Posted on 11/15/2007 2:26:57 AM PST by dano1
Mitt Romney, despite heavy spending and intensive campaigning, finds himself in a tightening battle with Mike Huckabee in Iowa, forcing Romney to confront aggressively an opponent with far less money and organizational backing who was far back in the polls a few weeks ago. more stories like this
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Seven weeks before the Jan. 3 caucuses, a New York Times/CBS News Poll published yesterday had Romney capturing support from 27 percent of likely Republican voters, but Huckabee within striking range with 21 percent. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was third with 15 percent, Fred Thompson had 9 percent, and John McCain and Ron Paul had 4 percent each. As recently as September, Huckabee was in the single digits.
"It happened," a memo from the Huckabee campaign said yesterday. "We broke 20% in Iowa, which pulled us to within 6% of Governor Romney!"
Huckabee has been staking much of his campaign on Iowa, hoping that a win in caucuses there, the first nomination votes of 2008, will vault his relatively shoestring candidacy to prominence in delegate-rich states. Romney has invested heavily in Iowa as part of his strategy to capture the early-voting states.
(snip)
On Fox News yesterday, Huckabee was more pointed in his response to Romney: "I guess Mitt Romney would rather keep people out of college so they can keep working on his lawn, since he had illegals there."
That refers to a Globe report in December that the landscaping service working on Romney's lawn in Belmont employed several illegal immigrants. Romney has said his family checked that the employer was legal, but didn't know about the workers.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
A pretty pathetic field this election cycle.
That type of conservative understands the essential truth of conservatism and why it works in concert with fundamental human nature, but then they confuse the personal choice of charity to others as a governmental responsibility, while ignoring the effect that doing so has on both the indolent receivers and the forced givers, all to satisfy their own personal desires to be “compassionate”.
No more pseudo conservatives.
Clueless? I guess that's why he's worth a quarter of a billion dollars and is running one of the smartest campaigns in history.
You, on the other hand, are fully clued. That's why you're feebly clacking away on your keyboard this morning complaining about a man whose personal and professional accomplishments put you to ignominious shame.
Cutting off jobs and welfare will keep them in Mexico or where ever home might be. Oklahoma has already proved this to be true. Mexicans are leaving by the droves.
LLS
Here is a Huckabee position statement on immigration from his website:
Immigration Facts
It has been reported that Mike Huckabee supported benefits for illegals immigrants while he was Governor of Arkansas.
Governor Huckabee never supported benefits for illegal immigrants. In Arkansas, illegal immigrants do not receive welfare benefits or food stamps. Governor Huckabee has always, and will always be supportive of the laws and regulations of the country.
It has also been said that Mike Huckabee was in favor of providing college scholarships for illegal immigrants while he was Governor.
The governor only supported the measure that applied to those who met the academic qualifications and applied for legal citizenship. The measure didn't pass. Governor Huckabee stressed that any student would simply be treated as any other graduate of an Arkansas High School, and not given any special consideration.
Critics say that Governor Huckabee's motives behind opening a Mexican consulate office in Little Rock was to court illegals to come work in Arkansas.
The Mexican consulate provided Arkansas businesses with access to Mexico and opportunities to expand their markets, and would help further ensure that immigrants from Mexico are legal and better able to secure legal documentation. At the same time, the office would open up opportunities for Mexican investors to invest money with Arkansas partners, which would help create more jobs in the state.
Source: Truth Squad: Immigration Facts, Huckabee website, November 02, 2007
You don’t know anything about me personally. Further, I am not persuaded by wealth,in and of itself, unlike you.
Lastly, I’ll do as I please, at my leisure, as is my want.
Does anyone in Iowa read? There are more issues than abortion, and the Huckster is on the wrong side on many of them. And of course, Mitt has held quite a few positions himself...he’s the Kama Sutra of politics.
Oh well.
Ron who?
I agree. The MSM does seem to have way too much influence in the process. But I guess that's slowly changing with the Internet. But I agree with you that the MSM still has much too much say in the process.
Huck is the new McCain as the republican candidate the media always picks to pretend they like republicans as much as they like democrats.
The problem with that is their fawning on all democrats.
Does anyone in their right mind actually believe Huckaby could win a national election? I know this is about political games to get somebody nominated by hook or crook. Problem is I don’t know who.
True. And with an estimated 20,000,000 illegal immigrants in the U.S., what politician didn't know this was going on?
This is bad news. Huckabee is another Jimmy Carter and would be a disaster as the nominee. He’d be almost as bad as Rudy.
IMHO, from what I have heard so far, these alledged ethics violations do not seem very serious to me, even if they are true. It seems like there are a few people who are really gunning for him in Arkansas, and they are playing the alledged ethics thing to the hilt for what's it's worth.
Here is a statement from Team Huckabee related to these charges:
My biggest concern with Mitt is the flip-flopper charge, which seems to be rarely refuted even by Mitt's supporters.
It's not that I couldn't personally live with it, I just think the Dims would never let us live it down if we nominated Mitt, after all the heat Kerry caught for the same thing.
What the hell happened to Fred Thompson? Talk about a slow fade...
Where does Huckabee really stand on the issue of illegal immigration? At first glance of all the chatter, some of the news stories, and the editorials out there floating around, one would believe that Huckabee is, not only soft on illegal immigration, but actually, farther to the left of the issue than our current President. After reading all of the stories out there and listening to the facts in the case against Huckabee, I was beginning to have some serious doubts about the sincerity of this candidate myself, who is admittedly a strong Huckabee supporter.
However, upon doing a little research on this particular issue I discovered that, as usual, there is more than one side to the story. Evidently, the truth of the matter goes a little more like this: Huckabee opposes illegal immigration, supports sealing the border, and opposes amnesty. In a perfect world that would be enough, but this is no perfect world as we all know. The fact of the matter is that there are millions of illegals in this country already, and there is a constant flow of them across our borders each and every day. Another fact, Huckabee supports the deportation of illegal immigrants, but he believes that the process should be a better one.
Case in point is the 119 illegals deported in an Arkansas raid of a plant in 2005, in which officials, without having properly done their homework, proceeded to deport the illegals leaving their children behind here in the states to be a burden to our already overloaded system.
Also, according to the Arkansas State Constitution, children of all ages, whether legal or illegal are entitled to an education. Huckabee following the logic of the state's Constitution, supported allowing children of the illegals to attend Arkansas colleges at in-state rates. Bear in mind these are not individuals who came here illegally, but rather the offspring of those individuals. Holding said offspring responsible for the sins of the parents is like holding anyone else responsible for some crime committed by their forefathers. This is a preposterous notion, a dangerous road, and completely inconsistent with the ideology of compassionate conservatism.
Now, before anyone goes hysterical here, let me point out that we are not suggesting that illegals, who are definately in violation of the law, be given any form of amnesty, nor is there any promotion of the idea of an open border here. However, as in any crime or act of wrongdoing their are always innocents involved who may become collateral damage. Let's be clear there should be a secure border between the U.S. and its bordering nations, there should be no amnesty, and there should always be consequences for breaking the law, but we must remember to follow the ideology of compassionate conservatism as well. After all our system is a system of checks and balances, and we must not forget that there are two sides to the scales of justice. These are the principles that guide Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee. These are the principles that should guide every American.
Source can be found at http://mikehuckabeepresident2008.blogspot.com/2005/08/msm-huckabee-right-on-illegal.html
http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2005/08/13/opinion/18editorial.txt
Why I like Mike for GOP 'bus driver'
WorldNetDaily | 11/8/2007 | Janet Folger
The bus is leaving the station. Two of them, actually. Going to two very different places. ...
I read the Republican destination platform. We're on the right bus. We just need to quit throwing paper-wads at each other long enough to hire the driver who agrees to take us where we want to go. May I suggest a driver without a long record of traffic violations like driving the wrong way on one-way streets such as abortion, marriage and judicial appointments?...
By the way, if you're willing to compromise on life and marriage, go buy a ticket for the RINO safari bus, because you're a Republican in name only. Besides, if Giuliani or Romney were at the wheel, a whole lot of passengers would head for the emergency exit. And of those who remain, they're not likely to chip in for gas or help change a flat tire.
Our Conservative Choice: An Endorsement of Mike Huckabee
The Evangelical Outpost | 10/25/2007 | Joe Carter with Matthew Anderson and Justin Taylor
"Gov. Huckabee is a candidate that should appeal to fiscal conservatives. He has signed the Presidential Taxpayer Protection Pledge which binds the signer to "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses … and oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates"; he supports the FairTax, which would abolish the IRS and replace the Internal Revenue Code with a consumption tax; he believes in free trade (that is, fair trade) and claims that "globalization, done right, done fairly, can be the equivalent of a big pay raise by allowing us to buy things more cheaply.""
"Some of us were initially duped by the white paper on Huckabee that was released by the Club for Growth. Even though CFG is slightly outside of the mainstream on conservative fiscal policies (CFG is to fiscal conservatism what the Christian Coalition is to social conservatism), we respect the organization and appreciate their valuable work. Nevertheless, we were dismayed by their report that was at times misleading, if not outright dishonest."
"We acknowledge that the Club for Growth believes that state sales taxes should never be increased to pay for such entitlements as education, Medicare, highways, and economic development. We understand that this is the reason that they oppose Gov. Huckabee’s record. But we believe that most Americans—and most conservatives—are not minarchists. We do not think the fiscal conservative bona fides of a man who cut taxes and fees almost 100 times, saving the taxpayers almost $380 million, and left a surplus of nearly $850 million should be denigrated because he took such actions as implementing a 1/8-cent sales tax hike. Although we respect the CFC, we are dismayed at the disingenuous means that the group has used to smear the Governor’s character. "
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