Wednesday, December 19, 2007
"Most Pro-Life President In History" Skips March For Life Yet Again
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Saturday, December 15, 2007
A Higher Power
By Liz Clarke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 15, 2007; A08
When he climbed out of the car at Fort Robinson that morning in June 1972, Mike Huckabee found himself surrounded by 1,200 other high school juniors, each a leader in his Arkansas home town, each primed for an election. Several were carrying posters touting their platforms. Others were handing out cards.
Then as now, Huckabee didn't have the campaign apparatus of his peers. The 16-year-old arrived at Boys State, a prestigious and civic-minded youth camp run by the American Legion, from the small southwest Arkansas town of Hope with nothing but a suitcase and a gift for oratory.
By week's end he was its brightest star, elected governor in a landslide. He left Boys State with a network of high-achieving new friends who were eager to hitch their futures to his. And he'd soon have a letter from Gov. Dale Bumpers encouraging him to consider a career in public service.
It was a heady triumph for a teenager who already harbored big ambitions. But it wasn't enough -- not yet -- to lure him from his chosen path: preaching the word of God.
Three days after Boys State, Huckabee and two buddies from Hope piled into a car and headed to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, where they joined 80,000 other teenagers at Explo '72, the first worldwide gathering of evangelical youth. Time magazine dubbed it "the Jesus Woodstock." There, Huckabee spent six days learning from the Rev. Billy Graham and Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, how to lead others to the Lord.
"It was transforming," Huckabee recalls. "Suddenly, I'm one of nearly 100,000 very young evangelical Christian believers who had a very fervent faith and wanted to change the world. Suddenly, I was confronted with a feeling of 'Wow! There are a lot of people like me, too.' "
Huckabee's decision to enter the ministry, announced before his senior year of high school, disappointed a number of admiring teachers and classmates. Why would he squander such obvious leadership potential, they asked, to be a preacher?
"But this is what he knew in his heart he was supposed to do," says his older sister, Pat Harris. "I don't think Mike ever quibbled or felt like he was giving up anything. He was totally committed to what he was doing."
It would take almost two decades for Huckabee's ministerial calling to yield to his political aspirations. And when it did, many of those closest to the evangelical Baptist minister were shocked. But Huckabee has always been comfortable navigating both the spiritual and secular realms. For him, one form of power has always fueled the other.
* * *
Huckabee's rise to political prominence -- first among Southern Baptists, then among Arkansas Republicans and now among the candidates vying for the GOP presidential nomination -- had an implausible beginning.
Huckabee was reared in a one-story brick rental house in Hope, the small town that also produced Bill Clinton. The Huckabees lived near Hope's railroad depot. Mike's father, Dorsey, a burly firefighter who never finished high school, was a "spare the rod, spoil the child" disciplinarian. Huckabee once referred to his father as a "patriot," saying: "He laid on the stripes, and I saw stars."
His mother, Mae, was a clerical worker at the local gas company. Every Sunday morning, she would take Mike and Pat to Garrett Memorial Baptist Church -- a small Missionary Baptist congregation that stressed the inerrancy of the Bible, the memorization of Scripture and the importance of saving souls through mission work. Huckabee was taught as a child that Adam and Eve were real people, that God created the Earth in seven days, that evolution is a false doctrine and that homosexuality is a grave sin -- all views he still holds today.
Huckabee says he was shy and insecure as a youngster. That began to change in fifth grade when he received a guitar for Christmas and, coached by an Assembly of God preacher, tackled basic chords and his fear of performing in public.
At 14, he got a job at the local AM radio station, where the station manager, a passionate, deeply conservative Republican, became his first political mentor. Haskell Jones gave Huckabee a copy of Phyllis Schlafly's 1964 book, "A Choice Not an Echo," written in part to promote Barry Goldwater's presidential bid. Schlafly railed against the moneyed East Coast elites who she argued were diluting the Republican Party's core values. Huckabee found the ideas in the book electrifying.
His work at KXAR was equally transforming. He became a minor celebrity in Hope by announcing high school sports, reading the news and giving away tubes of Fostex acne cream to callers who answered trivia questions he made up.
"I didn't have to see my audience," Huckabee, now 52, explains, "but I had one. And it helped me develop a sense of confidence -- a sense that I could do this."
But nothing supplied the confidence he found in Philippians 4:13, which he first read at 15. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," it says. God was telling him, he says, "that there were really no limits to what was ahead of me."
Soon after that, he preached his first sermon, titled "Watering Down the Blood of Christ," and he illustrated his message by holding up a pitcher of bright-red liquid and pouring plain water into it. "The point of the sermon was Jesus had died, and his blood was there to cover our sins," says his sister. "But because sin kept creeping in, it watered down his blood and diluted the purity of Christ, and we became less because we let sin in."
Huckabee's budding gift for oratory carried over at school. He was such a star in speech class that fellow students took him out in the hall at one point and asked him to quit volunteering to go first.
In 10th grade, he was elected class president. He started the Christian Student Union because he was concerned about the spiritual lives of his peers. It wasn't so much that he viewed them as sinners, he insists. "It was really to encourage Christian behavior," he says. "It was an 'anything goes' world at that time. And this was to offer an alternative to the alternative."
In his book "Character Makes a Difference," Huckabee describes 1968 as the year that marked the death of American innocence. "From that year onward," he writes, "we have lived in the age of the birth control pill, free love, gay sex, the drug culture and reckless disregard for standards."
But Huckabee had little firsthand exposure to the excesses of the 1960s. By all accounts, the strife that erupted across much of the nation after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy bypassed Hope. The high school there integrated fairly smoothly in 1969-1970. Drugs were unheard of.
It didn't occur to Huckabee that not everyone went to church until he won a scholarship to a two-week space camp at Cape Canaveral in the summer of 1971. The camp drew top high school sophomores from all over the country. "I was shocked by how many of them had no belief in God at all," recalls Huckabee, who was singled out by one boy as the camp's sole "Jesus freak." Huckabee says he didn't retreat from his beliefs or chide the doubters. "I was the one kid who would explain why it was important."
The invitation to Boys State followed the next summer.
All of the participants campaigned for office, with the prestige of the position sought, from alderman to governor, betraying the extent of each boy's ambition. Huckabee sought the top job from the moment he arrived.
Winning an election was hard work. A candidate had to collect 25 signatures on a petition from members of his own party, survive a primary and, ultimately, appeal to enough members of the opposing party to prevail, making speeches at every stage of the process. Huckabee swept into the governor's office with more than 80 percent of the vote.
"He challenged the young men to get involved and told us we could make a difference," recalls Jonathan Barnett, then chairman of the Arkansas High School Republicans. "He talked about how fortunate we were that we lived in the United States. And he talked about how the Bill of Rights guaranteed us 'the pursuit of happiness' -- not the guarantee of happiness."
When Boys State ended, Barnett told Huckabee that he wanted him to run for public office someday and asked if he could manage his campaign when the time came. Huckabee demurred, explaining his call to the ministry. Barnett didn't try to talk him out of it. But at least once a year, he'd phone to ask whether Huckabee had changed his mind.
"I'd say, 'Mike, are you ready?' " says Barnett, now a general contractor in Siloam Springs, Ark. "And he'd say, 'No, I'm not ready.' I took that to mean he might not ever be ready."
Boys State ended on June 9. On June 12, Billy Graham opened Explo '72 with a rousing call to action. "We are here to say to the world that Christian youth are now on the march," Graham said to thunderous cheers. "And we're going to keep marching until millions of people are brought into the kingdom of God!"
Tens of thousands of teenagers each received a yellow pamphlet containing Bright's treatise, "The Four Spiritual Laws," which explained how to lead nonbelievers to Christ. In the days that followed, they attended training sessions to hone their evangelical skills and fanned out in Dallas-Fort Worth neighborhoods to talk with residents about God's word.
Huckabee roomed in a Southern Methodist University dorm with Lester Sitzes, his best friend since second grade. They did their evangelizing together, with Huckabee, the more polished speaker, taking the lead. "I was always Mike's wingman," Sitzes says with a chuckle.
On the last night, they returned to the Cotton Bowl for a huge concert headlined by Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson and Christian artists. As attendees filed into the stadium, each person was handed an unlit candle.
Huckabee has vivid memories of what followed. After Graham finished speaking, the lights were turned off. Graham lit his candle and then lit Bright's, turning one light into two. Each man lit another candle, so two became four. The audience was told to follow suit, lighting their neighbor's candle as soon as theirs was lit.
"Two things made an impression," recalls Huckabee, who was seated at the opposite end of the stadium. "Even though I was extremely far away, that tiny flickering of the one candle penetrated the darkness, and I saw it. That told me that even a little bit of light in the midst of darkness is worth something. . . . The second thing that happened was, as those candles began to accelerate -- because obviously it happens pretty quickly through the principle of multiplication -- this light just starts expanding around the stadium, faster and faster, until the stadium is aglow. It had a big impact on me -- the rapidity with which something can spread, good or bad, and the impact that one life, and one light, can make. That's when it really sunk in to me that one person can make a difference."
Once back in Hope, Huckabee wore his Explo '72 T-shirt until it was threadbare, determined to be that candle.
* * *
It was another huge gathering of evangelicals in Dallas that reignited Huckabee's interest in politics. In 1980, he and 15,000 other pastors and conservative Christians gathered at Reunion Arena in what is often characterized as a political "coming-out party" for the evangelical movement.
At the time, Huckabee was working for James Robison, a television evangelist known for his fiery sermons. Huckabee, who had attended seminary for a year after graduating from Ouachita (pronounced "WASH-uh-taw") Baptist University in Arkadelphia, was Robison's publicist. He orchestrated Robison's prayer meetings and promoted his television show, while Robison railed against homosexuality, abortion and the country's moral decay.
Robison's Fort Worth-based ministry helped host the gathering in Dallas, organized at a time of great political ferment among evangelicals, remembers Richard Land, then a 33-year-old Christian broadcaster and now head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Rev. Jerry Falwell had formed the Moral Majority the year before and registered 12 million church members. Now evangelicals wanted to figure out how to mobilize their newfound political strength.
Ronald Reagan, who had just won the Republican nomination for the presidency, was the event's keynote speaker. And he brought down the house by famously telling the believers: "I know you can't endorse me, but I want you to know that I endorse you."
Land says the event made a huge impression on Huckabee: "It was there that Mike caught a new vision for the potential of faith in politics and faith in public policy. There were a lot of younger evangelicals who had been raised to believe that politics was dirty business and the last thing a Christian would do is get involved in politics."
Huckabee's wife, Janet, who had just given birth to the couple's second child, says he began talking about running for office himself. Right around that time, she says, he was offered an opportunity to serve as interim pastor of a small Baptist church in Pine Bluff, where Huckabee had identified a potentially promising congressional seat. But before he could explore a run for Congress, church leaders asked him to become their full-time pastor. And a full-time job, for a young family with few means, was hard to turn down. Politics would have to wait.
* * *
One night in late 1991, Huckabee suggested that he and Janet take a walk. He told her he was thinking about running for the U.S. Senate and asked what she thought. She was supportive and not at all surprised. "I think we both felt the same thing, but neither one wanted to talk about it," Janet recalls.
That feeling, as Huckabee would explain in "Character Makes a Difference," was mounting frustration. After 12 years as a minister, he'd begun questioning the significance of the work he was doing.
"In my early years of ministry, I was quite idealistic, thinking that most people in the congregation expected me to be the captain of a warship leading God's troops into battle to change the world," he writes. "As the years passed, I became increasingly convinced that most people wanted me to captain the Love Boat, making sure everyone was having a good time."
At the time, Huckabee was finishing a two-year term as president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, which he had held together during a period of deep division between fundamentalists and more moderate Baptists. In his outgoing speech to the convention, recounted in the Arkansas Baptist Newsmagazine, he hinted at the career change that he would announce in a matter of weeks.
"We cannot change the world if we refuse to participate in the institutions of society that dictate its direction," Huckabee said. "Christians have a message to America that would save many a person such misery. . . . If we want to stop the spread of AIDS and deal with the teen pregnancy problem, we must play by the rules of our Creator -- one man with one woman for life in a monogamous marital relationship."
He pleaded for tolerance, telling his fellow Baptists: "Our most important fight is not with each other. [It is] a battle to salvage our culture and our very civilization from a world view that thinks man is good and God is dead."
Years later, after he'd lost the Senate race but become governor of Arkansas, Huckabee would explain in starker terms his motivation for "getting inside the dragon's belly."
"I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer," he told a group of pastors on the eve of the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention. "I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives." He concluded that speech with words he says he'd phrase differently today: "I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."
Friday, December 14, 2007
ED ROLLINS TO LEAD HUCKABEE CAMPAIGN
"I am proud to announce the addition of Ed Rollins as my National Campaign Chairman," said Huckabee. "Ed is an unparalleled strategist and is well-known as the man who directed the most successful Presidential campaign in the history of the United States. Ed's experience and track record of building winning coalitions within our party, bringing together social, economic and foreign-policy conservatives, and reaching across party lines, makes him a good fit for our campaign."
Rollins served as the National Campaign Director to Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election in which Reagan won 49 states.
"I am honored to be joining Governor Huckabee's remarkable campaign," added Rollins. "I have always said that I want to work for candidates with convictions who can communicate those convictions. And Governor Huckabee is that candidate. He has the ability to change the political conversation in this country. Among the presidential contenders, he is also the one with the most executive experience. I look forward to working with the Governor over the coming year on the road to the White House."
Rollins served in the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, including serving two tours of duty at the highest level of the White House as Assistant to the President and White House Political Director. His book, Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms, was the number one selling political book in America in 1996 and made the top of the New York Times and every other national best seller list. He is currently the Chairman of the Rollins Strategy Group, a communications and crisis management firm with offices in New York and Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Minuteman Project Founder Endorses Mike Huckabee
Noting that he might not agree 100 percent on immigration with Huckabee, the firebrand illegal immigration opponent said Huckabee's recently released immigration plan won him over.
"The governor has a plan and I appreciate his plan. That's why I'm supporting him. He's one of the few who's actually brought forth a plan and gone public with it. It shows to me that he's willing to engage in the tough love necessary to fix this problem," Gilchrist said.
Gilchrist, whose organization is separate from the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, has drawn protests in appearances at college campuses in recent months for his views on strict illegal immigration laws. Unlike the MCDC, whose primary role is to park volunteers along the U.S.-Mexico border to report jumpers to Border Patrol agents, the Minuteman Project calls attention to enforcement of state and federal laws relating to immigration.
Huckabee last week announced a get-tough immigration plan, proposing to construct a border fence with surveillance cameras by July 1, 2010, calling for an increase to the number of Border Patrol agents and imposing steep penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants.
The approach is a seeming reversal for Huckabee, who has been criticized for actions he took as Arkansas governor, including his support for tuition breaks for children of undocumented immigrants and $1,000 in government assistance to children whose illegal parents were arrested, and his denunciation of a 2005 raid on illegal immigrants at a poultry plant.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
HUCKABEE UNVEILS PLAN FOR IMMIGRATION CONTROL AND BORDER SECURITY
A 9-Point Strategy for Immigration Enforcement and Border Security
Overview: Implement a broad-based strategy that commits the resources of the federal government to the enforcement of our immigration laws and results in the attrition of the illegal immigrant population.
1. Build the Fence
- Ensure that an interlocking surveillance camera system is installed along the border by July 1, 2010.
- Ensure that the border fence construction is completed by July 1, 2010.
2. Increase Border Patrol
- Increase the number of border patrol agents.
- Fully support all law enforcement personnel tasked with enforcing immigration law.
3. Prevent Amnesty
- Policies that promote or tolerate amnesty will be rejected.
- Propose to provide all illegal immigrants a 120-day window to register with the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services and leave the country. Those who register and return to their home country will face no penalty if they later apply to immigrate or visit; those who do not return home will be, when caught, barred from future reentry for a period of 10 years.
4. Enforce the Law on Employers
- Employment is the chief draw for most illegal immigrants and denying them jobs is the centerpiece of an attrition strategy.
- Impose steep fines and penalties on employers that violate the law.
- Institute a universal, mandatory citizenship verification system as part of the normal hiring process.
- Prevent the IRS and the Social Security Administration from accepting fraudulent Social Security numbers or numbers that don't match the employees' names.*
5. Establish an Economic Border
- Move toward passage of the FairTax.
- The FairTax provides an extra layer of security by creating an economic disincentive to immigrate to the U.S. illegally.
6. Empower Local Authorities
- Promote better cooperation on enforcement by supporting legislative measures such as the CLEAR Act, which aims to systematize the relationship between local law and federal immigration officials.
- Encourage immigration-law training for police. Local authorities must be provided the tools, training, and funding they need so local police can turn illegal immigrants over to the federal authorities.
7. Ensure Document Security
- End exemptions for Mexicans and Canadians to the US-VISIT program, which tracks the arrival and departure of foreign visitors. Since these countries account for the vast majority of foreigners coming here (85 percent), such a policy clearly violates Congress' intent in mandating this check-in/check-out system.
- Reject Mexico's "matricula consular" card, which functions as an illegal-immigrant identification card.
8. Discourage Dual Citizenship
- Inform foreign governments when their former citizens become naturalized U.S. citizens.
- Impose civil and/or criminal penalties on American citizens who illegitimately use their dual status (e.g., using a foreign passport, voting in elections in both a foreign country and the U.S.).
9. Modernize the Process of Legal Immigration
- Eliminate the visa lottery system and the admission category for adult brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens.
- Increase visas for highly-skilled and highly-educated applicants.
- Expedite processing for those who serve honorably in the U.S. Armed Forces.
- Improve our immigration process so that those patiently and responsibly seeking to come here legally will not have to wait decades to share in the American dream. Governor Huckabee has always been grateful to live in a country that people are trying to break into, rather than break out of.
*This policy will be drafted to comply with the final federal court decisions on this issue.
Note: This plan is partially modeled on a proposal by Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies. ("Re: Immigration: Ten Points for a Successful Presidential Candidate," National Review, May 23, 2005.)
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Huckabee: A Conservative with the Spark of Greatness
The political establishment, the transnational corporations, and those that gravitate to whomever looks like a winner, long ago lined up behind other candidates, but all the momentum is with Huckabee because he will fight for Main Street over Wall Street and the people before the power hungry. If you will only take time to watch one of these videos, please watch the third one -- but if you do watch all three, you will understand why so many see the spark of greatness in this man.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Iowa Poll: Huckabee Leads
Monday, November 26, 2007
Huckabee Strongest Against Hillary
ZOGBY INTERNATIONAL
UTICA, New York – A new Zogby Interactive survey shows Democrat Hillary Clinton of New York would lose to every one of the top five Republican presidential contenders, representing a reversal of fortune for the national Democratic front–runner who had led against all prospective GOP opponents earlier this year.
Clinton 40
McCain 42% +4
Clinton 38
Clinton 40
Clinton 40
The online survey included 9,150 likely voters nationwide, and was conducted Nov. 21–26, 2007. It carries a margin of error of +/– 1.0 percentage points.
"You Be the Somebody"
"The Bible says, 'do not move the ancient boundary stones put forth by your fathers.' I can't think of a more accurate picture of this country today than a nation that has 'moved the boundary stones' that were placed by our forefathers, and as a result we live now in a confused and convoluted country.
What I am asking is, 'you be the somebody, you do the something.' Let's make sure we don't lose this great land of ours because we were more interested in being on the stage than we were in being on our knees to salvage the great, great land, given by God, entrusted to us. And we have the responsibility to pass it on better than we found it. May God help us to do it, and may God bless you in doing it."
Mike Huckabee
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Huckabee: Abortion Not States' Call
By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee rejects letting states decide whether to allow abortions, claiming the right to life is a moral issue not subject to multiple interpretations.
"It's the logic of the Civil War," Huckabee said Sunday, comparing abortion rights to slavery. "If morality is the point here, and if it's right or wrong, not just a political question, then you can't have 50 different versions of what's right and what's wrong."
"For those of us for whom this is a moral question, you can't simply have 50 different versions of what's right," he said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."
The former Arkansas governor, who has drawn within striking distance of Mitt Romney in Iowa's leadoff presidential caucuses, said he was taken aback by the National Right to Life Committee's recent endorsement of Fred Thompson, the ex-Tennessee senator.
"But my surprise was nothing compared to the surprise of people across America who had been faithful supporters of right to life," said Huckabee, who is challenging Thompson's claim that he is the most reliable conservative in the GOP field.
"Fred's never had a 100 percent record on right to life in his Senate career. The records reflect that. And he doesn't support the human life amendment which is most amazing because that's been a part of the Republican platform since 1980," Huckabee said.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Spotlight Falls on Mike Huckabee
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Mike Huckabee from a British Perspective
He was born in the small town of Hope, Arkansas, and overcame poverty to become governor of his native state before launching a bid for the White House. He is a charismatic speaker and a musician who has played with some of America's most famous artists.
Mr Clinton recently called his fellow Arkansan "the best speaker" among the Republican candidates.
Now conservative Republicans, dissatisfied with the leading candidates, are increasingly looking to Mr Huckabee as the man to take on Mrs Clinton.
While he still only ranks fifth in national polls, surveys last week in Iowa, the scene of the first test of voter opinion on January 3, put him a close third to Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. He leads the field among Republicans who say they have definitely made up their minds.
Speaking between campaign events in New Hampshire, Mr Huckabee deployed his quick wit — honed as an ordained Baptist preacher — to skewer his Republican rivals, paint himself as the one true conservative in the race and denounce the takeover of American politics by the Clinton and Bush families. He said: "Unlike my opponents', my support has only ever increased. We're going to catch them and pass them. The polls are stunning."
Dan Bartlett, who quit last month as President George W Bush's White House counsellor, described Mr Huckabee as the "most articulate, visionary candidate" – but said he could not win because of his unusual surname.
Mr. Huckabee, 52, hit back, saying: "That showed the kind of condescending arrogance that people are so tired of. Do we really want potentially 28 years with only two families occupying the White House? We broke away from your King George because we were tired of one family telling us what to do."
Trim and animated, he fires out pointed remarks and jokes in the time it takes many Southerners to get out a sentence.
Before entering politics, he held several positions as a Baptist minister and served as president of a religious television channel. He and his wife Janet have three adult children, and he plays bass guitar for his band, Capitol Offence, which has played at two presidential inauguration balls and opened for Willie Nelson.
In the past week, the stars in the political firmament have begun to align for Mr Huckabee.
Christian Conservatives – who dislike the pro-abortion frontrunner Rudy Giuliani and distrust Mitt Romney, who converted late to the pro-life cause – have threatened to run an independent candidate unless the Republicans pick a pro-life figure such as Mr Huckabee. On Friday, Senator Sam Brownback, with whom he had been vying for evangelical votes, dropped out of the race.
In a withering assault on Mr Romney, Mr Huckabee said: "Sometimes I think people are auditioning to be the conservative American Idol contestant. They're good at lip synching. I'm not sure that they are singing their own true song."
Mr Huckabee, strongly tipped as a possible vice-presidential running mate to Mr Giuliani if he does not win the nomination himself, is noticeably warmer towards the former New York mayor. "I don't believe a pro-choice candidate can win the nomination but he's run a very smart campaign. Rudy hasn't pretended to be something he isn't."
Mr Huckabee may share Mr Bush's faith but, unlike the President, he has not said that God asked him to run for office. "The last time I checked, God was not registered to vote," he says.
He is also highly critical of the Iraq war, comparing Mr Bush's foreign policy to the behaviour of "that kid at school who was good at everything" but instead of helping others, "rubbed peoples' faces in it. People resent the US, not because we are a superpower, but because we acted like one".
He said he had "a great love, admiration and respect for Great Britain" and regarded the US as "extraordinarily blessed" to have had its friendship.
Mr Huckabee, Arkansas governor from 1996 to last January, may be a long shot but he is used to adversity, having battled to lose weight after he was warned that obesity would kill him (the subject of his book, Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork). He says losing 110lb taught him "that discipline and patience and perseverance get you to the finish line".
Many think he could still win. Newt Gingrich, the former House of Representatives speaker, says: "Huckabee is very effective, and if he can find money, he will be dramatically competitive almost overnight."
THE JOKER IN THE REPUBLICAN PACK
On his band, capitol offence: "We're playing at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, where Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens played their last concert. I will not be flying out that evening."
On health care: "Baby boomers retiring are going to cause a crisis for health care. Can you imagine what it will cost when all the hippies find out that seniors get free drugs?"
On arkansas: "I heard a man was telling a joke about a politician from Arkansas. I told him: 'You won't believe this, but I am a politician from Arkansas.' He said to me: 'Don't worry son, I'll tell it real slow.'?"
On his poor upbringing: "We only had this lava soap [which contains pumice stone]. I was in college before I realised a shower wasn't supposed to hurt."
I am so offended and insulted by what Governor Huckabee wrote about President Bush that I cannot vote for him.
Unless I see a written retraction of the insults to President Bush in his Foreign Affairs article no amount of PR spin or positive stories will overcome that.
I had been looking forward to having the Governor visit down here in the Lowcountry and get a chance to meet him. But now, he can save me the trouble of attending his event. I wouldn't exactly be the person he would want to call on for a question.
December 17, 2007 10:23 AM
Quite right! How could anyone characterize this Administration as having a "bunker mentality"?
After all, the President has welcomed the whole world to illegally invade our country across our undefended borders, and has attempted to reward the law breakers with a "path to citizenship."
He has offered the UN total jurisdiction over all the oceans and everything in them, including "solid, liquid or gaseous mineral resources" along with taxing authority.
In the name of his "democracy crusade" he has brought about the election of Hamas and Hezbollah, while ending the political careers of friends in London, Warsaw, and Canberra, and destabilizing a friendly regime in Pakistan.
He has $20 billion in chump change for just about every problem that arises, foreign and domestic (except border security). He has bragged about spending more on education in his first two years than Bill Clinton spent in eight. Never mind that we still lag behind virtually every other industrialized nation on the face of the earth in math, reading and science.
Federal spending has increased more under "W" than under any President since LBJ.
We will be paying the "religion of peace" regimes about $100 a barrel for their oil.
He has negotiated the surrender of US sovereignty by executive fiat with Canada and Mexico.
He has strengthened the Euro and the Canadian dollar to historic highs. The Euro that was worth 83 cents when he took office is $1.47 today.
Bunker mentality? Hardly! Now please tell me, which of Governor Huckabee's opponents will be defending that record?