8mm
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.
Maybe someday you will get it and leave your cult but you are in my Prayers and meanwhile I will march on defending truth.
I’m voting for FRed. :)
I am keeping a wide open mind, excepting Rooty McRomney. I may Obama in the primary.
Do you really believe that Huckabee wouldn’t be steadfast on the issue of LIFE?
I can understand if you are skeptical of Thompson, McCain or Romney but I don’t think that you can make a case for Huckabee not being pro life at the core of his being. I have reservations about Huckabee on some things but LIFE isn’t one of them. Huckabee is the ONLY candidate that I trust to appoint pro LIFE judges no matter what opposition he faces.
So do I. When I moved here in ‘83, I could not shop on Sunday, could not beer at the corner and watched women not being able to vote in church issues. I was told that it was too bad that I was of the Lutheran faith because only the “southern baptist” were going to heaven.
It is a big river, we are all are swimming upstream. I refuse to accept the concept that “southern babtist” are the only children of God.
The man’s fiscal record is identical to my failed former Governor Bob Taft.
They both hiked taxes, increased spending about 70% and both left with a surplus.
I do not want to see Huck do to America what Bob Taft did to Ohio which was to divide and decimate the Republican party. One could say he did that to the Arkansas GOP already.
I heard just the opposite from somebody else. I hate it when that happens.
Imho, Obama would be harder to beat than Hillary.
Where is your documentation of that?
He said it at one of the debates and he has not backed down from it since .(wouldn’t matter if he did)
I don't follow any mortals. As for SCHIP, I've done a Web search and found an article that states he did not say he would veto it, in a debate. I did not read that he supported it. I don't even know if he was given the opportunity to do anything more than "show hands" about it.
Blue laws were once throughout most of America, and pre-date the Southern Baptists. They were still here when you came to Texas because it is so hard to repeal old laws under the Texas constitution.
I'm not from Arkansas. But, I do think Huckabee did a much better job than his critics are giving him credit for. His record on social issues is as good as any I have seen. I think he did pretty well on taxes considering what he had to work with.
The attacks on Huckabee strike me as largely because he is an actual Christian that will take action on social issues that the Republican hierarchy generally wishes would go away.
Barrack HUSSEIN Obama hard to beat? Nah.
Ex out the court ordered tax hikes and that isn’t a fair comparison.
Sorry, I thought you were from down there. From the posts here on FR and some of the comments from the media and conservative pundits, I also get the impression that allot of people are made uncomfortable by Huckabee’s faith.
Huckabee isn’t perfect but I agree that he does have a decent record on taxes and streamlining government as well as being far and away the best candidate on social issues.
Yep, it's a dame shame some freepers are trying to revise history to retroactively make Huckabee a "RINO socialist nanny-stater" when you can look up any thread posted here when he was IN office and see that freepers were totally happy with his leadership back then.
The Huckster had been governor for NINE YEARS, more than enough time to have a paper trail, and there wasn't a peep out of freepers here in 2005 except to praise him as a great conservative "freeper" governor who got rave reviews for his pro-life and pro-gun leadership, record on balencing the budget to a billion dollar surplus, nicknaming the "tax me more" fund to mock liberals and for exposing John Kerry as the traitor he is.
Yes sir, talk about the Michael Moore wing of conservativism. Seems like some of the Fredheads and Mittwitts will now say anything in an attempt to tear down Mike Huckabee, regardless of the great track record posted about him at the time he was in office.
I'm just glad Reagan isn't running against the saintly Fred Thompson, or we'd be subject to a slew of posts talking about "nanny stater Ronnie" banning cigarette lighters in the white house.
I have been a life long (66 years) Southern Baptist, and I have NEVER heard anyone say that we believe that we are the only ones going to Heaven.
Women have always been equal in church business voting matters.
I think that you just have your facts wrong or a bee in your bonnet about Baptist.
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