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Huckabee's Tune Is Out Of Touch
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Published: January 11, 2008
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Mike Huckabee charmed Iowa with his playful personality, his gift of gab and his success at losing more than 100 pounds. But it was his conservative convictions on abortion and gay marriage that secured the vote of evangelical Christians, about 60 percent of Iowa's Republican turnout.
Huckabee maintained his affable manner in New Hampshire, even while dodging criticism about having increased taxes as Arkansas governor. In fairness, the state's Supreme Court had ordered lawmakers to change the funding of public schools. In developing a comprehensive solution, Huckabee made some courageous choices, including the closure of tiny, wasteful school districts.
Nevertheless, many Republicans remain wary of Huckabee, the guitar-playing, anti-establishment Southern Baptist preacher.
Huckabee unabashedly wears his faith on his sleeve. He doesn't believe in evolution. He wanted to quarantine people with AIDS as late as 1992. He held up disaster-relief legislation for three weeks because it mentioned "acts of God." And he freed more than 1,000 prisoners because of his belief in religious redemption. One of those freed went on to kill a Missouri cheerleader.
More worrisome for free-market conservatives, Huckabee believes in protectionist government. He doesn't want our food to come from China, our oil from Saudi Arabia or our manufacturing from Europe.
Yet he's too clever to say he wants import duties so high on Hondas and BMWs that everyone will have to buy Fords and Chevys.
Huckabee also wants to replace the income tax with a 23 percent sales tax that would hit hard the low-income voters drawn to him. At the same time, he calls the Club for Growth, which campaigns for low taxes, the Club for Greed. And his crackpot proposal to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service only serves to marginalize him.
While not incurious, Huckabee has shown himself to be surprisingly unaware during the campaign. He didn't know for 10 days that Pakistan had lifted its emergency rule. He didn't know for nearly two days that the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear ambitions had been released.
And when he crossed the picket line to appear on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, he said he thought the writer's strike had been settled.
Huckabee plays the bass guitar loudly, but his candidacy is out of tune with America today. He is not the right choice.
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