You look at total tax burden not state tax burden so it doesnt look so bad due to Bush tax cuts that Huckabee had nothing to do with! If you look at state tax burden alone, it went up BIGTIME under Huckabee - up 50% in 10 years.
To get a real read on Huckabee as Governor ... Take a look at this - from RebekahT, an Arkansas Freeper:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1950905/posts?page=95#95 But when we say that Huckabee hurt the state GOP, we are talking about seats in the state legislature. The governor, as head of our party, is in charge of setting the tone for the party, recruiting candidates for winnable races, targeting seats that we have a shot of taking, supporting those candidates, etc.. and that is what Huckabee was so poor at doing, mostly because he only put young, inexperienced guys who were blindly loyal to him in leadership positions in the party. Huckabee blacklisted any GOP legislature who dared not to support any of his liberal proposals and constantly pandered to democrat groups. Huckabee got elected largely by overwhelming democrat support in Arkansas - what does that tell you about his policies?!
It was extremely hard to work to bolster the conservative movement when the leader of our state party was becoming more nanny-state by the minute, constantly supporting and proposing liberal agendas. This hurt candidate recruitment and turned many conservative activists off. ... Huckabee ... went from being the hope of the GOP in Arkansas to our worst enemy on everything but guns and abortion.
That, as I've stated before is, thematic (endemic?) to Illinois, Wisconsin -- and what little I've read of Massachussetts and Michigan, thanks to the elections -- and just about every state I've heard of, lately.
The federal government could afford to lower taxes, due in part to welfare reform and unfunded mandates. (Shifting of the "social safety net" to the states.) Commensurately, the states had a much greater burden.
I'm not saying that Huckabee is Calvin Coolidge. I'm saying that I don't necessarily see him as Walter Mondale, either.