http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59252

Huckabee’s
fact-twisting

Posted: December 19, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

In the Nov. 28 YouTube debate on
CNN, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee misrepresented the
historical record when asked if he had supported as Arkansas governor a program
for granting in-state college tuition scholarships for illegal aliens.

A YouTube viewer asked Huckabee a question that began,
“Governor Huckabee, while governor of Arkansas, you gave illegal aliens a
discount for college in Arkansas by allowing them to pay lower in-state tuition
rates.”

In Huckabee’s answer, I have
identified five specific, easily documented misrepresentations of historical
facts.

Huckabee began his response by
telling the questioner, “Ashley, first of all, let me just express that
you are a little misinformed. We never passed a bill that gave special
privileges to the children of illegals to go to college.”

In the next paragraph, Huckabee
misrepresented the program the first time, identified here by italics.

First, he claimed he supported a
bill “that would’ve allowed those children who had been in our schools
their entire school life the opportunity to have the same scholarship that
their peers had, who had also gone to high school with them and sat in the same
classrooms.”

The bill in question was the Access to Postsecondary Education Act of 2005,
also known as HB 1525.

Section 1(b) of HB1525 offered
state-supported tuition scholarships to illegal immigrants who attended only
three years of high school in Arkansas, provided they graduated from an
Arkansas high school or received a General Education Development diploma in the
state, and were admitted at an Arkansas institution of higher education.

None of the provisions of the bill
require the illegal immigrants to have attended Arkansas elementary or high
schools for “their entire life,” as Huckabee represented in the
debate.

The next paragraph of Huckabee’s
YouTube debate answer contained the second misrepresentation of facts, once
again emphasized here with italics.

“They couldn’t just move in
during their senior year and go to college,” Huckabee continued. “It
wasn’t about out-of-state tuition. It was an academic meritorious
scholarship called the Academic Challenge Scholarship.”

The Arkansas Challenge Program,
codified at Ark. Code Ann. Section 6-82-1001-1006 (Supp. 1991), is a totally
separate law from HB 1525.

The Arkansas Challenge Program was
enacted in 1991, becoming law more than four years before Huckabee began his
first term as Arkansas governor in 1996.

Huckabee had nothing to do with the
passage of the Arkansas Challenge Program, a law based on being an Arkansas
resident that makes no mention of illegal immigrants.

Evidently, Huckabee sought to
deflect attention about HB 1525 by referring to the Challenge Program, an act
that was meritorious in nature.

HB 1525 made no special exemptions
for illegal aliens who merited tuition preferences because of their exemplary
academic performance.

In the next paragraph of his CNN
debate answer, Huckabee tells the truth, noting that HB 1525 passed the
Arkansas House, but failed to become law after the bill failed to pass the
Arkansas Senate.

Huckabee, however, neglected to
reference his State of the State Address, also archived
on YouTube, in which he endorsed HB 1525, again on the false
premises that the bill applied to illegal immigrants who had attended Arkansas
schools for “their entire career as a student.”

If we skip a paragraph of Huckabee’s
response in the debate, we come to Huckabee’s third misrepresentation, in which
he identified a set of qualifications not mentioned in HB1525 that Huckabee
claimed an illegal immigrant would have to meet under the bill to qualify for
in-state college tuition scholarships.

The paragraph also contains the
fourth misrepresentation, where Huckabee specified to be eligible an illegal
alien would have to apply for citizenship.

Huckabee told the CNN debate
audience, “I said that if you’d sat in our schools from the time you’re
5 or 6 years old and you had become an A-plus student, you’d completed the
curriculum, you were an exceptional student, and you also had to be drug and
alcohol-free – and the other provision, you had to be applying for
citizenship.”

Obviously, Huckabee realized these
invented qualifications would make his support of in-state college tuition
scholarships for illegal immigrants appear to be more politically acceptable to
opponents of illegal immigration.

The problem is none of these
qualifications were specified in HB 1525, the only relevant bill here that
Huckabee actually supported.

HB 1525 was not a merit bill.

Section 1(d) of HB 1525 merely
required an illegal alien, to be eligible for an in-state college tuition
scholarship, had to file an affidavit with the state-sponsored institution of
higher education stating that the student had intent to legalize his or her
immigration status.

Contrary to what Huckabee said,
HB1525 required no proof a student had obtained legal status or even had
applied to obtain legal status.

HB 1525 did not require proof of
legal status.

Huckabee’s fifth misrepresentation
came when he told the CNN debate audience, “We wanted people to be taxpayers,
not tax-takers. And that’s what that provision did.”

HB 1525 had no work requirement
provisions specifying an illegal immigrant who qualified for an in-state
college tuition scholarship had to work in Arkansas, or anywhere else, while he
or she was a college student or afterwards.

HB 1525 had no work requirements
specified.

What this analysis suggests is
Huckabee appears to have a facility to re-invent the past when questioned
closely about a past action or statement, here his support of HB 1525.

Huckabee answers by shifting ground,
mixing HB 1525 with a merit law passed before Huckabee was governor that was
never designed for illegal immigrants.

Moreover, Huckabee mischaracterizes
the true conditions of HB 1525 with a series of invented requirements, none of
which had any factual basis in the actual language of the bill.

Huckabee’s point appears to be to
engage misdirection by falsehoods designed to elicit our sympathies.

The candidate’s convenient rewriting
of history sets the stage for him to argue before a national television
audience, “This bill would’ve said that if you came here, not because you
made the choice, but because your parents did, that we’re not going to punish a
child because the parent committed a crime.”

Unfortunately, we have come to
expect our politicians to lie.

Still, when re-inventing the past
becomes a ready facility of a candidate never before scrutinized at the
presidential level, the charge becomes particularly important.

How can we allow a man who
represents himself to Christian conservatives as a Baptist preacher to run for
president on a self-styled myth of his political history?

If Huckabee feels no personal
responsibility to recall his political history accurately, we as an electorate
must be doubly vigilant, determined to make sure no Huckabee slip goes by
unnoticed.

This is especially critical when we
realize the YouTube questioner had not asked Huckabee to justify his position
supporting preferential in-state tuition colleges for illegal immigrants as
such, but to explain why Huckabee had neglected to argue the provisions of HB
1525 should apply to the children of U.S. military as well.

Huckabee got to this, but only at
the end, when he claimed, “And that’s why I proposed a veterans bill of
rights that, if anything, would give our veterans the most exceptional
privileges of all, because they are the ones who have earned all of our freedom
– every single one of them.”

Remarkably, even though Huckabee
exceeded his allotted time, he still failed to answer the question, never
explaining why he supported HB 1525 for illegal immigrants only, and not for
the children of U.S. military as well.

Note: The question and answer exchange
during the YouTube/CNN debate can
be seen online.

 

Huckabee’s
fact-twisting

Posted: December 19, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

In the Nov. 28 YouTube debate on
CNN, Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee misrepresented the
historical record when asked if he had supported as Arkansas governor a program
for granting in-state college tuition scholarships for illegal aliens.

A YouTube viewer asked Huckabee a question that began,
“Governor Huckabee, while governor of Arkansas, you gave illegal aliens a
discount for college in Arkansas by allowing them to pay lower in-state tuition
rates.”

In Huckabee’s answer, I have
identified five specific, easily documented misrepresentations of historical
facts.

Huckabee began his response by
telling the questioner, “Ashley, first of all, let me just express that
you are a little misinformed. We never passed a bill that gave special
privileges to the children of illegals to go to college.”

In the next paragraph, Huckabee
misrepresented the program the first time, identified here by italics.

First, he claimed he supported a
bill “that would’ve allowed those children who had been in our schools
their entire school life the opportunity to have the same scholarship that
their peers had, who had also gone to high school with them and sat in the same
classrooms.”

The bill in question was the Access to Postsecondary Education Act of 2005,
also known as HB 1525.

Section 1(b) of HB1525 offered
state-supported tuition scholarships to illegal immigrants who attended only
three years of high school in Arkansas, provided they graduated from an
Arkansas high school or received a General Education Development diploma in the
state, and were admitted at an Arkansas institution of higher education.

None of the provisions of the bill
require the illegal immigrants to have attended Arkansas elementary or high
schools for “their entire life,” as Huckabee represented in the
debate.

The next paragraph of Huckabee’s
YouTube debate answer contained the second misrepresentation of facts, once
again emphasized here with italics.

“They couldn’t just move in
during their senior year and go to college,” Huckabee continued. “It
wasn’t about out-of-state tuition. It was an academic meritorious
scholarship called the Academic Challenge Scholarship.”

The Arkansas Challenge Program,
codified at Ark. Code Ann. Section 6-82-1001-1006 (Supp. 1991), is a totally
separate law from HB 1525.

The Arkansas Challenge Program was
enacted in 1991, becoming law more than four years before Huckabee began his
first term as Arkansas governor in 1996.

Huckabee had nothing to do with the
passage of the Arkansas Challenge Program, a law based on being an Arkansas
resident that makes no mention of illegal immigrants.

Evidently, Huckabee sought to
deflect attention about HB 1525 by referring to the Challenge Program, an act
that was meritorious in nature.

HB 1525 made no special exemptions
for illegal aliens who merited tuition preferences because of their exemplary
academic performance.

In the next paragraph of his CNN
debate answer, Huckabee tells the truth, noting that HB 1525 passed the
Arkansas House, but failed to become law after the bill failed to pass the
Arkansas Senate.

Huckabee, however, neglected to
reference his State of the State Address, also archived
on YouTube, in which he endorsed HB 1525, again on the false
premises that the bill applied to illegal immigrants who had attended Arkansas
schools for “their entire career as a student.”

If we skip a paragraph of Huckabee’s
response in the debate, we come to Huckabee’s third misrepresentation, in which
he identified a set of qualifications not mentioned in HB1525 that Huckabee
claimed an illegal immigrant would have to meet under the bill to qualify for
in-state college tuition scholarships.

The paragraph also contains the
fourth misrepresentation, where Huckabee specified to be eligible an illegal
alien would have to apply for citizenship.

Huckabee told the CNN debate
audience, “I said that if you’d sat in our schools from the time you’re
5 or 6 years old and you had become an A-plus student, you’d completed the
curriculum, you were an exceptional student, and you also had to be drug and
alcohol-free – and the other provision, you had to be applying for
citizenship.”

Obviously, Huckabee realized these
invented qualifications would make his support of in-state college tuition
scholarships for illegal immigrants appear to be more politically acceptable to
opponents of illegal immigration.

The problem is none of these
qualifications were specified in HB 1525, the only relevant bill here that
Huckabee actually supported.

HB 1525 was not a merit bill.

Section 1(d) of HB 1525 merely
required an illegal alien, to be eligible for an in-state college tuition
scholarship, had to file an affidavit with the state-sponsored institution of
higher education stating that the student had intent to legalize his or her
immigration status.

Contrary to what Huckabee said,
HB1525 required no proof a student had obtained legal status or even had
applied to obtain legal status.

HB 1525 did not require proof of
legal status.

Huckabee’s fifth misrepresentation
came when he told the CNN debate audience, “We wanted people to be taxpayers,
not tax-takers. And that’s what that provision did.”

HB 1525 had no work requirement
provisions specifying an illegal immigrant who qualified for an in-state
college tuition scholarship had to work in Arkansas, or anywhere else, while he
or she was a college student or afterwards.

HB 1525 had no work requirements
specified.

What this analysis suggests is
Huckabee appears to have a facility to re-invent the past when questioned
closely about a past action or statement, here his support of HB 1525.

Huckabee answers by shifting ground,
mixing HB 1525 with a merit law passed before Huckabee was governor that was
never designed for illegal immigrants.

Moreover, Huckabee mischaracterizes
the true conditions of HB 1525 with a series of invented requirements, none of
which had any factual basis in the actual language of the bill.

Huckabee’s point appears to be to
engage misdirection by falsehoods designed to elicit our sympathies.

The candidate’s convenient rewriting
of history sets the stage for him to argue before a national television
audience, “This bill would’ve said that if you came here, not because you
made the choice, but because your parents did, that we’re not going to punish a
child because the parent committed a crime.”

Unfortunately, we have come to
expect our politicians to lie.

Still, when re-inventing the past
becomes a ready facility of a candidate never before scrutinized at the
presidential level, the charge becomes particularly important.

How can we allow a man who
represents himself to Christian conservatives as a Baptist preacher to run for
president on a self-styled myth of his political history?

If Huckabee feels no personal
responsibility to recall his political history accurately, we as an electorate
must be doubly vigilant, determined to make sure no Huckabee slip goes by
unnoticed.

This is especially critical when we
realize the YouTube questioner had not asked Huckabee to justify his position
supporting preferential in-state tuition colleges for illegal immigrants as
such, but to explain why Huckabee had neglected to argue the provisions of HB
1525 should apply to the children of U.S. military as well.

Huckabee got to this, but only at
the end, when he claimed, “And that’s why I proposed a veterans bill of
rights that, if anything, would give our veterans the most exceptional
privileges of all, because they are the ones who have earned all of our freedom
– every single one of them.”

Remarkably, even though Huckabee
exceeded his allotted time, he still failed to answer the question, never
explaining why he supported HB 1525 for illegal immigrants only, and not for
the children of U.S. military as well.

Note: The question and answer exchange
during the YouTube/CNN debate can
be seen online.

 elated special offer:

Get Corsi’s latest book, autographed: “The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada”

---

Jerome R. Corsi
is a staff reporter for WND. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard
University in political science in 1972 and has written many books and
articles, including his latest best-seller, “The Late Great USA.”
Corsi co-authored with John O’Neill the No. 1 New York Times
best-seller, “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against
John Kerry.” Other books include “Showdown with Nuclear Iran,” “Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil,” which he co-authored with WND columnist Craig. R. Smith, and “Atomic Iran.”