Huckabee Presser. Attack of the Blumenthal Kid
By Erick Posted in 2008 | FRC Action — Comments (45) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I attended a press conference with Mike Huckabee after his speech. It is interesting to note that of all the candidates, his was the only one to do something like this for media and bloggers.
I asked Governor Huckabee what he'd do, assuming he's gotten social conservatives on his side, to get fiscal conservatives on his side. He went straight to the Fair Tax. He said they should support him because he'd push the Fair Tax and scrap the income tax. I think this is going to be his huge weakness.
We've all been focused on social conservatives bolting. Fiscal conservatives could bolt if Huckabee were the nominee and he has not done something to placate the Club For Growth types.
On Iowa, Huckabee says his office there has seen a lot of traffic in the past twenty-four hours. He says he does not know what Brownback will do, but a lot of Brownback supporters in Iowa are flocking to him.
One reporter asked Gov. Huckabee if he thought Governor Romney is a conservative. He paused, then he said, "I think Governor Romney is espousing a very conservative message right now."
Oh, and Max Blumenthal, Sidney's son, showed up to harass Huckabee (click the pic for a larger view). During Huckabee's speech, he said we were importing workers into this country because we're aborting a million Americans a year. Max, cutting into other reporters time rudely, wants to know if Huckabee means the aborted babies would be working in poultry plants and cutting the grass. Huckabee says he has no idea what they'd be doing other than contributing to America. Max is not amused and keeps harassing Huckabee until he goes on to someone else.
Then Max interrupts again to know why Huckabee isn't wearing a flag lapel pin. Huckabee says the jewelry is irrelevant. Max takes his off, says it would protect Huckabee from Fox News, and then says it is made in China. Huckabee tries then to give it back saying he really didn't want a plastic American flag that was made in China. Max then berates him on Obama being attacked for not wearing a flag pin. Huckabee points out he defended Obama and Max looks even less intelligent than when he started, which is pretty difficult. The kid seems to not know how to make a way in life expect to live off his dad's name. Sad.
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Huckabee Presser. Attack of the Blumenthal Kid 45 Comments (0 topical, 45 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
That bit about Max was a riot From your depiction Huck handled him very well. I've got nothing against Huck. He is an excellent debater but I just don't see him as president.. I think he would get stomped by Hillary. I would like to see him run for Senate as we could really use someone like him defending our views in Washington.
Hes an ace in the VP spot however. Its about time the nice guy didnt finish last!!
Big Ups to the Huckster for keeping his cool, everytime I see the Huck I like him more....
Joe Carter of FRC had some fun with him earlier this year.
For the record, nobody is threatening to go third party, but Huck's record is such that he would definitely disappoint and depress both the tax cutters and the spending hawks - and the former are a core of the GOP going back a century, while the latter have already been told to sit on their hands for 8 years of Bush (we saw where decay of the GOP brand on spending got us in 2006) and might end up lost for good. Add to that the fact that Huckabee doesn't really have a lot of cred with national security hawks and is a big nanny-stater, and you have a guy who is running almost entirely on being a SoCon. His SoCon credentials are great and he's a charismatic guy with a decade of executive experience, but at the end of the day you can't win the White House as a one-issue social conservative.
The Senate, on the other hand...
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
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-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I'm a big-time so-con, but I'm a bigger-time fis-con and mil-con (is that a term?).
And I can't support the Huck. Well, not in the primaries. A Rudy-Huck ticket.....wow.
It's war -- so when can we start shooting back at the enemy Democrats?
Im a no Democrat-con.
BTW Rudy-Huck would be a great ticket
...you think that the Dems might pick up Arkansas with Hillary Clinton on the ticket (and that may just be a possibility).
Of course, there are different schools of thought about VP selections. Sometimes people look to them to deliver one or more states. Other times, they're to fill a gap or otherwise balance the ticket.
Huckabee makes sense because the SoCons are going to demand a great deal from Giuliani to get behind him.
In 1960, Labor-Mafioso Complex bigwig Joe Bananas -- a close friend of Joe Kennedy's -- told the elder Mr. Kennedy that the only way his son becomes president is if he chooses mafia fave LBJ as his runningmate. The next day it happened. The unions, really a front for the powerful mafia in those days, held that kind of power over the Democratic Party.
At the risk of comparing the social conservatives to a bunch of criminals, it's a pretty similar situation here. The social conservatives, obviously, don't want Rudy....but, if he's going to be it, then they're going to demand one of their own as VP.
And it may well be Huckabee. And that would be a good ticket.
If its the mafia your worried about, Rudy took them head on! But away Fat Tony Salerno, they put a hit out on him! :)
including fat tony salerno he also had a slam dunk case against
then GAMBINO FAMILY BOSS Paul Castellono but John Gotti had him assaniated in front of Sparks Steakhouse before Giuliani could put him away for life . Big Paul Castellano's house was bugged so he was doomed for a life in prison even if he had never been took out by GOTTI and GRAVANO.
Rudy's the man he will make a great president
%100 irrelevant to being a modern day president.
i was pointing out a fact in NYC HISTORY that Giuliani also took out 3 other bosses besides fat tony salerno
i agree it has nothing to do with being president in fact it had nothing to do with being mayor either he did this while working in Reagans justice dept.
But it sure looks good on any resume
I don't see where her tenuous association with that state wins her any support at all.
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson
You watching the game?
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The Red Sox Republican: Burkeanism, Baseball, and Sundries.
I have already gnawed off two fingernails...
60 minutes is a game
later
Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
www.race42008.com
www.hinzsightreport.com
www.theminorityreportblog.com
"One man with courage makes a majority" - Andrew Jackson
Thank you, that is all.
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The Red Sox Republican: Burkeanism, Baseball, and Sundries.
thats a very strong ticket and with Huckabee as Rudy's running mate the reasonable social conservatives will definitely stay with us and not leave the GOP.
How about SC's governor Sanford?
Surely there's somebody out there with rock solid SoCon bona fides other than Mike Huckabee. If Rudy's the nominee, we'll already have one "piecemeal-conservative" on the ticket. We don't need another one.
Fiscally, Huckabee's a big government conservative. And we've had enough problems with the big government conservative we have in office right now.
Hell, put Tom Coburn on the ticket. I'd vote for him in a heartbeat. And he's as socially conservative as they come.
would be an excellent VP choice i used to live in his district in San Diego and he is both a great man and a fantastic congressman.
But Huckabee being a ordained minister and fine orator that is well known to social cons due to the debates would do the best of keeping the social cons from bolting i don't want them to leave the GOP but it's a free country and the choice is theirs to make but i hope nad pray they stay with us.
Certainly that would be a ticket designed to illustrate a fusion between the hawks/tax cutters/small govt crowd and the SoCons, and both are charismatic campaigners, albeit in very different ways. Stranger tickets have happened.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
Giuliani and Huckabee are two sides of the same split party coin.
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He can get the "national security hawks" on his side with a good VP choice. As for fiscal conservatives, he has some work to do, but he did take a big step already by taking the ATR "no tax" pledge, something that neither Giuliani nor McCain nor Fred have done.
Once everyone hears about how Huckabee wants to try to apply the Powell Doctrine to the War on Terror, and how he wants to alienate our one firm ally that borders Afghanistan (much as Pelosi wants to re: Iraq and Turkey), he'll have a huge falling out with the pro-War on Terror majority in our party.
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Let's nominate the Nash Equilibrium for President.
The part of the Powell Doctrine he likes is the "overwhelming force" part. That's why Huckabee is a big supporter of the surge in Iraq.
Regarding Pakistan, we already dealt with this issue. Huckabee is a very vocal supporter of our ally Pakistan:
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/anteater/2007/sep/29/a_favorable_analysis_...
I care about the top guy, not the VP. The top guy is going to set policy, not the VP. And I care more about his actual record on taxes than what pledge he agrees to in the hopes it will help him salvage his Presidential campaign, not that there was anything ever there to salvage. His support of the FairTax is all about the same thing. He probably wouldn't have done either if he had any choice in the matter. It's all too little, too late anyway.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
I'm becoming less and less a fan of Huckabee's the more I learn about him. He has a lot of nanny-state tendencies and his populist pronouncements just grate on me.
I'm primarily motivated by fiscal and foreign policies. And he seems OK on the latter, but just about awful on the former.
He'd make a great Senate candidate -- at least insofar as it would be good to gain a Republican seat (we'll need them). Both of Arkansas' Dem senators are relatively conservative. So, ideologically, it probably wouldn't be much of a gain. But we're going to need as many R's as we can get in the next Congress.
The Dems may well be close to the magical number of 60 Senators. And when you consider that Republicans have the Snowes, Collins', and Specters out there, they'll probably be able to get cloture votes for most things Hillary will want to do.
I'm not sure too many of my fellow Republicans and conservatives understand how close we are to the edge of the cliff.
...when it comes to guns. On that issue, Huckabee can be thought of as the ultimate anti-nanny-stater. On fighting obesity, perhaps you can view Mike as an nanny-stater (but that is such a small issue compared to guns).
I'm not really a gun guy myself -- although I have long been a fervent supporter of the NRA's agenda.
Maybe you didn't get the memo: they won. Gun control is the last thing the Democrats are going to be doing anything on now.
I think they've come to the understanding (correctly, IMO) that this issue was killing them with the blue-collar constituencies that they once relied on.
Obviously, there still are and always will be gun-grabbers in Washington. But politics drives things. And there's no political upside right now to gun control.
It's not just fighting obesity that worries me about Huckabee, BTW. His rhetoric is unabashedly populist. And populism, frankly, sucks. In whatever form it takes, it's the arch-enemy of real conservatism -- because it necessarily pits one group of people against another group of people, when the essence of conservatism is the primacy of all people.
I never knew much about Huckabee when he was governor of Arkansas. But I've come to like him less and less as he's run for president. I look at him the way a lot of you social conservatives look at Giuliani.
But it matters none: my overriding interest here is winning the White House in 2008. And if I thought Huckabee was the guy who could deliver that to the Republicans, I'd support him in a heartbeat.
But he isn't.
This is still a big issue and we are still on the downhill slope started almost 100 years ago. If the Republican's didn't take control of Congress, we'd be looking at a son-of-AWB already (as well as automatic renewal of the original AWB). The liberals do it for the same reason they want to raise taxes. It's in their DNA. It doesn't matter whether it is politically popular or not. They are confident they can spin it and they are probably right. Gun control is not a hard sell for the suburban soccer mom crowd.
Huckabee is great on that issue, but it is balanced out by his big government approach to everything else.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
Follow the Democratic primaries right now. This is where the cornucopia of big liberal bugaboos generally get their airing. How much have you heard about gun laws? I haven't heard much personally. Maybe I've missed it. But it seems to be persona non grata in the primary. We've got everything else: healthcare, taxes, foreign policy, etc.
But gun control has been conspicuously missing. And that's because the appetite for it on the left, among the pragmatists, has waned. And the prospect that a Democratic congress would use such an item with a Republican president is, IMO, nil.
Moreover, as somebody who has dabbled in electoral politics myself (though never as a candidate), my Democratic friends tell me that they've basically cried 'uncle' on the issue. It's been killing them with some core constituencies.
The Carolyn McCarthy's of the world are growing more rare.
Just why the amendment to reauthorize the AWB passed in the Senate? The Democrats (and some Republicans) certainly weren't afraid to go on record supporting it. Romney seems to be absolutely proud of his support of the AWB, and that's when he's running in the freakin Republican primary. The only reason it isn't law right now is because it was attacked to a bill that granted immunity to firearms manufacturers that the trial lawyers (owners of the Democrat party) hated.
The Democrats don't have to talk about gun control, because everybody already knows where they stand on the issue. There's not a bit of difference between Hillary, Obama, and Edwards on this. Hillary is much too smart to talk about it anyway. She knows she has the nomination all sewn up, so why would she do anything to hurt herself in the general? You won't hear a word about gun control until she is signing a new gun control law passed by Congress.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
It is an article of faith with hard Ds that all guns are bad, so they don't have to talk about it. The only constituency they have that is generally pro-gun is the old-time blue collar /union voter, all twelve of them that remain alive, working, and voting. They'll get that vote because they're a D and can safely ignore them once in power.
In Vino Veritas
Because they aren't talking about it...and they have in years past.
It's just not something I'm worried about. There are other things that are much more disconcerting.
Good grief, I think we're close to the SCOTUS taking a wholesale look at gun legislation with the recent ruling of the DC gun ban being unconstitutional.
That issue has gone our way...and it will continue doing so.
For the same reason they pretend they are going to cut taxes and then raise them as soon as they get into office. It's an easy game to play and most of them never have to worry about paying a price for it. The only Democrats that need to watch it are those from rural districts, and there aren't enough of those to matter. Their numbers are offset by the pro-gun control Republicans from suburban districts.
I already gave you an example of an actual AWB amendment that had the votes to pass recently. Yet you claim there's no interest in gun control, we've won the war, and don't need to worry about it any more.
SCOTUS taking a wholesale look at gun legislation with the recent ruling of the DC gun ban being unconstitutional.
Yea, and there's exactly one pro-2A vote on SCOTUS, so a lot of good that is going to do us. How many times has SCOTUS thrown out a statute based on 2A grounds? As far as I've been able to determine, that number is exactly zero. It's the amendment that just doesn't exist.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
I see the kid has been thoroughly "indoctrinated".
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us - Voltaire
ill bred, too.
Guess it's true that apples don't fall very far from the tree.
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling
That dude is evidence that we need to dig out our zombie strategy...yeesh.
...when they see me they'll say, "There goes Loren Wallace,
the greatest thing to ever climb into a race car."
Max then berates him on Obama being attacked for not wearing a flag pin. Huckabee points out he defended Obama and Max looks even less intelligent than when he started, which is pretty difficult.
Never ask a question you don't know the answer to. I assume he's going to go ask Ron Paul to justify his support of the Iraq War now.
Papa must be proud.