Posted on 11/23/2007 12:54:22 PM PST by dano1
With little resources, and with a GOP presidential candidacy hovering in obscurity through the summer, the former Arkansas governor is now running in a dead heat with Mitt Romney in the lead in Iowa.
The former Massachusetts governor's spending in Iowa has been 10 times greater than Huckabee's and, until this week, Huckabee had not run a single ad (versus Romney, whose ads have already run over 5,000 times).
In various national polls, Huckabee is coming in a solid third behind former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.
The Washington Post's David Broder provides one hint about the fuel that might be propelling Huckabee. He says that, according to veteran Democratic pollster Peter Hart, the attributes that are pushing voters' buttons this year are "transparency, authenticity and unity."
A just-released The Economist/YouGov poll shows Huckabee doing well in these areas. Republican voters rate him first in both honesty and morality.
The long campaign and the plethora of pre-primary televised debates have been helpful to Huckabee, whose appeal has come through to voters, but who has not had a lot of resources for his own marketing. He has come off as genuine and not like a candidate, in Huckabee's words, "who's sort of the culmination of a room full of consultants."
There is little question that on social issues that Huckabee, a Baptist minister, is the real deal. This is playing well among Iowa Republicans, a third of whom are evangelicals and 70 percent of whom are conservatives.
But what about the rap against him that he is a populist with little regard for traditional Republican proclivities for unfettered markets and limited government?
He's been accused by the Club for Growth of "big-government liberalism" and called by conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg a "statist."
There's some justification, of course, to these labels. Huckabee invites them when he expresses reservations about free trade, which he does, when he talks about energy independence, which he does, and when he endorses ideas such as a nationally mandated ban on smoking in public places.
But there are important strains in what Huckabee is about that defy simple labels, and in this sense these accusations and generalizations are not legitimate.
When Huckabee says that "strong families are the foundation of a strong country," he means this. This is not a Hillary Rodham Clinton-like political throw-away line.
The traditional-values agenda is as much an economic initiative as anything else.
It's family breakdown and values breakdown that drive poverty in our country today. Poor families are overwhelmingly single-parent families.
Crime and unemployment among black males is a values crisis, and transforming these young men to productive beings is an economic as well as a values initiative. This is anything but statism.
It's tough to see how someone who wants to get rid of the IRS, which Huckabee's "fair tax" initiative would do, can be thought of as someone who loves big government.
His plan, which would replace the income tax with a national sales tax, has plenty of detractors, including those who see it as politically impossible to achieve.
But how do you argue with the idea of taxing consumption rather than income and production, and freeing every American family of having to share every intimate detail of their economic life with the government?
On health care, Huckabee has repudiated mandated universal coverage and supports reforms that would allow individuals the same tax preferences for purchasing health coverage as employers and that would allow a national market, rather than our current state-regulated fiefdoms, for buying health care Sounds pretty darned free-market to me.
On Social Security, Huckabee's plan would eliminate the payroll tax and he has expressed support for the idea of personal retirement accounts.
And, of course, Huckabee is a hard-core supporter of understanding the Second Amendment as protection of the rights of individuals to bear arms.
So the simple big-government-loving box into which many want to stick Huckabee is just not an accurate picture of the man. Do I agree with many of the criticisms in areas where he does want to turn to government? Yes.
Mike Huckabee is not a simple guy. But life is not simple. However, he is honest, he is clear and many, including me, appreciate his unequivocal stand for the traditional values that are critical for the future of this country.
Unfair my shiny butt. Just look at his record on taxes, immigration etc. Other than on a few social issues he’s as liberal as Rootie.
I'd like you to join me at the best "Going Out of Business" sale I can imagine - one held by the Internal Revenue Service. Am I running for president to shut down the federal government? Not exactly. But I am running to completely eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes. And do I mean all - personal federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment. All our hours filling out forms, all our payments for help with those forms, all our shopping bags filled with disorganized receipts, all our headaches and heartburn from tax stress will vanish. Instead we will have the FairTax, a simple tax based on wealth. When the FairTax becomes law, it will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness.
The FairTax will replace the Internal Revenue Code with a consumption tax, like the taxes on retail sales forty-five states and the District of Columbia have now. All of us will get a monthly rebate that will reimburse us for taxes on purchases up to the poverty line, so that we're not taxed on necessities. That means people below the poverty line won't be taxed at all. We'll be taxed on what we decide to buy, not what we happen to earn. We won't be taxed on what we choose to save or the interest those savings earn. The tax will apply only to new goods, so we can reduce our taxes further by buying a used car or computer.
So no matter how hard Americans work, no matter how innovative and creative we are, no matter how superior our products are, we suffer from a built-in competitive disadvantage simply because of our tax system. A recent study by MIT found that our tax system deprives us of about $1 billion in exports annually. When you export over-priced goods as we have, you inevitably end up exporting jobs and industries as we now are. We are the square peg trying to fit into the round hole of international trade. The rest of the world isn't going to change, it's time that we do.
Under the FairTax, American companies are far less likely to move overseas and foreign companies are far more likely to come here, hiring Americans to build and work in their new plants. The FairTax encourages growth by promoting investment and capital formation.
We have to scrap a 20th century tax system that is holding us back and keeping us down in the 21st century. The FairTax is the path to greater prosperity and job security for us and for our children.
As Governor of Arkansas, I pushed through the Arkansas Legislature the first major, broad-based tax cuts in state history - a $90 million tax relief package for Arkansas families. I also doubled the standard deduction to $2,000 for single taxpayers and $4,000 for those who are married. Some taxes I eliminated entirely: the marriage penalty, bracket creep caused by inflation, income tax on poor families, and capital gains on home sales. To encourage investment, I cut capital gains for both individuals and businesses. To help people better themselves, I provided tax credits for employee training and education. In total, I cut taxes and fees nearly 100 times during my ten-and-a-half years as Governor, saving the people of Arkansas almost $380 million.
When I left office in early 2007, Arkansas had nearly $850 million in state surplus, which I urged should go back to the people in the form of either a tax rebate or tax cut.
I believe that our massive deficit is not due to Americans' being under-taxed, but due to the federal government's over-spending. Achieving and maintaining a balanced federal budget is an important and worthy goal necessary to our long-term economic well-being. To achieve a balanced federal budget, I believe the President should have the line-item veto.
I believe in free trade, but it has to be fair trade. We are losing jobs because of an unlevel, unfair trading arena that has to be fixed. Behind the statistics, there are real families and real lives and real pain. I'm running for President because I don't want people who have worked loyally for a company for twenty or thirty years to walk in one morning and be handed a pink slip and be told, "I'm sorry, but everything you spent your life working for is no longer here."
I believe that globalization, done right, done fairly, can be a blessing for our society. As the Industrial Revolution raised living standards by allowing ordinary people to buy mass-produced goods that previously only the rich could afford, so globalization gives all of us the equivalent of a big pay raise by letting us buy all kinds of things from clothing to computers to TVs much more inexpensively.
he’s a big government socialist who wouldn’t veto schip and drastically raised taxes in arkansa as governor. if club for growth doesn’t like him, it’s more than enough for me..
Huckleberry is a populist; he’ll say whatever he thinks people want to hear and, he doesn’t care how thick he spreads it either!
The Rap Against Huckabee, What’s true, and what’s not
National Review Online | 10/30/2007 | Byron York
"On immigration, Huckabee is a strong advocate of a fence across the entire U.S.–Mexico border. While Congress debates guest-worker programs, Huckabee tells me, the most important problem is being ignored. “Seal the border,” he says. “Until you do that, you don’t have any control over how many people are coming in, who they are, and where they’re going.” At the same time, Huckabee has taken criticism for his proposal, as governor, to offer Arkansas in-state tuition to illegal aliens and their children. “I have always said you don’t punish a child for the crime of a parent,” Huckabee tells me. “Frankly, it’s in our best interest to try to get that child on to a higher level of education.”
dano1 wrote: “There’s some justification, of course, to these labels. Huckabee invites them when he expresses reservations about free trade, which he does, when he talks about energy independence, which he does, and when he endorses ideas such as a nationally mandated ban on smoking in public places.”
Anyone who would support a nationwide ban on smoking in public places is no friend of liberty or the US Constitution, and I’m a non-smoker.
This is about electing the next POTUS, not a church deacon...
He is not endorsing anything here in public places, he is endorsing restrictions on private property rights.
This issue has nothing to do with smoking, but rather a re-definition of private property to become public property.
Anyone that has such little respect for private property rights gets no where with me.
“The unfair rap against Mike Huckabee”
I’ll give him a fair one-
He’s the lifeboat for the financial services industry’s potential half a trillion dollar interest in carbon trading.
Their first Republican bet, John McCain, has tanked.
Obama, Clinton and Edwards are locked in on the Democrat side.
I don’t trust the Huckster. Sounds like “Slick Willie” Lite.
The liberal media keeps hyping this schuckster and Dano1 here keeps doing their yeoman’s work.
Sorry about my previous post, dano1. I attributed the quote to you, but you didn’t write the article.
Nevertheless, Huckabee has some very serious issues. If the man supports a nationwide smoking ban in public places (unconstitutional unless he believes in a perverted opinion of the Commerce Clause), what other laws would he support? A do-gooder power grabber isn’t any more appealing to me than lib.
Getting your info from a Huckster website eh?
Huckabee wants to get rid of the IRS and income tax?
“What a kook!! He agrees with Ron Paul!!”
One does not have to be a smoker to argue against this position of Huckabee's. It is an affront to anyone who believes in private property rights.
I do believe they have the old lying, pro-illegal, nanny-stater, big government, Huckster pegged.
The question is does Tyson pay you to post this bogus BS?
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