Posted on 12/23/2007 5:41:56 AM PST by don-o
DAVENPORT, Iowa - To hear Mitt Romney tell it, Republican Mike Huckabee shares more with Democrat Bill Clinton than a hometown in Hope, Ark., and a stint as Arkansas governor.
Both men, Romney suggests, have left-leaning governing philosophies, particularly on taxes and spending.
"Governor Huckabee's record is more liberal than our nation needs right now," the former Massachusetts governor said in Iowa last week, seeking to link his GOP presidential rival to the former Democratic president who is loathed by many Republican loyalists.
Retorted Huckabee: "This nonsense about being a liberal is pure nonsense."
Romney started giving Huckabee that brand — and implicitly linking him to Clinton — as polls started showing a tight race in the first state to speak in the GOP nomination fight. Romney had led in Iowa for months, but Huckabee's recent rise here and elsewhere has prompted Romney to go after his opponent.
The effort may be paying off. Polls show Huckabee's double-digit lead dropping to single digits less than two weeks before the caucuses.
Romney's aides argue Huckabee's record as governor undercuts his claim that he's the only authentic conservative in the race. Romney himself has stopped short of explicitly saying his rival is simply another Clinton, though he's less shy about it in campaign literature mailed to thousands of Iowa Republicans.
He wouldn't bite this past week when pressed on whether Huckabee and Clinton were one and the same.
"They're very different people, and obviously the area of concern relates to spending and taxation. We think of Bill Clinton as being a tax raiser and a spender," Romney said — then mused that he had read somewhere that Huckabee had raised more taxes than Clinton when they were governors.
Asked whether Huckabee was more like him or Clinton, Romney sidestepped.
"I think you have to look issue by issue," he said.
They appear to be cultists who don't pay attention to anything in the real world. Attacking Rush Limbaugh is traditionally a practice reserved for the feverish Left. That Huckabee has joined the liberal 'rats in their squealing pigs' chorus says it all.
Get ready for the Rapture, which will come in the form of a 40+ state defeat in November.
Rudy was a lock; then Fred saddled up and FReepers have their man. McCain gets a little juice from somewhere. Rudy declines. Huckabee rockets into the top tier.
I am thinking that Ron Paul is going to be huge in the primaries. He is going to pull enough support to make for some very close races.
Lightning sharp wit, there, Mike. Reminds me of some state department hack whom I heard once say, with a straight face,
"We're not expecting any more surprises."
Really? Here he is AGAIN hanging with Bill...
He is looking like a lib to me.
AmericanMade1776, In looking at the two pics, this obviously is two different locations. What was Huck doing hanging with Bill? Is Huck promoting Billery Health Care or something?
Does anybody know what this was?
Does anybody really care what Romney says? He has almost no credibility after you examine his claims and past record. He has some real problems with the truth. Read the Editorial printed in the Concord Monitor yesterday. It lists all the reasons why New Hampshire voters should not vote for Romney.
Huck has done the impossible. He’s made McCain look not so bad after all.
To pull that off, you gotta be one hell of a liberal.
I’ve learned over the years NOT to put my trust in the Concord Monitor.
If you don’t vote for Romney, who’s left? Thompson is getting nowhere and you’re beating a dead horse if you back him. Giuliani’s dropping like a rock; he’s finished. That leaves Hickabee, Romney, and McCain. McCain may win New Hampshire, Hickabee takes Iowa. Let’s say McCain survives to get the nomination. He’s now at least 70 years old. In debates, he’s had obvious mental lapses and stumbles. He gets sort of a panicked look on his face, grits his teeth, sticks the end of his tongue over his upper teeth, and then reverts to snippets of what he remembers of his campaign speech when these lapses occur. Or he goes with a furious winking of his left eye. He can’t beat Hillary in a debate. Period. It’s the Bob Dole syndrome at work with any Republican who votes for McCain. Put up some old warhorse who’s wanted to be president forever. It’s a losing strategy.
link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071223/ap_on_el_pr/huckabee_clinton_comparisons;_ylt=AsVOuchCEBAQAFwfFAgxJGms0NUE
A day earlier, in Spartanburg, S.C., Romney assailed Huckabee as soft on crime, and then suggested he was even more of a liberal than Clinton on the issue.
"Now in the case of Governor Huckabee, he also faced a number of individuals coming forward for pardons and commutations and he gave out 1,033, even more than the prior three governors combined — and one of those prior governors was Bill Clinton," Romney said.
He's far more direct in literature mailed by his campaign.
"The Audacity of Hope" one mailer says, a play on the hometown Huckabee and Clinton share — as well as a book written by Democrat Barack Obama. "Two former governors from Hope. One was president. One wants to be."
It then asks a series of questions, including which governor "raised taxes by $880 million to pay for 8,000 new bureaucrats," and "supported amnesty for illegal immigrants." The mailer says Huckabee is the answer to all.
Looking to break out in Iowa, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson also has distributed his own literature plastered with pictures of Huckabee and Clinton.
"Mike Huckabee wants to hide the fact that he and Bill Clinton share a D lifetime rating for their tax & spend policies," it says, referencing the Cato Institute's scorecard for governors. It also adds: "Mike Huckabee talks like a Republican but taxes like a Democrat."
Huckabee, for his part, is seeking to inoculate himself against such comparisons and turn a vulnerability into an asset. He counters Clinton comparisons with a ready, though exaggerated, response at just about every campaign event.
"I'm the only person running for president who has actually run against the Bill and Hillary Clinton machine, and I didn't just run against it. I beat it four times in Arkansas," Huckabee says now as part of his standard pitch. "They campaigned against me every time. They raised money for every opponent I ever had."
"Against the headwinds of their machine, I not only won the election every time — I didn't just win it one time and say oh I won't do that again — I kept going up against them and kept winning, and by the largest margins that any Republican had ever won," Huckabee said.
The line always draws applause — but it's a stretch.
Huckabee never ran against either Clinton for elected office. They moved to Washington after Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 — four years before Huckabee, then lieutenant governor, assumed the state's top job when Democratic Gov. Jim Guy Tucker resigned after his conviction in the Whitewater investigation.
The Clintons did support Huckabee's opponents and raised money for them, and they still had a lot of connections and supporters in Arkansas after leaving the state. But they had little to do with politics in the state after they left and hardly controlled a political machine.
These days, Huckabee preemptively uses the Clinton
line not only to try to distance himself from comparisons but also to argue that he's more likely than other Republicans to beat Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Huckabee didn't appear to sway Dan Bunnell who told him recently at an event in Newton, Iowa, that he was concerned Huckabee was "too nice" to go up against the Clintons.
The 63-year-old from Grinnell expects Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee and says he's leaning toward Rudy Giuliani, whom he called a street fighter.
"The Clintons run an awfully rough campaign. I'm troubled by the fact, I guess, that Huckabee is a nice guy," Bunnell said, noting that Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist minister. "I'm looking for somebody that rather than turning the other cheek, is going to haul back and punch him right in the face."
You nailed it. Whether it’s McCain or by some miracle Thompson, the media is going to play the age factor up big time. Reagan turned it around on the media when they tried to do it in the late seventies. The media won’t let that happen again as we saw all too well when Dole was nominated. And when the mantra this year is change... someone like McCain just ain’t going to get it done.
You do realize that there is only a 5 year difference between Hillary and Fred Thompson?
When has reality had anything to do with what the media does? As a matter of fact the recent discussion of Hillary’s age by Rush and the picture on Drudge has now made HER age old news. Fred looks old and every wrinkle and verbal gaff will be magnified. As long as Thompson’s poll numbers stay low, it won’t be an issue. Should he gain the nomination which is still a long shot you can bet the media will use the age weapon. Most of the electorate is very, very young and our culture worships youth.
You and me both. Typical huckster.
If you look at the foreign affairs speech, he is very reminiscent of Carter. Do you remember Carter trying to influence our enemies by not letting our athletes go the olympics... though some trained their whole lives. Huckabee seems like a blame America first guy.
"They appear to be cultists who don't pay attention to anything in the real world."
What does this say about our party? Is this really "the religious right" that the MSM has been propagandizing about all these years? This has been quite a shock to me
This is silly.
Huckabee gets condemned for raising a question about Mormonism and now he's going to be condemned for not being a tough enough campaigner.
I believe Huckabee's ability to govern in a Rat environment is a plus. He was tough enough to deal with the typical ethics charges the Rats used to chase Gingrich and Delay out of DC. He does not seem to be suicidal over immigration policy. He did raise sales taxes and excise taxes, but did not raise income taxes and cut capital gains taxes. He is pro life and does not support same sex marriage. He was known to be a tough governor who pursued his agenda despite opposition.
It appears he does have a serious problem with his son, who probably needs psychiatric help. He has made some dumb comments about foreign policy and the WOT.
Who do you support and why?
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