{"id":716,"date":"2007-10-26T18:38:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-26T18:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.arkansasfreedom.net\/?p=716"},"modified":"2007-10-26T18:38:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-26T18:38:00","slug":"huckabee-is-outed-by-john-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/?p=716","title":{"rendered":"Huckabee is outed by John Fund"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL<\/span><\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

Another Man From Hope<\/span><\/strong>
\n<\/span>Who is Mike Huckabee?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Friday, October 26, 2007 12:01 a.m.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span>Republicans have won five of the
\nlast seven presidential elections by running candidates who broadly fit the
\nRonald Reagan model–fiscally conservative, and firmly but not harshly
\nconservative on social issues. The wide-open race for the 2008 GOP nomination
\nhas generated two new approaches. <\/span><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Rudy
\nGiuliani, for example, isn’t running away from his socially liberal views,
\nalthough he has modified them. But he is campaigning as a staunch, even acerbic
\neconomic conservative. Should he win the nomination, conventional wisdom has it
\nhe may balance the ticket by picking former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as a
\nrunning mate. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mr.
\nHuckabee, on the other hand, is running hard right on social issues but
\nliberal-populist on some economic issues. This may help explain why the
\naffable, golden-tongued Baptist minister was the clear favorite at the pro-life
\nFamily Research Council’s national forum last Saturday. And why Mr. Huckabee’s
\npraises have been sung by liberal columnists such as Gail Collins of the New
\nYork Times and Jonathan Alter of Newsweek.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Huckabee attributes his support
\nto the fact he is a “hardworking, consistent conservative with some
\nauthenticity about those convictions.” He is certainly qualified for
\nnational office, having served nearly 11 years as a chief executive. I have
\nknown and liked him for years; on the stump he often tells the story of how we
\nfirst met outside his boarded-up office in the state Capitol, which had been
\nsealed by Arkansas Democrats who refused to accept he had won an upset election
\nfor lieutenant governor in 1993. But I also know he is not the “consistent
\nconservative” he now claims to be. <\/span><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Nor am I
\nalone. Betsy Hagan, Arkansas director of the conservative Eagle Forum and a key
\nbacker of his early runs for office, was once “his No. 1 fan.”
\nShe was bitterly disappointed with his record. “He was pro-life and
\npro-gun, but otherwise a liberal,” she says. “Just like Bill Clinton
\nhe will charm you, but don’t be surprised if he takes a completely different
\nturn in office.” <\/span><\/p>\n

Phyllis
\nSchlafly, president of the national Eagle Forum, is even more blunt. “He
\ndestroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas, and left the Republican Party
\na shambles,” she says. “Yet some of the same evangelicals who sold us
\non George W. Bush as a ‘compassionate conservative’ are now trying to sell us
\non Mike Huckabee.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The
\nbusiness community in Arkansas is split. Some praise Mr. Huckabee’s efforts to
\nraise taxes to repair roads and work with an overwhelmingly Democratic
\nlegislature. Free-market advocates are skeptical. “He has zero
\nintellectual underpinnings in the conservative movement,” says Blant Hurt,
\na former part owner of, and columnist for, Arkansas Business magazine.
\n“He’s hostile to free trade, hiked sales and grocery taxes, backed sales
\ntaxes on Internet purchases, and presided over state spending going up more
\nthan twice the inflation rate.” <\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Huckabee
\ntold me yesterday he also cut some taxes, and has taken the Americans for Tax
\nReform no-tax pledge. Former GOP state Rep. Randy Minton is not impressed. In
\n1999, he was urged by the governor to back a gas-tax increase. “I’d taken
\na pledge against higher taxes, but he sniffed that my constituents didn’t
\nunderstand what we have to do in state government to make it work,” Mr.
\nMinton says. “His support for taxes split the Republican Party, and
\ndamaged our name brand.” The Club for Growth notes that only a handful of
\nthe 33 current GOP state legislators back their former governor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Governors
\nwho served with him praise Mr. Huckabee for his ability to work with others,
\nbut say he was clearly a moderate. “He fought my efforts to reform the
\nNational Governors Association and always took fiscal positions to my
\nleft,” former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, a supporter of Mitt Romney, told
\nme.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rick
\nScarborough, a pastor who heads Vision America, attended seminary with Mr.
\nHuckabee and is a strong backer. But, he acknowledges, “Mike has always
\nsought the validation of elites.” When conservatives took over the
\nSouthern Baptist Convention after a bitter fight in the 1980s, Mr. Huckabee
\nsided with the ruling moderates. Paul Pressler, a former Texas judge who led
\nthe conservative Southern Baptist revolt, told me, “I know of no
\nconservative he appointed while he headed the Arkansas Baptist
\nConvention.” <\/span><\/p>\n

Mr.
\nHuckabee’s reluctance to surround himself with conservatives was evident as
\ngovernor, when he kept many agency heads appointed by Bill Clinton. Zac Wright,
\na spokesman for incoming Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe, was asked this year why 15
\nHuckabee agency heads had been retained. Most of them were “Clinton
\npeople,” he replied, not “Huckabee people.” Mr. Huckabee told me
\nmany of his agency heads had “apolitical” responsibilities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many Huckabee supporters have told
\nme their man should be judged by what he’s saying on the campaign trail today.
\nFair enough. Mr. Huckabee was the only GOP candidate to refuse to endorse
\nPresident Bush’s veto of the Democrats’ bill to vastly expand the Schip
\nhealth-care program. Only he and John McCain have endorsed the discredited
\ncap-and-trade system to limit global-warming emissions that has proved a fiasco
\nin Europe. <\/span><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

“It
\ngoes to the moral issue,” he told an admiring group of environmentalists
\nthis month. Alan Greenspan blasts cap-and-trade in his new book as not
\nfeasible, noting that “jobs will be lost and real incomes of workers
\nconstrained.” Mr. Huckabee defends his plan as an “innovative”
\nway to attain complete energy independence from foreign oil by 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n

During a visit to the Journal last
\nspring, Mr. Huckabee joked that one of his biggest challenges is that
\n“like Bill Clinton I hail from Hope, Arkansas, and not every Republican
\nwants to take a chance like that again.” But it’s Mr. Huckabee who is
\ncreating the doubts. “He’s just like Bill Clinton in that he practices
\nmanagement by news cycle,” a former top Huckabee aide told me. “As
\nwith Clinton there was no long-term planning, just putting out fires on a daily
\nbasis. One thing I’ll guarantee is that won’t lead to competent conservative
\ngovernance.” <\/span><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n


\n

\n

\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL Another Man From Hope Who is Mike Huckabee? Friday, October 26, 2007 12:01 a.m. Republicans have won five of the last seven presidential elections by running candidates who broadly fit the Ronald Reagan model–fiscally conservative, and firmly but not harshly conservative on social issues. The wide-open race for the 2008 … Continue reading Huckabee is outed by John Fund<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-huckabee-shameful-record","category-presidential-candidates"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}