Who's the ONLY Fiscally Responsible Candidate?

28 Nov 2007

What Does Dick Morris Say...? Current mood: cheerful November 28, 2007 Huckabee is a Fiscal Conservative By Dick Morris As Mike Huckabee rises in the polls, an inevitable process of vetting him for conservative credentials is under way in which people who know nothing of Arkansas or of the circumstances of his governorship weigh in knowingly about his record. As his political consultant in the early '90s and one who has been following Arkansas politics for 30 years, let me clue you in: Mike Huckabee is a fiscal conservative. A recent column by Bob Novak excoriated Huckabee for a "47 percent increase in state tax burden." But during Huckabee's years in office, total state tax burden -- all 50 states combined -- rose by twice as much: 98 percent, increasing from $743 billion in 1993 to $1.47 trillion in 2005. In Arkansas, the income tax when he took office was 1 percent for the poorest taxpayers and 7 percent for the richest, exactly where it stood when he left the statehouse 11 years later. But, in the interim, he doubled the standard deduction and the child care credit, repealed capital gains taxes for home sales, lowered the capital gains rate, expanded the homestead exemption and set up tax-free savings accounts for medical care and college tuition. ..Most impressively, when he had to pass an income tax surcharge amid the drop in revenues after Sept. 11, 2001, he repealed it three years later when he didn't need it any longer. He raised the sales tax one cent in 11 years and did that only after the courts ordered him to do so. (He also got voter approval for a one-eighth-of-one-cent hike for parks and recreation.) He wants to repeal the income tax, abolish the IRS and institute a "fair tax" based on consumption, and opposes any tax increase for Social Security. And he can win in Iowa. When voters who have decided not to back Rudy Giuliani because of his social positions consider the contest between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, they will have no difficulty choosing between a real social conservative and an ersatz one. Romney, who began as a pro-lifer and switched in order to win in Massachusetts, and then flipped back again, cannot compete with a lifelong pro-lifer, Huckabee. But Huckabee's strength is not just his orthodoxy on gay marriage, abortion, gun control and the usual litany. It is his opening of the religious right to a host of new issues. He speaks firmly for the right to life, but then notes that our responsibility for children does not end with childbirth. His answer to the rise of medical costs is novel and exciting. "Eighty percent of all medical spending," he says, "is for chronic diseases." So he urges an all-out attack on teen smoking and overeating and a push for exercise not as the policies of a big-government liberal but as the requisites of a fiscal conservative anxious to save tax money. So what happens if Huckabee wins in Iowa? With New Hampshire only five days later, his momentum will be formidable. The key may boil down to how Hillary does in Iowa. Hillary? Yes. If she loses in Iowa, most of the independents in New Hampshire will flock to the Democratic primary to vote for her or against her. That will move the Republican electorate to the right in New Hampshire -- bad news for Rudy, good news for Huckabee. But if she wins in Iowa, there will be no point in voting in the Democratic primary and a goodly number will enter the GOP contest, giving Rudy a big boost. And afterward? If Romney wins Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan and South Carolina, sweeping the early primaries, Giuliani will have a very tough task to bring him down in Florida or on Super Tuesday. It can be done, but it's tough. But if Romney loses in Iowa (likely to Huckabee) then Rudy can survive the loss of Iowa and even New Hampshire without surrendering irresistible momentum to Romney. In any event, neither Hillary nor Giuliani will be knocked out by defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire. Their 50-state organizations, their national base and their massive war chests will permit them to fight it out all over the United States. Even if they lose the first two contests, they will remain in the race and could well come back to win. Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of "Outrage." To get all of Dick Morris's and Eileen McGann's columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com.

Huckabee the False Conservative??

27 Nov 2007


Huckabee - The False Conservative?

Monday, November 26, 2007
Written by K- Street for Huck Blogger.

Huckabee - The False Conservative?
Today Robert Novak calls Huckabee "The False Conservative" in the editorial pages of the Washington Post. As I have said before, what scares fusionist "conservatives" about Huckabee is that he is the true conservative, not them, and he demonstrates their economic liberalism (in the classic definition of "liberalism"--meaning completely unrestrained free markets) may not be not necessary to form a governing majority. Novak's article pretty clearly admits this:


The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger: What if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own? That has happened with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Notice in the last sentence, Novak switches to the term "conservative-libertarian," showing that this is what he really means by "conservative." He also goes on to complain about Huckabee's desire to conserve the environment, saying it is "anathema to the free market." But what's so "conservative" about supporting absolute free markets even when they destroy the environment, families, or civil society?

Novak also calls evangelicals (and really should include practicing Catholics too) an "inherent danger" even as he admits that the Republicans would have been relegated to permanent minority status--probably would have gone the way of the Whigs--if it weren't for Christian social conservatives joining the Party. It sounds like Novak defines "danger" as dropping the libertarian part of Novak's hyphenated-conservatism, rather than the danger of becoming secularist states like Europe that inevitably slide into socialism when all the moral undergirdings that make economic liberties possible are gone.

Thank you, Mr. Novak, for coming clean about exactly where you and your ilk are coming from in your exaggerated criticisms of Gov. Huckabee.

Supporting the Wrong Kingdom

Monday, November 26, 2007

Supporting the Wrong Kingdom


Washtinton (AP)

Consumers are financing both sides in the war on terror because of the actions of U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said Sunday.

The former Arkansas governor made the comments following what he suggested was a muted response by the Bush administration to a Saudi court's sentence of six months in jail and 200 lashes for a woman who was gang raped.

"The United States has been far too involved in sort of looking the other way, not only at the atrocities of human rights and violation of women," Huckabee said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"Every time we put our credit card in the gas pump, we're paying so that the Saudis get rich - filthy, obscenely rich, and that money then ends up going to funding madrassas," schools "that train the terrorists," said Huckabee. "America has allowed itself to become enslaved to Saudi oil. It's absurd. It's embarrassing."

Huckabee said "I would make the United States energy independent within 10 years and tell the Saudis they can keep their oil just like they can keep their sand, that we won't need either one of them."

Responding to the gang rape case in Saudi Arabia, the State Department expressed astonishment about the sentence of the Saudi court against the rape victim.

The woman was convicted of being in the car of a man who was not a relative. The seven men convicted of raping her were given prison sentences of two years to nine years.

Under Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, women are not allowed in public in the company of men other than relatives.

The woman has said the 2006 attack occurred as she tried to retrieve her picture from a male friend. While in the car with the friend, two men climbed into the vehicle and drove to a secluded area. She said she was raped by seven men, three of whom also attacked her friend.

The woman initially had been sentenced to 90 lashes after she was convicted of violating rigid laws on the segregation of the sexes. The Saudi court said the woman's punishment was increased because of what the court said was her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that "when you look at the crime and the fact that now the victim is punished, I think that causes a fair degree of surprise and astonishment. But it is within the power of the Saudi government to take a look at the verdict and change it."

Last Tuesday, the same day as McCormack's comments, President Bush telephoned Saudi King Abdullah, trying to get Saudi Arabia to co-sponsor this week's U.S.-organized conference aimed at working toward a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. On Friday, Abdullah agreed to send its foreign minister to the conference.