Huck Sin

"Nominating Mike Huckabee for president or vice-president, would constitute an abject rejection of the free-market, limited-government, economic conservatism that has been the unifying theme of the Republican Party for decades." -- Club for Growth


The above is what you'd call a bad character reference. The authors should be the guys friendly to an underdog candidate overturning applecarts in the GOP presidential race. The Club are the boys you go to when you want to know where the next Ronald Reagan is hiding.


So why the sudden upsurge in his poll numbers? Well, he's funny. And he's the religious right's chosen man. That seems to be it: Rhetoric over record. Is the social stuff really all that religious conservatives care about? They'll prove it if they push this guy over the top.


Yipes.


Here's the man who would be President:

• Immediately upon taking office, Governor Huckabee signed a sales tax hike in 1996 to fund the Games and Fishing Commission and the Department of Parks and Tourism.
  

Outstanding. Great priorities. No sooner does he plant his (then) immense rear end in the seat and he is inking his name to a tax hike for the toy department of state government.

• He supported an internet sales tax in 2001. He opposed a congressional measure to ban internet taxes in 2003.

Translation: He'll quite literally tax anything that isn't nailed down. No transaction is safe from this man. None. All of you Fair Tax nuts who believe in this guy, please gaze upon the above. He wants to impose a sales tax on the stuff you buy over the internet from other states. He likes your sales tax ideas because he likes taxes, period!!!

• By the end of his ten-year tenure, Governor Huckabee was responsible for a 37% higher sales tax in Arkansas, 16% higher motor fuel taxes, and 103% higher cigarette taxes according to Americans for Tax Reform, garnering a lifetime grade of D from the free-market Cato Institute. Huckabee's substantial tax hikes far surpassed his modest tax cuts, with the average tax burden increasing by a whopping 47% over his tenure.

Hrmmmm.... Free-market experts... tax reform fighters.... More of these ominous character references. Huckabee is to your wallet what Michael Jackson is a to a cute 9-yr old boy. In both cases, one should not be trusted with the other.

• Under Governor Huckabee's watch, state spending increased a whopping 65.3% from 1996 to 2004, three times the rate of inflation. The number of state government workers rose 20% during his tenure, and the state's general obligation debt shot up by almost $1 billion, according to Americans for Tax Reform.

See there? He's like the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. He's waging war on your money because he has a plan for it: More government and more government workers.

• Instead of talking about the well-documented economic benefits of free trade, Huckabee has taken to talking about "fair trade," while focusing on what he believes to be the negative consequences of free trade. Make no mistake about it: These are not the words of a free trader.

No. Those would be the words of a trade warrior, protectionist, Democrat. Those are the words of a man who would destroy this nation's economy. Bill Clinton -- both as candidate and as President -- was light years better than this on trade. The Democratic electorate, with the chance to nominate some of those trade warrior Democrats in 1992 (Bob Kerrey, to name just one), turned instead to Clinton. Who promised and delivered on passing NAFTA. With Al Gore's help.

Got that? Huckabee is talking far worse on trade than both Clinton and Gore -- as candidates. Bad signs. Bad, bad, bad...

This is the mindless, populist, crap that helped bring on the Great Depression.

• Huckabee has continued to support big-government measures as a presidential candidate, including his support for a federal ban on smoking in the work place, and his oft-heard call for a federally mandated arts and music curriculum in schools across America.

In other words, a Nanny State Health Nazi.

So, the question here is... What if this were Hillary Clinton trying to drive her version of how to live down your throat? Her version of federal arts and music? And what happens if he creates all of these programs for arts and such, and then a new President shows up and hands the steering wheel over to Nancy Pelosi's pals in San Francisco?

If you're a cultural conservative, get ready for your kids to bring home some really interesting art projects from school.

High taxes and a bigger government that's empowered to tell you how to live. This is the power the liberals always dreamed of. Mike Huckabee could be their Trojan Horse.