Mike Huckabee: The Armageddon Candidate
OMG.Eric wrote:Weep.
But, hey don't forget, this is still the greatest country in the world! (How do I know? All the candidates tell em so.)
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
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I guess this shouldn't be a shock that A) he appears on Leno, B) he appears on a struck show...shows how little he values unions.
Huckabee plans quick foray from Iowa to Leno show By Ed Stoddard
1 hour, 1 minute ago
FORT DODGE, Iowa (Reuters) - From snowy Iowa to the bright lights of comedian Jay Leno's studio in Burbank, California, Republican Mike Huckabee's upstart presidential campaign was taking a roundabout route on Wednesday.
ADVERTISEMENT
A day before the Iowa caucuses that will kick off the presidential selection process for both Democrats and Republicans, the former Arkansas governor was planning a break from chilly community halls to fly briefly to the West Coast to appear on NBC's "The Tonight Show" hosted by Leno.
Huckabee was taping an interview on Leno's first new show since the Hollywood writers' strike forced it into reruns on November 5. The show was expected to attract a large national audience.
It was an unusual move in the final hours before a critical election, but Huckabee denied that it reflected overconfidence, despite polls showing him leading the Republican field.
"Absolutely not," Huckabee told ABC's 'Good Morning America.'
"I've been up since 4 this morning. I'll be campaigning to early afternoon. I fly to California. I'm back here tonight. I'll be up again at 4 in the morning. We'll still be campaigning. In the meantime more people will see me -- in Iowa -- on Jay Leno tonight," he said.
Polls show a close race between Huckabee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has pumped much effort and millions of dollars into the state. A Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Wednesday showed Huckabee's lead over Romney sliced to two points, 28 percent to 26 percent, within the statistical margin of error.
Some analysts thought the exposure of appearing on Leno may pay big dividends.
"Leno is offering him a tremendous opportunity for a national audience," said Dennis Goldford, a professor of politics at Drake University in Des Moines.
"Unless the bottom drops out, his work in Iowa is done and I don't see much risk in it. But the potential benefits are huge," he said, also noting Huckabee could reach more Iowans on the television than he could out on the hustings.
The exposure could also raise Huckabee's profile in upcoming contests in New Hampshire and South Carolina and reach well beyond his evangelical Christian base.
On Monday, Huckabee stirred some controversy when he decided at the last minute not to run a television ad critical of Romney -- then showed it to reporters, ensuring its got a wide airing.
Huckabee defended the heavily criticized move, saying he had decided to keep the campaign positive despite Romney's negative commercials aimed at his record.
Huckabee has specialized in unorthodox campaign stunts. The day after Christmas, he appealed for the support of gun owners by hunting pheasants in the snow-coated fields of Iowa. He often campaigns with action actor and martial arts guru Chuck Norris and sometimes play bass with a local band.
(Additional reporting by Joanne Kenen, editing by Lori Santos and Alan Elsner)
Huckabee plans quick foray from Iowa to Leno show By Ed Stoddard
1 hour, 1 minute ago
FORT DODGE, Iowa (Reuters) - From snowy Iowa to the bright lights of comedian Jay Leno's studio in Burbank, California, Republican Mike Huckabee's upstart presidential campaign was taking a roundabout route on Wednesday.
ADVERTISEMENT
A day before the Iowa caucuses that will kick off the presidential selection process for both Democrats and Republicans, the former Arkansas governor was planning a break from chilly community halls to fly briefly to the West Coast to appear on NBC's "The Tonight Show" hosted by Leno.
Huckabee was taping an interview on Leno's first new show since the Hollywood writers' strike forced it into reruns on November 5. The show was expected to attract a large national audience.
It was an unusual move in the final hours before a critical election, but Huckabee denied that it reflected overconfidence, despite polls showing him leading the Republican field.
"Absolutely not," Huckabee told ABC's 'Good Morning America.'
"I've been up since 4 this morning. I'll be campaigning to early afternoon. I fly to California. I'm back here tonight. I'll be up again at 4 in the morning. We'll still be campaigning. In the meantime more people will see me -- in Iowa -- on Jay Leno tonight," he said.
Polls show a close race between Huckabee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has pumped much effort and millions of dollars into the state. A Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Wednesday showed Huckabee's lead over Romney sliced to two points, 28 percent to 26 percent, within the statistical margin of error.
Some analysts thought the exposure of appearing on Leno may pay big dividends.
"Leno is offering him a tremendous opportunity for a national audience," said Dennis Goldford, a professor of politics at Drake University in Des Moines.
"Unless the bottom drops out, his work in Iowa is done and I don't see much risk in it. But the potential benefits are huge," he said, also noting Huckabee could reach more Iowans on the television than he could out on the hustings.
The exposure could also raise Huckabee's profile in upcoming contests in New Hampshire and South Carolina and reach well beyond his evangelical Christian base.
On Monday, Huckabee stirred some controversy when he decided at the last minute not to run a television ad critical of Romney -- then showed it to reporters, ensuring its got a wide airing.
Huckabee defended the heavily criticized move, saying he had decided to keep the campaign positive despite Romney's negative commercials aimed at his record.
Huckabee has specialized in unorthodox campaign stunts. The day after Christmas, he appealed for the support of gun owners by hunting pheasants in the snow-coated fields of Iowa. He often campaigns with action actor and martial arts guru Chuck Norris and sometimes play bass with a local band.
(Additional reporting by Joanne Kenen, editing by Lori Santos and Alan Elsner)
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
The other Pub candidates are scared...and hell, we should be too!
New York Times
December 17, 2007
Candidates Scrambling to Cope With Rise of Huckabee
By MICHAEL COOPER
This article was reported by Michael Cooper, Michael Luo, Marc Santora and Paul Vitello and written by Mr. Cooper.
Just one month ago, Mitt Romney’s supporters thought that they had Iowa fairly well in hand. But there was Mr. Romney last week, telling several hundred people at a high school cafeteria in Marion that he was the underdog and pleading for their help to keep him from being derailed at the caucuses by the rise of Mike Huckabee.
“You’re going to do something which people don’t expect,” Mr. Romney told them, “which is give me a victory.”
His campaign is working feverishly to right itself, zeroing in on Mr. Huckabee’s past moderate record on immigration with critical television advertisements, a mailing and recorded phone calls from a former Arkansas lawmaker who says, “I know Mike Huckabee’s a likable guy, but I also know what he did to our state.”
As the Democratic candidates crisscrossed Iowa on Sunday, the Republicans pounded one another, with Mr. Huckabee’s ascendancy rippling across the field. Mr. Romney demanded that Mr. Huckabee apologize to President Bush for comments he made about the administration’s foreign policy, with Mr. Huckabee firing back, while Fred D. Thompson flung the ultimate conservative insult, calling him a “liberal.” Senator John McCain of Arizona, meanwhile, was gathering endorsements, including one expected Monday from Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who was on the Democratic presidential ticket in 2000.
The campaign most immediately threatened by Mr. Huckabee’s rise was that of Mr. Romney. One senior Romney adviser, Ronald C. Kaufman, said of Mr. Huckabee’s campaign, “Am I worried? Of course I am.” But, Mr. Kaufman added, “At the end of the game, you want the ball in Tom Brady’s hands, or the mike in Mitt Romney’s hands, and I have faith in our team.”
Mr. Romney now faces a two-front battle — in Iowa, which holds its caucuses on Jan. 3, and in New Hampshire, whose primary is on Jan. 8.
Mr. Huckabee’s rise also comes at a delicate time for Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has been slipping in national polls and who failed to lift his standing in New Hampshire with a heavy advertising campaign. Mr. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York, scaled back his advertising in New Hampshire so he could marshal his resources for later states.
The rise of Mr. Huckabee could help Mr. Giuliani in one way: If Mr. Romney is defeated in Iowa, he heads into New Hampshire weakened, unsettling the field and clearing the way for Mr. Giuliani’s national strategy. That strategy counts on a victory on Jan. 29 in Florida to propel his candidacy in the nationwide primaries of Feb. 5, when important moderate states like New York and California vote.
Campaigning over the weekend showed the chaotic interplay of the race. Mr. Romney finished a swing through Iowa that was meant to try to stem the rise of Mr. Huckabee there but hurried back to New Hampshire to defend his flank there.
And Mr. Giuliani, who chose Florida to refocus his campaign, gave a rare formal speech on Saturday in which he called for leading a “revitalized, 50-state Republican Party into the White House.” But he found his address overshadowed that day by news of Mr. Huckabee’s attack on the Bush administration’s foreign policy, describing an “arrogant bunker mentality” in an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine.
The article landed as Mr. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor who is the central player in the drama, was in New Hampshire through the weekend, hoping his recent momentum would help slice into the edge that Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, holds in his neighboring state.
The scene in New Hampshire showed the altered state of the Huckabee campaign. Only two or three reporters followed him on his last visit. This time, more than three dozen turned out to track his movements.
But Mr. Huckabee’s campaign showed the strains of its own success. Its e-mail service was down for 24 hours, forcing it to rely on old-fashioned phone calls.
The Giuliani campaign professes delight at Mr. Huckabee’s rapid rise, but it could ultimately cost Mr. Giuliani, whose drop in national polls came after news accounts questioned his business dealings and his personal life. Now Mr. Huckabee is essentially tied with Mr. Giuliani in several national polls, which could undermine one of the Giuliani campaign’s central arguments: that he is the strongest Republican candidate nationwide.
One of Mr. Giuliani’s chief political advisers, Anthony V. Carbonetti, dismissed the notion that Mr. Huckabee could politically endanger Mr. Giuliani.
“Huckabee is roughly where Thompson was when he got his bump,” Mr. Carbonetti said, referring to the former senator from Tennessee whose star has dimmed since entering the race at the end of the summer. “It’s something we’ve seen before. But the one constant is us on top. We’re now on the third generation of No. 2’s: there was McCain, Thompson and now Huckabee.”
But Mr. Giuliani’s decisions not to focus on Iowa and to scale back his efforts in New Hampshire pose other risks. He could have to wait nearly a month for his first victory, time in which another candidate might gain momentum. More immediately, he risks falling off the media radar screen as news organizations concentrate on the race in Iowa.
The McCain campaign is also trying to seize on Mr. Romney’s troubles in Iowa. It believes that a defeat there for Mr. Romney would put Mr. McCain in a position to pull off an upset in their must-win state, New Hampshire, where they have pinned their hopes for a comeback.
“Mike Huckabee gives us a new deck of cards to play with,” said Mr. McCain’s campaign manger, Rick Davis. “And anything that gives us a new deck of cards is a good thing.”
In Iowa, the Romney campaign believes that its vastly superior ground operation is worth several percentage points and can help it close a gap in the polls by bringing out enough supporters to grind out a victory on caucus night.
“We’re going to be represented in every precinct caucus,” said Gentry Collins, the Romney campaign’s Iowa state director. “Is that something other campaigns are prepared to do? My sense is, probably not.”
Mr. Huckabee is being helped by conservative Christian voters. But Mr. Romney’s advisers point out that in past Iowa caucuses, the favored candidates of the Christian right, including Pat Robertson, who pulled off a second-place finish there in 1988, have topped out with somewhere around 25 percent of the vote.
To capitalize on his momentum, Mr. Huckabee is focusing on the parts of his message beyond social conservatism, like the environment, a break from the Bush administration’s foreign policy and a sort of economic populism. He is also shifting his positions by adopting a harder-line stance on immigration.
Mr. Huckabee, in his latest campaign swing through New Hampshire, sounded almost like John Edwards, a Democrat running for president, when he decried what he called “fat cat” chief executive officers and their outsize paychecks.
Still, Mr. Romney’s advisers think they will be able to win back fiscally conservative caucusgoers worried about the economy and immigration. “That’s the piece we have to bring back,” said Alex Gage, his director of strategy.
In Iowa last week, Mr. Romney regularly tore into Mr. Huckabee’s record, sometimes bringing it up directly with audiences in town hall forums and other times waiting to do it with reporters afterward. And after the Foreign Affairs article, he questioned Mr. Huckabee’s Republicanism.
“That’s an insult to the president, and Mike Huckabee should apologize to the president,” Mr. Romney said Sunday on the NBC program “Meet the Press.”
The Romney campaign’s decision to directly engage Mr. Huckabee carries risk; Iowans are known to dislike negative campaigning. But Mr. Romney’s advisers are convinced that they must begin to draw contrasts with Mr. Huckabee, preferably before Christmas, because they believe he has not been scrutinized enough by the news media in Iowa.
Mr. Huckabee has been ramping up his organization in Iowa, but it still remains far behind Mr. Romney’s. The campaign recently doubled the office space at its headquarters in downtown Des Moines; it now has 17 paid employees in Iowa, up from 3 over the summer. The campaign is broadcasting commercials in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and is preparing its first mailing in Iowa.
But the campaign remains bare bones in many ways. It has not had the money to do any polling. The campaign predicts that it will have precinct captains in the major caucus precincts, but not in all of them. Mr. Huckabee’s Iowa state director, Eric Woolson, got a BlackBerry only about a month ago.
Also in the mix is Mr. Thompson, whose late entrance in the campaign failed to resonate with the conservative voters who are now flocking to Mr. Huckabee. Mr. Thompson sees Iowa as his best chance to get back in the game. So his campaign is moving to Iowa, where it plans two bus tours — starting Monday — that total some 16 days on the road before and after Christmas.
But the greatest uncertainty lies in whether Mr. Huckabee can seriously compete beyond Iowa. His trip to New Hampshire over the weekend put that to the test. And while sizable crowds turned out, many seemed to have been drawn more by the star power of the actor Chuck Norris.
The Giuliani campaign believes that Mr. Huckabee’s momentum will fade. But its decision to scale back advertising in New Hampshire is telling. From Nov. 10 through Dec. 9, the Giuliani campaign spent $1.7 million on commercials in New Hampshire, compared with $1.3 million by Mr. Romney and $1.2 million by Mr. McCain, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which estimates advertising expenditures.
Although Mr. Giuliani will cut back on advertising in New Hampshire, he is not writing off the state; he plans to campaign there Monday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin
Edited By Akash on 1197883117
New York Times
December 17, 2007
Candidates Scrambling to Cope With Rise of Huckabee
By MICHAEL COOPER
This article was reported by Michael Cooper, Michael Luo, Marc Santora and Paul Vitello and written by Mr. Cooper.
Just one month ago, Mitt Romney’s supporters thought that they had Iowa fairly well in hand. But there was Mr. Romney last week, telling several hundred people at a high school cafeteria in Marion that he was the underdog and pleading for their help to keep him from being derailed at the caucuses by the rise of Mike Huckabee.
“You’re going to do something which people don’t expect,” Mr. Romney told them, “which is give me a victory.”
His campaign is working feverishly to right itself, zeroing in on Mr. Huckabee’s past moderate record on immigration with critical television advertisements, a mailing and recorded phone calls from a former Arkansas lawmaker who says, “I know Mike Huckabee’s a likable guy, but I also know what he did to our state.”
As the Democratic candidates crisscrossed Iowa on Sunday, the Republicans pounded one another, with Mr. Huckabee’s ascendancy rippling across the field. Mr. Romney demanded that Mr. Huckabee apologize to President Bush for comments he made about the administration’s foreign policy, with Mr. Huckabee firing back, while Fred D. Thompson flung the ultimate conservative insult, calling him a “liberal.” Senator John McCain of Arizona, meanwhile, was gathering endorsements, including one expected Monday from Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who was on the Democratic presidential ticket in 2000.
The campaign most immediately threatened by Mr. Huckabee’s rise was that of Mr. Romney. One senior Romney adviser, Ronald C. Kaufman, said of Mr. Huckabee’s campaign, “Am I worried? Of course I am.” But, Mr. Kaufman added, “At the end of the game, you want the ball in Tom Brady’s hands, or the mike in Mitt Romney’s hands, and I have faith in our team.”
Mr. Romney now faces a two-front battle — in Iowa, which holds its caucuses on Jan. 3, and in New Hampshire, whose primary is on Jan. 8.
Mr. Huckabee’s rise also comes at a delicate time for Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has been slipping in national polls and who failed to lift his standing in New Hampshire with a heavy advertising campaign. Mr. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York, scaled back his advertising in New Hampshire so he could marshal his resources for later states.
The rise of Mr. Huckabee could help Mr. Giuliani in one way: If Mr. Romney is defeated in Iowa, he heads into New Hampshire weakened, unsettling the field and clearing the way for Mr. Giuliani’s national strategy. That strategy counts on a victory on Jan. 29 in Florida to propel his candidacy in the nationwide primaries of Feb. 5, when important moderate states like New York and California vote.
Campaigning over the weekend showed the chaotic interplay of the race. Mr. Romney finished a swing through Iowa that was meant to try to stem the rise of Mr. Huckabee there but hurried back to New Hampshire to defend his flank there.
And Mr. Giuliani, who chose Florida to refocus his campaign, gave a rare formal speech on Saturday in which he called for leading a “revitalized, 50-state Republican Party into the White House.” But he found his address overshadowed that day by news of Mr. Huckabee’s attack on the Bush administration’s foreign policy, describing an “arrogant bunker mentality” in an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine.
The article landed as Mr. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor who is the central player in the drama, was in New Hampshire through the weekend, hoping his recent momentum would help slice into the edge that Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, holds in his neighboring state.
The scene in New Hampshire showed the altered state of the Huckabee campaign. Only two or three reporters followed him on his last visit. This time, more than three dozen turned out to track his movements.
But Mr. Huckabee’s campaign showed the strains of its own success. Its e-mail service was down for 24 hours, forcing it to rely on old-fashioned phone calls.
The Giuliani campaign professes delight at Mr. Huckabee’s rapid rise, but it could ultimately cost Mr. Giuliani, whose drop in national polls came after news accounts questioned his business dealings and his personal life. Now Mr. Huckabee is essentially tied with Mr. Giuliani in several national polls, which could undermine one of the Giuliani campaign’s central arguments: that he is the strongest Republican candidate nationwide.
One of Mr. Giuliani’s chief political advisers, Anthony V. Carbonetti, dismissed the notion that Mr. Huckabee could politically endanger Mr. Giuliani.
“Huckabee is roughly where Thompson was when he got his bump,” Mr. Carbonetti said, referring to the former senator from Tennessee whose star has dimmed since entering the race at the end of the summer. “It’s something we’ve seen before. But the one constant is us on top. We’re now on the third generation of No. 2’s: there was McCain, Thompson and now Huckabee.”
But Mr. Giuliani’s decisions not to focus on Iowa and to scale back his efforts in New Hampshire pose other risks. He could have to wait nearly a month for his first victory, time in which another candidate might gain momentum. More immediately, he risks falling off the media radar screen as news organizations concentrate on the race in Iowa.
The McCain campaign is also trying to seize on Mr. Romney’s troubles in Iowa. It believes that a defeat there for Mr. Romney would put Mr. McCain in a position to pull off an upset in their must-win state, New Hampshire, where they have pinned their hopes for a comeback.
“Mike Huckabee gives us a new deck of cards to play with,” said Mr. McCain’s campaign manger, Rick Davis. “And anything that gives us a new deck of cards is a good thing.”
In Iowa, the Romney campaign believes that its vastly superior ground operation is worth several percentage points and can help it close a gap in the polls by bringing out enough supporters to grind out a victory on caucus night.
“We’re going to be represented in every precinct caucus,” said Gentry Collins, the Romney campaign’s Iowa state director. “Is that something other campaigns are prepared to do? My sense is, probably not.”
Mr. Huckabee is being helped by conservative Christian voters. But Mr. Romney’s advisers point out that in past Iowa caucuses, the favored candidates of the Christian right, including Pat Robertson, who pulled off a second-place finish there in 1988, have topped out with somewhere around 25 percent of the vote.
To capitalize on his momentum, Mr. Huckabee is focusing on the parts of his message beyond social conservatism, like the environment, a break from the Bush administration’s foreign policy and a sort of economic populism. He is also shifting his positions by adopting a harder-line stance on immigration.
Mr. Huckabee, in his latest campaign swing through New Hampshire, sounded almost like John Edwards, a Democrat running for president, when he decried what he called “fat cat” chief executive officers and their outsize paychecks.
Still, Mr. Romney’s advisers think they will be able to win back fiscally conservative caucusgoers worried about the economy and immigration. “That’s the piece we have to bring back,” said Alex Gage, his director of strategy.
In Iowa last week, Mr. Romney regularly tore into Mr. Huckabee’s record, sometimes bringing it up directly with audiences in town hall forums and other times waiting to do it with reporters afterward. And after the Foreign Affairs article, he questioned Mr. Huckabee’s Republicanism.
“That’s an insult to the president, and Mike Huckabee should apologize to the president,” Mr. Romney said Sunday on the NBC program “Meet the Press.”
The Romney campaign’s decision to directly engage Mr. Huckabee carries risk; Iowans are known to dislike negative campaigning. But Mr. Romney’s advisers are convinced that they must begin to draw contrasts with Mr. Huckabee, preferably before Christmas, because they believe he has not been scrutinized enough by the news media in Iowa.
Mr. Huckabee has been ramping up his organization in Iowa, but it still remains far behind Mr. Romney’s. The campaign recently doubled the office space at its headquarters in downtown Des Moines; it now has 17 paid employees in Iowa, up from 3 over the summer. The campaign is broadcasting commercials in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and is preparing its first mailing in Iowa.
But the campaign remains bare bones in many ways. It has not had the money to do any polling. The campaign predicts that it will have precinct captains in the major caucus precincts, but not in all of them. Mr. Huckabee’s Iowa state director, Eric Woolson, got a BlackBerry only about a month ago.
Also in the mix is Mr. Thompson, whose late entrance in the campaign failed to resonate with the conservative voters who are now flocking to Mr. Huckabee. Mr. Thompson sees Iowa as his best chance to get back in the game. So his campaign is moving to Iowa, where it plans two bus tours — starting Monday — that total some 16 days on the road before and after Christmas.
But the greatest uncertainty lies in whether Mr. Huckabee can seriously compete beyond Iowa. His trip to New Hampshire over the weekend put that to the test. And while sizable crowds turned out, many seemed to have been drawn more by the star power of the actor Chuck Norris.
The Giuliani campaign believes that Mr. Huckabee’s momentum will fade. But its decision to scale back advertising in New Hampshire is telling. From Nov. 10 through Dec. 9, the Giuliani campaign spent $1.7 million on commercials in New Hampshire, compared with $1.3 million by Mr. Romney and $1.2 million by Mr. McCain, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which estimates advertising expenditures.
Although Mr. Giuliani will cut back on advertising in New Hampshire, he is not writing off the state; he plans to campaign there Monday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin
Edited By Akash on 1197883117
Just wow:
Huckabee on defensive over AIDS quarantine call
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Top Republican White House hopefuls were forced on the defensive over their pasts Sunday with Mike Huckabee grilled about his 1992 belief that AIDS patients should be quarantined.
New attention is being paid to Huckabee's record as the wisecracking, avuncular Baptist pastor surges in the polls, less than a month before Iowa kicks off the party nominating contests.
National Republican frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani meanwhile refused to renounce his lucrative consulting business despite questions over a potential conflict of interest with some of the foreign states it has represented.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, former Arkansas governor Huckabee said he would probably "say things a little differently" now than when he was asked his views on AIDS 15 years ago.
"But what I'm not going to do is to go back and now try to change every story I've ever had. I'm going to simply say that that was exactly what I said. I don't run from it, don't recant from it," he said.
As a Senate candidate in 1992, Huckabee told The Associated Press that if the US government wanted to deal effectively with AIDS, "we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague."
The Baptist minister was also quoted as calling homosexuality "an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle."
Speaking on Fox, Huckabee insisted that there were legitimate concerns in the early 1990s about whether AIDS could be spread by casual contact, despite US government advice as early as 1985 that this was impossible.
Huckabee was also grilled over his ignorance, more than 24 hours after it was released, of a new US intelligence appraisal last week that stated Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
The Republican candidate had said he was too busy on the campaign trail to learn immediately of Tuesday's National Intelligence Estimate, a change of heart by the spy agencies that contradicted bellicose US talk on Iran.
"It shows more than anything not what I didn't know, but what our own intelligence community didn't know," Huckabee said.
A Newsweek survey Friday suggested that Huckabee has opened up a gaping lead in Iowa over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, of 39 percent to 17 percent, ahead of the state's nominating caucuses on January 3.
Romney delivered a landmark speech on Thursday, asking Americans not to reject him over his Mormon religion, partly motivated by Huckabee's strong support among crucial evangelical voters in Iowa.
The candidates' personal and political beliefs will get another airing on Wednesday at the last Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses.
While leading in national Republican polls, Giuliani trails badly in Iowa and the other early-voting state of New Hampshire, but is banking on carrying bigger states such as New York, Florida and California.
The former New York mayor, interviewed on NBC television Sunday, faced new questions over his private-sector interests through his stewardship of the security consultancy Giuliani Partners.
Its clients have included the Gulf country of Qatar, which is a US ally but has been accused of sheltering Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the Al-Qaeda figure suspected of masterminding the September 11 attacks of 2001.
Citing confidentiality agreements, Giuliani refused to release a list of the firm's clients, and said he was no longer involved in its day-to-day affairs.
Asked if he would sever all ties to the consultancy, he said: "No, I'm an owner."
Giuliani said that in due course, he would provide the legally required financial disclosure of his involvement with the firm "and then we will take a look and see should we go beyond that."
Giuliani was also questioned anew about his ties to former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was formally indicted last month on charges of tax evasion and corruption.
And he insisted that he acted on the recommendations of New York police, following accusations that he hid thousands of dollars in travel and security costs during an extra-marital affair with his now wife.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jyeQqd_e2vboedNa8YBcQbCOYxrA
Huckabee on defensive over AIDS quarantine call
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Top Republican White House hopefuls were forced on the defensive over their pasts Sunday with Mike Huckabee grilled about his 1992 belief that AIDS patients should be quarantined.
New attention is being paid to Huckabee's record as the wisecracking, avuncular Baptist pastor surges in the polls, less than a month before Iowa kicks off the party nominating contests.
National Republican frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani meanwhile refused to renounce his lucrative consulting business despite questions over a potential conflict of interest with some of the foreign states it has represented.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, former Arkansas governor Huckabee said he would probably "say things a little differently" now than when he was asked his views on AIDS 15 years ago.
"But what I'm not going to do is to go back and now try to change every story I've ever had. I'm going to simply say that that was exactly what I said. I don't run from it, don't recant from it," he said.
As a Senate candidate in 1992, Huckabee told The Associated Press that if the US government wanted to deal effectively with AIDS, "we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague."
The Baptist minister was also quoted as calling homosexuality "an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle."
Speaking on Fox, Huckabee insisted that there were legitimate concerns in the early 1990s about whether AIDS could be spread by casual contact, despite US government advice as early as 1985 that this was impossible.
Huckabee was also grilled over his ignorance, more than 24 hours after it was released, of a new US intelligence appraisal last week that stated Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
The Republican candidate had said he was too busy on the campaign trail to learn immediately of Tuesday's National Intelligence Estimate, a change of heart by the spy agencies that contradicted bellicose US talk on Iran.
"It shows more than anything not what I didn't know, but what our own intelligence community didn't know," Huckabee said.
A Newsweek survey Friday suggested that Huckabee has opened up a gaping lead in Iowa over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, of 39 percent to 17 percent, ahead of the state's nominating caucuses on January 3.
Romney delivered a landmark speech on Thursday, asking Americans not to reject him over his Mormon religion, partly motivated by Huckabee's strong support among crucial evangelical voters in Iowa.
The candidates' personal and political beliefs will get another airing on Wednesday at the last Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses.
While leading in national Republican polls, Giuliani trails badly in Iowa and the other early-voting state of New Hampshire, but is banking on carrying bigger states such as New York, Florida and California.
The former New York mayor, interviewed on NBC television Sunday, faced new questions over his private-sector interests through his stewardship of the security consultancy Giuliani Partners.
Its clients have included the Gulf country of Qatar, which is a US ally but has been accused of sheltering Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the Al-Qaeda figure suspected of masterminding the September 11 attacks of 2001.
Citing confidentiality agreements, Giuliani refused to release a list of the firm's clients, and said he was no longer involved in its day-to-day affairs.
Asked if he would sever all ties to the consultancy, he said: "No, I'm an owner."
Giuliani said that in due course, he would provide the legally required financial disclosure of his involvement with the firm "and then we will take a look and see should we go beyond that."
Giuliani was also questioned anew about his ties to former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was formally indicted last month on charges of tax evasion and corruption.
And he insisted that he acted on the recommendations of New York police, following accusations that he hid thousands of dollars in travel and security costs during an extra-marital affair with his now wife.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jyeQqd_e2vboedNa8YBcQbCOYxrA
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Rasmussen now has Huckabee leading Giuliani 20% to 17%, with McCain and Romney each at 13, Thompson at 10, and Paul at 7.
http://rasmussenreports.com/public_....ng_poll
http://rasmussenreports.com/public_....ng_poll
Rasmussen now has Huckabee tied with Giuliani for the lead nation-wide. They are both at 18%, with McCain at 14, Thomapson at 13, Romney at 12 and Paul at 7.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_....ng_poll
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_....ng_poll
Rasmussen now has Huckabee in a statistical tie for 2nd place in New Hampshire.
http://rasmussenreports.com/public_....primary
http://rasmussenreports.com/public_....primary
The Nation
Online Beat by John Nichols
BLOG | Posted 11/28/2007 @ 12:53pm
Mike Huckabee's Religious-Test Campaign
This is supposed to be Mike Huckabee's make-or-break night.
The former Arkansas governor has emerged as the potential "Jimmy Carter" of the 2008 presidential race – a virtual unknown from the south who, with little money and few national endorsements, uses a breakthrough win in the Iowa caucuses to go national. Huckabee is now statistically tied with the GOP frontrunner in Iowa, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
A strong performance in tonight's CNN/YouTube Republican debate could give Huckabee, who must rely on free media to offset Romney's self-financed "money-is-no-object" campaign, the boost he needs to take the lead.
But with competitiveness should come scrutiny. And that is why tonight's debate must address the fundamental – or, perhaps, we should say fundamentalist -- question that has been raised by the rise of Huckabee.
Is the Arkansan's campaign intentionally stoking anti-Mormon bias in order to draw evangelical conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere away from Romney's bandwagon?
No serious observer of what's playing out in Iowa will disagree with the New York Times assessment that: "The religious divide over Mitt Romney's Mormon faith that his supporters had long feared would occur is emerging in Iowa as he is being challenged in state polls by Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor who has played up his faith in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Huckabee's rise in Iowa -- some recent polls now put him in a dead heat with Mr. Romney, who had led surveys for months -- has been fueled by evangelical Christians, who believe Mormonism runs counter to Christian orthodoxy."
Huckabee backers in Iowa have been quoted as referring to Romney, a member of one of Mormonism's most prominent families, as a politician "who's going to be acting on an anti-Christian faith as the basis of their decision-making." The former Arkansas governor's Iowa campaign co-chair, veteran Republican activist Daniel Carroll, has been quoted as saying that Christians prefer Huckabee over Romney because Huckabee "prays to the God of the Bible.'
Mormon's do pray to the God of the Bible, by they add another book to the Old and New Testaments: The Book of Mormon. Evangelicals reject the Book of Mormon as false prophesy. And they mince few words with regard to Mormons. "Evangelicals who conclude Mormonism a cult do conclude that Mormons' prayers to God do not ‘get through' because they are not actually petitioning the God of the Bible but a deity of a cultic base," writes Maine pastor Joseph Grant Swank Jr., who writes frequently about what evangelicals refer to as "truth-in-conviction" matters.
In a pluralistic society, evangelicals have a right to their views, as do Mormons.
So what is the question for Huckabee? A simple one: Does he, as someone who seeks to be the president of the United States, respect and endorse Article VI, Section 3, of the Constitution, which states that: "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States"?
If Huckabee were to be nominated for the presidency, he would on January 20, 2009, place his hand on a Bible and swear a solemn oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
That oath, necessarily, requires a rejection of precisely the sort of religious test that Huckabee backers are applying to Mitt Romney.
If Huckabee avows that he is indeed committed to the Constitution, and if he declares that he opposes the application of any religious test, then he must face a second question: Will the candidate Mike Huckabee and the Huckabee campaign make it absolutely clear that they want neither the support nor the votes of those who would oppose Mitt Romney's candidacy on the basis of religion?
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=254898
Online Beat by John Nichols
BLOG | Posted 11/28/2007 @ 12:53pm
Mike Huckabee's Religious-Test Campaign
This is supposed to be Mike Huckabee's make-or-break night.
The former Arkansas governor has emerged as the potential "Jimmy Carter" of the 2008 presidential race – a virtual unknown from the south who, with little money and few national endorsements, uses a breakthrough win in the Iowa caucuses to go national. Huckabee is now statistically tied with the GOP frontrunner in Iowa, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
A strong performance in tonight's CNN/YouTube Republican debate could give Huckabee, who must rely on free media to offset Romney's self-financed "money-is-no-object" campaign, the boost he needs to take the lead.
But with competitiveness should come scrutiny. And that is why tonight's debate must address the fundamental – or, perhaps, we should say fundamentalist -- question that has been raised by the rise of Huckabee.
Is the Arkansan's campaign intentionally stoking anti-Mormon bias in order to draw evangelical conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere away from Romney's bandwagon?
No serious observer of what's playing out in Iowa will disagree with the New York Times assessment that: "The religious divide over Mitt Romney's Mormon faith that his supporters had long feared would occur is emerging in Iowa as he is being challenged in state polls by Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor who has played up his faith in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Huckabee's rise in Iowa -- some recent polls now put him in a dead heat with Mr. Romney, who had led surveys for months -- has been fueled by evangelical Christians, who believe Mormonism runs counter to Christian orthodoxy."
Huckabee backers in Iowa have been quoted as referring to Romney, a member of one of Mormonism's most prominent families, as a politician "who's going to be acting on an anti-Christian faith as the basis of their decision-making." The former Arkansas governor's Iowa campaign co-chair, veteran Republican activist Daniel Carroll, has been quoted as saying that Christians prefer Huckabee over Romney because Huckabee "prays to the God of the Bible.'
Mormon's do pray to the God of the Bible, by they add another book to the Old and New Testaments: The Book of Mormon. Evangelicals reject the Book of Mormon as false prophesy. And they mince few words with regard to Mormons. "Evangelicals who conclude Mormonism a cult do conclude that Mormons' prayers to God do not ‘get through' because they are not actually petitioning the God of the Bible but a deity of a cultic base," writes Maine pastor Joseph Grant Swank Jr., who writes frequently about what evangelicals refer to as "truth-in-conviction" matters.
In a pluralistic society, evangelicals have a right to their views, as do Mormons.
So what is the question for Huckabee? A simple one: Does he, as someone who seeks to be the president of the United States, respect and endorse Article VI, Section 3, of the Constitution, which states that: "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States"?
If Huckabee were to be nominated for the presidency, he would on January 20, 2009, place his hand on a Bible and swear a solemn oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
That oath, necessarily, requires a rejection of precisely the sort of religious test that Huckabee backers are applying to Mitt Romney.
If Huckabee avows that he is indeed committed to the Constitution, and if he declares that he opposes the application of any religious test, then he must face a second question: Will the candidate Mike Huckabee and the Huckabee campaign make it absolutely clear that they want neither the support nor the votes of those who would oppose Mitt Romney's candidacy on the basis of religion?
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=254898