MikeHuckabee.com News Release: Former Arkansas Governor Delivers a Strong Performance at the GOP Debate at the Ronald Reagan Library

January 30, 2008

Little Rock, AR – Former Arkansas Governor and Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee spoke to the American people about the vital issue of the economy at the GOP Presidential Debate at the Reagan Library. Huckabee reiterated a common theme of his campaign, that average Americans are struggling in the current economy.

“If you talk to people driving trucks, they’ll tell you fuel prices are higher. They are not making more money to haul items, but they are spending more to do it,” Huckabee said. “I think what Americans are looking for is someone who will talk straight with them. We need to have someone who will address policies, not just for the people at the top, but for the average American.”

Huckabee said a new infrastructure package would help stimulate the U.S. economy. “For every dollar we spend, it would create jobs. “Let’s create more jobs with American workers, American concrete and American steel,” he said.

Huckabee has the most executive leadership of any Republican candidate, having served as governor of Arkansas for more than ten years. He believes that experience makes him the best qualified person to lead this country.

“When you’re a governor you manage a microcosm of the federal government,” Huckabee said. “Washington doesn’t understand how states operate, but states understand how Washington operates because we had to deal with unfunded mandates.”

Huckabee touted his conservative credentials, earned while serving as governor of Arkansas.

“I created the first broad-based tax cut with a 90 percent Democratic legislature. I balanced a budget every year, I consistently supported the human life amendment, I also supported the marriage amendment – two conservative hallmarks,” he said. “I believe in less government and lower taxes.”

On the issue of illegal immigration, Huckabee spoke of his plan to build a border fence.

“What we have to do is have a secure border fence and I propose to do that within 18 months of office,”

Huckabee said. “We have to have a process where the people who are here have to go to the back of the line and start over, that way we create a system that’s legal and protects the dignity of all Americans.”

Huckabee said he supports the “Reagan doctrine” on peace through strength. “We must have enough troop strength of the regular Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine, so that we don’t have extended deployments out of the National Guard.”

On the issue of Iraq, Huckabee said the U.S. needs to do what it takes to “get out of there with victory and honor. We owe it to those who have gone before – so that they have not gone in vain, and for our future sons and daughters, so that they don’t have to go there again soon.”

Huckabee said he has a consistent record of being pro-life.

"I value every human life, I would make every decision on the side of life.” It goes to the heart of who we are as a country,” Huckabee said. “I’m pro-life.”

Noting that the last four of out of five presidents were governors, Huckabee said that “governors understand leadership. There is no such thing as an isolated issue – education, health care, economic development, they are all related.

“Governors don’t get to specialize – we don’t have that luxury. We need to be able to handle on any given day, a variety of issues, and understand how they are woven together. “Real leadership recognizes what your decisions do to people at the bottom – it’s seeing the whole field,” he said.

When asked if President Reagan would endorse his candidacy, Huckabee said “I endorse President Reagan and let me tell you why: Ronald Reagan was more than a policy wonk – he loved this country and he inspired us to believe in ourselves again. He loved America and he knew it is a good nation.

“We need to recapture that American can-do spirit. He brought that to our country and made us believe in ourselves. I hope we continue to believe in ourselves again, and what made him a great American.”

Total Times for Boca Raton Debates

Romney: 21:11, during 13 times
McCain: 16:00, during 13 times
Giuliani: 13:50, during 11 times
Huckabee: 12:11, during nine times
Paul: 6:31, during six times

Time Percentages

McCain: 27.6%
Romney: 27.0%
Giuliani: 20.4%
Huckabee: 17.3%
Paul: 7.6%

CAMERON: Governor Huckabee, to change the subject a little bit and focus a moment on electability. Back in 1998, you were one of about 100 people who affirmed, in a full-page ad in the "New York Times," the Southern Baptist Convention's declaration that, quote, "A wife us to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband." Women voters in both parties harshly criticized that. Is that position politically viable in the general election of 2008, sir?

HUCKABEE: You know, it's interesting, everybody says religion is off limits, except we always can ask me the religious questions. So let me try to do my best to answer it. (APPLAUSE) And since -- if we're really going to have a religious service, I'd really feel more comfortable if I could pass the plates, because our campaign could use the money tonight, Carl. (LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE) We'll just go all the way. First of all, if anybody knows my wife, I don't think they for one minute think that she's going to just sit by and let me do whatever I want to. That would be an absolute total misunderstanding of Janet Huckabee. The whole context of that passage -- and, by the way, it really was spoken to believers, to Christian believers. I'm not the least bit ashamed of my faith or the doctrines of it. I don't try to impose that as a governor and I wouldn't impose it as a president. But I certainly am going to practice it unashamedly, whether I'm a president or whether I'm not a president. But the point... (APPLAUSE) ... the point, and it comes from a passage of scripture in the New Testament Book of Ephesians is that as wives submit themselves to the husbands, the husbands also submit themselves, and it's not a matter of one being somehow superior over the other. It's both mutually showing their affection and submission as unto the Lord. So with all due respect, it has nothing to do with presidency. I just wanted to clear up that little doctrinal quirk there so that there's nobody who misunderstands that it's really about doing what a marriage ought to do and that's marriage is not a 50/50 deal, where each partner gives 50 percent. Biblically, marriage is 100/100 deal. Each partner gives 100 percent of their devotion to the other and that's why marriage is an important institution, because it teaches us how to love. (APPLAUSE)

HUCKABEE: The Air Force has a saying that says that if you're not catching flak, you're not over the target. I'm catching the flak, I must be over the target.

(APPLAUSE)

HUCKABEE: Fred, I want to say, I appreciate the analysis of my record, but let me try to give you some of the facts of my record.

I came into Arkansas as a governor. Put in that position as a lieutenant governor when my predecessor, a Democrat, was forced out of office on a felony conviction.

I did something that had not been done in my state in 160 years. I cut taxes, with the legislature working with me, and we continued to do that 94 times.

We cut spending. I'll tell you, the most painful time of my being a governor in 10 and a half years was looking at a budget that 91 percent of which was pretty well fixed on education, Medicaid, and prisons -- and cutting 11 percent out of that budget.

Everywhere I went for about a year, and every person -- it may take me just a moment longer, please.

HUME: Go ahead. Go ahead.

HUCKABEE: Because there were a lot of things on that catalog there.

HUME: Go ahead. Please, go ahead.

THOMPSON: I know the feeling.

HUCKABEE: Yes.

Everywhere I went, I had people protesting me and screaming and yelling and doing demonstrations because I cut government. But I stayed faithful to the things that Ronald Reagan stayed faithful to.

You know, if Ronald Reagan were running tonight, there would be ads by the Club for Growth running against him because he raised taxes a billion dollars in his first year as governor of California. It would be $10 billion today.

What I did was I governed. And the people of my state must have liked the way I did it, because they kept re-electing me.

HUME: Thank you, Governor.

more at StuckonHuck.com

Here is the Transcript of Fox New Sunday appearance by Mike Huckabee on Sunday January 6th, 2008

Governor Mike Huckabee has received praise again for another solid performance in the Iowa Republican debate yesterday in Des Moines.  Today Noam Scheiber in his article in the New Republic gives high marks to both Mitt Romney and Huckabee saying, "Romney brought his A-game. Huckabee was just a little better."  Here is an excerpt from his article today:

And yet… Each time Romney went on one of his goal-mongering rampages, it seemed like Huckabee was there to one-up him--to see Romney’s technocratic optimism and raise him to some new thematic height. Never was this more apparent than after Romney’s romp through his first year in office. “Well, I like the laundry list that everybody's had,” Huckabee said. “The reality is none of that's going to happen until we bring the country back together.” At this point he reached for an Obama-like flourish: “I think the first priority is to be a president of all the United States. … We've got to quit fighting amongst ourselves and start putting the better interests of this nation [first]. If that doesn't happen, we'll get none of these things done.” I later heard some cynics in the press corps sneer at this sentiment. But a Huckabee aide told me the staff collectively swooned when he uttered the line (which, she said, was completely spontaneous), and I suspect Iowans will follow suit.

 

Political Columnist David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register commented that he thought Governor Mike Huckabee was one of the winners from the Republican Iowa debate yesterday:

Huckabee was also a winner. He has surged enough in recent polls of the race in Iowa that he now leads the GOP contest here. None of the other candidates did anything Wednesday to knock him from that position.

He was folksy, warm and conservative, qualities that have helped him win over Iowa Republicans in recent weeks. His performance should firm up the support of caucus activists who are starting to move toward him. By telling the audience he "won't forget where I come from", he cleaved a neat class difference with the more prosperous Romney.

Here is a link to the entire transcript of the Republican debate on 12-12-07 sponsored by the Des Moines Register.

Mike Huckabee received high marks again for his responses at the Republican debate sponsored by the Hispanic media outlet Univision on Sunday night.  Below are the actual transcribed remarks from Governor Huckabee.
_______________

MODERATOR: Governor Huckabee, how do you explain the decline of support to Republicans by Hispanics?

HUCKABEE: I think Hispanics want the same thing everybody wants. They want jobs. They want education. They want to know that they're going to be able to live with freedom. If the Republicans only got 30 percent of the vote, somehow we didn't do a very good job of communicating that that's what we would provide in terms of opportunity and fairness.

It says more about our party and our need to reach out thank it does about than it does about the Hispanic population of this country. If we're really serious about truly saying we want more than 30 percent of the vote, then as we look at issues like education we'll understand that while the dropout rate from high school is 30 percent among all populations, it's 50 percent among Hispanics.

HUCKABEE: We've got to change that by creating personalized education that focuses on perpetuating what's good for students, not just making what's good for the school.

There's also issues and disparities between diabetes and other issues of health.

So I think, if our policies reflect lifting people up, we'll get the vote.
(APPLAUSE)

___________

MODERATOR: Governor Huckabee, is there a risk standing up here (inaudible)?

HUCKABEE: Well, I think the great risk is not so much that we would come. The far greater risk is if we didn't. And it's not just that we would offend or perhaps insult the Hispanic audience of this country. I think it would insult our own party. It would insult every voter in this country.

To act like that somehow we've become so arrogant that there's any segment of our population that we're either afraid to speak to, hear their questions, or somehow that we don't think that they're as important as another group. And it's why I think whether it's an African American audience, a Hispanic audience, a union audience, as Republicans, we ought to be more than willing to sit down, even with people with whom we might know there are disagreements.  And I think, frankly, it's important for us to be here. It's important that you gave us this opportunity. And I want to say thanks for letting us have this audience on Univision.

(APPLAUSE)

___________

MODERATOR: Governor Huckabee, what to do with the 12 million of undocumented that already live in the United States?

HUCKABEE: Well, I agree with the mayor that the first step is a secure border, because otherwise nothing really matters.

But I do think the pathway has to include people going to the back, not the front of the line. There can't be an amnesty policy, because that's an insult to all the people who waited, sometimes, ridiculously, for years, just to be able to make the transition here.

I think a reasonable window of time in which a person would go back to the native country, start the process, but the real challenge is that our government, which has failed miserably in all of this -- it's got to get its act together.

HUCKABEE: If you can get an American Express card in two weeks, it shouldn't take seven years to get a work permit to come to this country in order to work on a farm.
(APPLAUSE)

So if our government is incapable of making that process in that length of time, then we should do it in a way to outsource it.

And here's why: When people come to this country, they shouldn't fear. They shouldn't live in hiding. They ought to have their heads up, because the one thing about being an American is, we believe every person ought to have his or her head up and proud, and nobody should have to be in hiding because they're illegal when our government ought to make it so that people can reasonably come here in a legal fashion.

(APPLAUSE)

_______________

Governor Huckabee, how can we curb that anti-Hispanic sentiment?

HUCKABEE: Well, I was governor of the state that is the second- fastest growing state for Hispanics in the country, and we faced that.  Quite frankly, when we fix the situation and make the border secure and people are here legally, a lot of the sentiment goes away.

HUCKABEE: And I think we forget sometimes that it's not just that it's the people feeling that the illegals are coming in such great numbers that we can't deal with it. But it's a terrible thing when a person who is here legally, but who may speak with an accent, is racially profiled by members of the public, and people assume that they may be illegal.

It is in everybody's best interest -- it is in most of all the best interest of the legal immigrants -- that we fix this problem, so nobody questions the legitimacy of their being here, which often happens, unfairly, unnecessarily and, frankly, in a completely un- American manner.
(APPLAUSE)

___________________

Governor Huckabee, the same thing: How would you deal with President Chavez? He was elected democratically.

HUCKABEE: Well, Hugo Chavez is hardly the friend of the United States. And even though we get 60 percent of their oil, I think it's one of the major reasons we need to become increasingly oil-free and energy-independent so that we don't have to worry about Mr. Chavez.

APPLAUSE)

HUCKABEE: But there's a greater issue here, and it's the fact that the people of Venezuela aren't Hugo Chavez and Hugo Chavez is not necessarily the spirit of the people of Venezuela.

(APPLAUSE)

Even though he was elected, he was not elected to be a dictator as he has become, suspending constitutional law.

My mother used to have a statement: If you give somebody enough rope, they'll hang themselves. I have a feeling that Mr. Chavez, continuing to take power from the people as he has done, will find himself unfortunately out of power, and hopefully for all of us, fortunately a democratically elected government there that will give those people back the freedom that he has robbed from them and hopefully by then we won't need their oil, but they will have their freedom.
(APPLAUSE)

____________________

MODERATOR: Governor Huckabee, why not withdraw the troops from Iraq?

HUCKABEE: Because we are winning, as Senator McCain just said. Civilians deaths are down 76 percent since the surge. Even the military deaths are down over 60 percent. And that's not the only way we know we're winning. We're winning because we see in the spirit of our own soldiers a sense of duty and honor that they are being able to carry out a mission that they were sent there to do. To take them out of it not only means we lose, but it means we totally destroy their sense of morale, and it may take a generation to get it back.

HUCKABEE: But there's more at stake than just their morale. It's the safety and the security of the Middle East and the rest of the world.  This isn't an issue that's about Hispanics or anybody else in terms of ethnicity. This is about every one of us being able to be free, to have a future, and to be able to know that we're not going to allow a vacuum there, which happens if we lose -- and we lose when we walk away -- to create an opening so that terrorists can build even greater cells of training and empowerment there.  That's why we have to stay. And it's why we have to win.
(APPLAUSE)

__________________

MODERATOR: Governor Huckabee, you know the numbers: 47 million people don't have health insurance, including 15 million Hispanic. What can be done to provide coverage for those people?

HUCKABEE: Of those 47 million, one-third don't have it because they are self-insured. Another one-third don't have it because they think they're healthy and invincible. There is one-third that don't have it because they can't afford it. And then there are a lot of people who have insurance, but they're underinsured.

But let me tell you, the biggest problem we have in this country is not a health care crisis, it is a health crisis. We spend $2 trillion a year on health care, and 80 percent of it goes to chronic disease, which means that what we really have to begin dealing with is turning the system right side up, because it is upside down focused on waiting until people are catastrophically ill, and then we try to rush in with the most expensive modalities possible.

HUCKABEE: What we need to be doing is putting the real focus on preventing the illness in the first place. It's the difference between either putting an ambulance at the bottom of the hill or building a fence at the top.  We can afford universal coverage, but not until and not even close until we first have health, rather than just focus on health coverage.

Let me say the last thing we need to do is to believe that Michael Moore's idea is good and we can all go to Cuba and get health care. I don't mind shipping him down there, but the rest of us I'd like to get our care here.

(APPLAUSE)

_________________

Governor Huckabee, what would you do to stop dropouts of school.

HUCKABEE: Well, first of all, the reason a lot of kids don't finish school and they drop out -- and by the way, you're right. The Hispanic dropout rate is significantly higher than the general population.

Six thousand kids, every day, drop out of school, 6,000. You know, the only reason any of us are standing on this stage today is because we have an education. Without it, we wouldn't be here.

HUCKABEE: An education is empowerment. The lack of it leads us to incredible, just all kinds of obstacles in our path.

And we always talk about we need more math and science, and we, and we're doing a better job. But one of the reasons we have kids failing is not because they're dumb, it's they're bored. They're bored with a curriculum that doesn't touch them.

We have schools that are about perpetuating the schools, not helping the students.

I propose launching weapons of mass instruction, making sure that we are launching not only the math and science...

(APPLAUSE)
... but music and art programs that touch the right side of the brain, and not only educate the left side of the student's brain.

(APPLAUSE)
Because without a creative economy and a creative student, you have a bored student, and that's one of the reasons we see so many of them dropping out.

___________________

MODERATOR: Well, we have the last question for all of you. Hispanics are the biggest minority in the United States, and by 2050, we're going to be 25 percent of the population. Three months ago, I asked the same thing to the Democratic candidates.

What would you think would be the biggest contribution from Hispanics, but we want to ask you what is the role -- what role do you think Hispanics will play in the development of our nation and our society?

We're going to start with Governor Huckabee.
HUCKABEE: On our coins, it says, E pluribus unum. It means out of many, one.
Ronald Reagan said it best. He said that if we go to Germany, we're not Germans, and if we go to Italy, we're not Italians. But anyone who comes to America is an American.

HUCKABEE: One of the great aspects of this nation is that when people come here and unite with us, they share not just our borders and our boundaries. They share our hopes and our dreams and our aspirations.

And if there's any one reason that this country is a magnet for people, and clearly a magnet for many Hispanics who have found hope and opportunity here, it's because they see in this country what we ourselves who live here see. And that is that here, we can dream great dreams and actually can see them.

Our equality is not based on our ancestry, our last name, it's not based on how much money we make. It's based on the intrinsic worth and value that every one of us have. It's why we share something else, and I think that this nation is basically pro-life because we recognize that intrinsic worth.
And I think what we offer is an opportunity to raise families and to live dreams and to be free.

Here is a great video montage of some of the best momemts from various debates featuring former Governor Mike Huckabee.