IS Bush's fault.
Absolutely, especially when they think their 12th leader (is it a mullah?) will only return upon devastation of the world by war and death.
At one point he might have been seriously looked at as a VP choice, but he seems intent on killing that.
The twelfth imam, or the Mahdi.
You’re right, Pat was, is, and shall remain the tops in politics. It’s too bad the American people could not understand his program.
btt
http://www.paragoulddailypress.com/articles/2007/09/29/opinion/doc46fdc1efbfcc2093293852.txt
Thanks to all of you, Company C
I had the distinct pleasure of standing on a street corner at 6:30 this morning in Paragould and watching two buses filled with these wonderful brave men come home to Paragould,Ar.
A huge homecoming rally for these brave troops!
Definitive proof that the man is unfit for national office. That together with his heinous insults against Americans by joking about mexican aliens becoming "a majority" (YUK YUK) pretty well discredit his claim to be a member of the human race. We just don't need any demented grotesque morbid fatties in the White House, and this gasbag is the worst of the lot.
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