Huckabee the huckster.
Posted on 01/06/2008 9:11:08 AM PST by Ol' Sparky
They're back, the out-of-state media types who want to know who this guy is, this presidential candidate out of Hope, Ark.
This year the subject is Michael Dale Huckabee, who's not just a highly effective preacher but a populist. He has a knack for reducing complex issues to simple terms.
There's a species of Republican true believers in Arkansas who've always suspected his bona fides as an honest-to-goodness fiscal conservative and social reactionary. Much the same anti-Huckabee line is now being repeated by the high-powered Club for Growth, which has launched an all-out effort to dub the Huck just another tax-and-spender.
The Club has a point - but only on paper. When you compare the dramatic tax cuts enacted early in the Huckabee administration with the later tax increases, you come up with some $500 million in additional taxes.
But some $400 million of that went to carry out the state Supreme Court's order to keep Arkansas' schools constitutional. Huckabee had little choice.
And as governor, Huckabee did more to improve education than pour money into it; he's been interested in improving outcomes, not just raising inputs.
There were other tax increases in his more than a decade as governor. But should he have left highways in miserable condition? Should he have left the poorest children without health insurance? He left Arkansas a healthier, wealthier state - economically, educationally, physically.
The Huck has his failings as a policymaker. He's got a weakness for untested schemes like the national sales tax he's supporting as a substitute for the income tax. His experience in foreign policy is a vacuum.
But his usual, practical approach to pressing problems isn't anything Huckabee need be ashamed of. Quite the contrary. If he's failed the Club for Growth's litmus test, he didn't fail his state.
That's why he should not be President. A governor does not a President make.
Are you talking about Edwards?
What fools! A person’s birthplace or where they were brought up has NOTHING to do with how they would run the country.
No Huckabee! I think that you knew that!
Actually, I think it does.
Southerners tend to be friendly, less likely to offend others. Loyalty towards friends, employees. Particularly brought up in small town South.
Being a Southerner myself it pains me to say it but looking at Carter (especially), and Bush reinforces my thinking that sometimes stepping on someone's toes is necessary . Clinton? how do you categorize him.
Sometimes those attributes must be tossed. Decisiveness is what we need.
I'll agree that Huck is very articulate, likable, a plus. But something about him raises red flags in my mind.
His foreign policy experience is about the same as O'Bama's, Edwards, Romney's, Zero.
If he is nominated he will get my vote.
I keep hearing news commentators mention that Huckabee has “ethical baggage”, but no details about what that might be. Is this the tocacco money that is alledged to have been paid directly to him? Anything else?
Try these for starters:
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12205
http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/2007/10/mike_huckabees_homeys.aspx
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15853756/
http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/2007/09/golden_oldie_from_the_huckabee.aspx
bull.
He did EVERYTHING HE COULD to tilt the SBC to the left.
Perhaps we do need a Secretary of De Fence. And Hunter would make a good Secretary of Defense (or De fence). But Duncan is better than that, we need him at the top.
The MSM has turned the world upside down. Hunter is by far the more able and better man than Huckleberry. Huck wouldn't be able to evaluate best possible advice" that he might surround himself with.
I'd be interested in your impressions of him as governor. Would you care to elaborate on "good job" ?
Huckabee the huckster.
Mine as well. I am seriously considering sitting out the primaries.
Huckabee is the most authentic Republican out there.
It is the corporatists who have reverted to being Whigs -- along with the social liberals and compromisers with them.
Corporatists?
Here come the Huckabee supporters with their class warfare and envy again.
Yeah sure.
I hope one day you can get over your envy of successful people.
Don't tend to find much of that. Americans just resent tyrany -- but just where that actally exists.
My suggestion to you is to pull your head up and look around more and stop taking what the Whigs are feeding.
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