As I was waiting for some pizza I ordered I walked into a nearby business where I saw they had Red white and blue hats with the Republican elephant on them. The hats were $2.50 before the election she said, "but now that it's over their only 99 cents." I looked at her and I said, "Oh, it's never over." And so the 2012 Republican Primary has begun with the release of Mike Huckabee's new book: Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That's Bringing Common Sense Back to America.
"Mitt Romney, Huckabee's principal rival in Iowa, receives the roughest treatment. Huckabee writes that the former Massachusetts governor's record was "anything but conservative until he changed the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for president." He notes that Romney declined to make a congratulatory phone call after Huckabee beat the odds to win the Iowa caucuses, "which we took as a sign of total disrespect." He mocks Romney for suggesting, during one debate, more investment in high-yield stocks as a solution to economic woes. "Let them eat stocks!" Huckabee jokes."
Of course Romney's camp responded. "Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for Mr. Romney, fired back today in a statement: “This type of pettiness is beneath Mike Huckabee. If we’re going to move the party forward, we need to offer more than personal recriminations. Unfortunately, in this book, Mike Huckabee is consumed with presumed slights, and he seems more interested in settling scores than in bringing people together.”
Huckabee and Romney if they don't hate each other are about as close as two Christians can come to hating each other.
Huckabee also takes on Fred Thompson although he is nowhere near as tough on him as he was Romney. Perhaps because he knows Fred doesn't have another run in him. Some would say he didn't even have the first run in him. "Fred Thompson never did grasp the dynamics of the race or the country, and his amazingly lackluster campaign reflected just how disconnected he was with the people, despite the anticipation and expectation that greeted his candidacy," Huckabee wrote.
However Mike Huckabee did not stop at his political opponents he also took on the Club for Growth. The organization perhaps most responsible for stopping his meteoric rise. In his chapter Faux-Cons: Worse than Liberalism," Huckabee identifies what he calls the "real threat" to the Republican Party: "libertarianism masked as conservatism. "Faux-Cons aren't interested in spirited or thoughtful debate, because such an endeavor requires accountability for the logical conclusion of their argument." Among his targets is the Club for Growth, a group that tarred Huckabee as insufficiently conservative in the primaries and ran television ads with funding from one of Huckabee's longtime Arkansas political foes, Jackson T. Stephens Jr."
But for all the sharp words Huckabee has for his fellow Republicans, score-settling is not the major thrust of the book, Huckabee's sixth. Rather, Huckabee, who now hosts a weekend show on Fox News, spends most of the pages celebrating the grass-roots success of his surprisingly successful campaign and laying out, again, his vision for the future of the Republican Party, which includes instituting a national sales tax to replace the income tax and renewed focus on health-care prevention and education. He mentions McCain only in passing, and with praise, calling him a "true statesman and a man of honor."
Good to know this book isn't just a hit job. I would've been very disappointed in Governor Huckabee if it had been.
I see four people who should be running for the nomination in 2012. Gingrich, Huckabee, Palin, and Romney. Honestly I would love if it was just Huckabee and Romney so those two could have the fight to the death they were denied by Fred Thompson allowing McCain to win the SC Primary. Thus McCain became our nominee and we all saw how that turned out. Of course I'm sure Jindal will want to jump in too. Crist might jump in, but I don't see him getting the nod. Then again Cantor and Pence might want to take a shot. All right eight, but that's it. I guess Ron Paul will probably run again so that would make nine. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP! We have even inaugurated the new President yet and the campaign for 2012 has begun.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1859539,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
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Very interesting article. I myself had been a big Huckabee supporter, though I'd frequently post on the UltiMitt site on different topics. So, I guess my first wish on thelist would be that his campaign would create a similar site. You made a first heads - up alerting me to the new book, so thanks. Having read a lot of both candidates (and little of everyone else) first let me say that I think, Republicans split on which of them to choose between.
ReplyDeleteThat's when McCain took advantage. Ideally Mitt would've won in Fla, right after Huck won South Carilina. But MIC (Military Industrial Complex) -ain managed to secure the military block vote and then the Latin block to get back in it, and with both being winner-take-alls, he gained the momentum.
People thought that he was sort of a reformer, a man who could deal with both parties and get the results. But the truth is, Mitt had been better at brokering or building concensuses. In crisis like we have now, he should have been effective. More people would've put their confidence in him than Senator Obama.
Huckabee also would, in my opinion, have gotten more votes away from Obama. This is because he's not from patricians with long coattails, but a working-class family. The FairTax issues would have made economic sense, as well.
Huckabee had more governing experience and took the every part of the job more seriously, than I thought Romney had. He was the most credible of all the candidates.
I would like to promote his 2012 campaign, and thanks for the great post.