Mike Huckabee (1955- ) was governor of the American state of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. Time magazine said he was one of the country’s five best governors. He is now running for president in the 2008 election.
In December 2007 he was second only to Rudy Giuliani among Republicans in nationwide opinion polls.
In January 2008 he fell to a weak third place. Although Giuliani dropped out, both Romney and McCain passed him by. By the end of the month he was falling badly behind.
Although he comes from a small state and has little money, he is favoured by the Christian right, one of the two main wings of the Republican party. He was once a Christian minister and speaks in the moral absolutes that the Christian right loves. Unlike anyone else running he is not afraid to say he believes in God and the Bible.
That is hardly an extreme position: most Americans believe in God and the Bible. Yet you do not hear the other candidates saying it because they live too much in the world of the white liberal north-east where it is bad manners to openly express your Christian beliefs.
And that is Huckabee’s secret weapon: he lives near the middle of the country and thinks more like most Americans. Only Obama comes close to him on that.
Because the press lives in that same liberal north-east world, Huckabee is bound to surprise them.
From a Republican point of view, although Huckabee is good on moral issues, he is bad on taxes.
Huckabee is not so much a Republican as what used to be called a Southern Democrat: they wanted to use government to help people but had old-fashioned ideas about morals. It was the Democratic party’s hard stand on abortion in the 1980s and 1990s that pushed them and much of the South into the Republican party.
When Huckabee was governor of Arkansas he cut taxes but he raised them too. He poured new taxes into education and health.
Huckabee wants to get rid of the income tax and put a nationwide sales tax in its place.
Huckabee is squarely against abortion and same-sex marriage, always has been. He thinks creationism should be taught in schools in addition to Darwin’s evolution.
Religion is so much a part of how he sees the world that he cannot separate it from his policy decisions. He was a Southern Baptist minister in Arkansas in the 1980s and early 1990s.
He is for making it hard for foreigners to come to America, but he is for helping those who are already here.
He is for the war in Iraq. But he has no foreign policy experience and his views on these things are a big unknown. The same was true of Bush in 2000, but that was before 9/11 when the world seemed quiet. His lack of experience proved costly.
Last updated: Wed Jan 30 13:18:48 UTC 2008
See also:
Learn about the Huckster;
Candidate Research – Know Who You’re Voting For ( The Easy Way )
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/candidate_research_know_who_youre_voting_for/
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