I am disappointed Matt... I thought you earlier said you favor individual liberties... The Chuck and Huck Bandwagon is certainly doing well - statistically - but is there any real substance here? As Fred Thompson's last commercial suggests, Huck from Arkansas has a friendship with raising taxes, a real no no in conservative states. Huckabee is not a fiscal conservative and that is his liability! Huckabee lied repeatedly about his tax record and we need to get this message out. Huckabee also has a liability on the scholarships for illegal aliens issue. Further, what's the deal with Huck's Capo Mafia enforcer Norris? Are we to expect the GOP convention to be a Total Gym exercise exhibit? Huck has this Norris guy as his shadow... are the other candidates in for a Chuck-style back alley beating? Listen... I kind of like Huckabee but he is not a big-ticket candidate... if he wasn't from Arkansas I think he might make a fine Town Selectman, a front-line WeightWatchers spokesman, or perhaps a good VP on a real Conservative's ticket... I see Huck as a fad... a flavor of the month (since it's December folks feel religious and give Huck & Chuck the nod now)... wait till January and Rudy and Fred will be back in the lead methinks...
I wonder if ITN sees the irony of a Fred Thompson supporter calling any other candidate "insubstantial". Nah, probably not.
The Chuck and Huck thing is pretty cool. And I agree that Huck isn't a fiscal conservative, witness his NASA cheerleading at the YouTube debate. But then again Fred isn't either, what with his support for welfare for defense companies, a.k.a. the Iraq War.
Huckabee's very own Willie Horton. I will say this - Dukakis didn't lie about releasing Horton. Huckabee with Dumond? Well, let's say he might want to examine the 10 commandments again. Though I'm sure there's an exception for Reeps suffering from Clinton Derangement Syndrome. EDIT: More here.
From the crooksandliars link: HO-LY-CRAP! Tell me this isn't true. This just cannot be true. If it is true whenever some clown like Tucker Carlson tries to compare the ire directed at Bush with some of the stuff that went on in the 90's with Clinton he should be smacked upside the head. Between Vince Foster conspiracy theories and allegations of Clinton's drug dealing these anti-Clinton whack-jobs were absolutely nuts!
I'm surprised this wasn't bigger news and that it didn't find its way on here: • The Politico -- A day after news about Iran was out, Huckabee was unaware: At an on-the-record dinner with reporters last night in Des Moines, The Politico's David Paul Kuhn asked Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee about the National Intelligence Report on Iraq that had been released a day earlier (a report that was front-page news across the nation Tuesday and says, as USA TODAY has written, that Iran ceased its secret nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has not resumed work toward building nuclear arms). According to a transcript of the discussion, after Huckabee appeared unfamiliar with the news Kuhn asked the candidate if he had "heard of the finding." Huckabee's response: "No." 31 hours after the NIE was released, a reporter asked Huckabee about its contents. He was absolutely clueless. Maybe its not a big deal, but in my mind, it raises a real concern when a candidate isn't even aware of a major story that was the above the fold lead in most papers more than a day and a half after the fact. It reminds me a little of that certainty a certain president feels that allows him to believe that he doesn't need to read the papers or watch the news. Others do that and filter out the bias for him. Well, here, apparently Huckabee doesn't even have anyone filtering for him.
I'm more and more convinced Huckabee will wither once the spotlight gets hot. He's managed to skate so far because he's likable, articulate, and at least appears to be a fundamentally decent person (I wouldn't say the latter about Guiliani, for example--or Hillary on the other side). But his ideology is a disaster--social/religious conservatism meets lowest-common-denominator economic populism, with a strong dose of nanny-statism thrown in for good measure.
In the course of lambasting Huckabee's fair tax proposal (calling it "crazier, by an order of magnitude, than any other crazy idea I've seen at the national level. It's so crazy that even really crazy right-wingers think it's pretty crazy."), Jon Chait makes an interesting point about the intellectual structures of today's GOP... http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=c2629ba4-609c-4575-aa12-27dde47d411e
Boy this sure does stink....If the press hounded Dukakis for Willie Horton, when he was not personally involved in requesting his release, more that he favored the policy.. Wonder what they will do to Huckabee
The death penalty is not at issue in this case either. It was about letting the guy out of prison. The fact that he got personally involved AND that it appears there was political pressure related to the right's hatred of Clinton adds an entirely different element to this. For me personally, the story is bad, but the fact that he appears to be less than honest about his role in this is worse. I'm done with politicians who blatantly lie to the American people [insert "done with all politician jokes" here].
Tough on crime is ALWAYS an issue. It's just not an issue whenever it appears that a Reep is not being tough on crime.
The other reason why it's a non issue is that Richardson is the only Dem running with ANY sort of record on crime. And he isn't winning the nomination.
Gringo, the free market eliminated racism in the 60s. Don't you know anything? What a perfect expose that you see your function here as being an asshole. You obviously don't know what you're talking about, seriously, yet you can't help yourself from arguing in your inimitable, stupid, contrarian fashion. Frankly, ITN has stepped up his game so much that he's a better poster than you are. He contributes more.
SD, you don't know shit. EVERYTHING good, free market, everything bad, the federal gummint. I thought you would have learned that by now.
So I'm reading Huckabee's website about his new immigration proposal and I think some of the measures are a bit harsh. I think this is an outstanding way to argue for the "Fair tax" Then I read this And the guy lost my vote.
It's a pay off to big business to the detrement of US workers. The number does not have to be increased and infact, I would like to see them up for bid. Let's see just how valuable they are.