Who is Mike Huckabee?
Well here's a bit of his synophsis from Foxnews:
Mike Huckabee is a former two-term governor of Arkansas. He has served as chairman of the National Governors' Association and the Interstate Oil & Gas Compact Commission. Before entering politics, Huckabee was the president of a local television station and a pastor for 12 years. He was the youngest president ever of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. He has also writer five books, including "Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork" about his battle with weight and how he managed to lose 105 pounds through diet and exercise.
ISSUES
Abortion:
Huckabee supports a constitutional amendment to protect life from the time of conception. He praised the Supreme Court ruling upholding a ban on partial birth abortion. Huckabee explains that as governor, he banned partial birth abortions, required parental notification, required that a woman give informed consent before having an abortion, required that a woman be told her baby will experience pain and be given the option of anesthesia for the baby, allowed a woman to drop off newborns at a hospital, and made it a crime for an unborn child to be injured or murdered during an attack on his mother. The governor also opposes embryonic stem cell funding, saying it amounts to creating a life only then to take it away.
Energy/Environment:
Huckabee wants to conserve and use alternative energy like nuclear, wind, solar, hydrogen, clean coal, bio-diesel, and biomass. He plans to set aside a federal research and development budget that will be matched by the private sector to research alternative fuels. He compares the U.S. dependence on foreign oil to writing "a check to Usama bin Laden." He says energy independence will make the U.S. safer. He supports offshore drilling and oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Huckabee opposed the Kyoto treaty.
Immigration:
Huckabee favors allowing illegal immigrants to apply for legal status by registering with authorities, paying a fine, getting guest worker permits, learning to speak English, and paying taxes. Such applicants for legal status must not be allowed to jump ahead of legal applicants. Huckabee says earned legalization is not an amnesty, but that rounding up and deporting 12 million illegal immigrants isn't going to happen. He also says federal immigration laws are antiquated and cumbersome. He wants to secure and police the border and supports erecting an electric or physical barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border. However, Huckabee does not want to militarize a peaceful border. He says immigrants coming to the U.S. should be required to prove who they are and that they don't have a criminal background or a communicable disease.
Iraq:
Huckabee supported Bush's troop surge in Iraq. He has left open the possibility of a further increase, should U.S. military commanders make such a request. He believes that going into Iraq with too few troops was a mistake, and opposes Democratic efforts to set a deadline for withdrawal. Huckabee says the U.S. must finish the job now or go back and do it all over again someday. He proposes a Middle East summit so that Iraq's neighbors become militarily and financially committed to stabilizing their neighborhood.
Taxes:
Huckabee says he will promote pro-growth tax policies, perhaps even the idea of true fair tax. He supported the Bush tax cuts and would make them permanent. Huckabee would also reduce the tax burden of those with the lowest incomes. He regrets that Republicans have all too often perceived as favoring the wealthy with their tax policies. He signed a no-new taxes pledge in March of 2007.
Economy:
Huckabee supports tax rebates and curbing federal spending, to include adopting the line-item veto. He is also in favor the FairTax and the elimination of the IRS, which he says will increase both the likelihood that American companies will invest domestically and that foreign companies will invest in America.
Homeland Security:
Huckabee plans to remove FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and give the organization cabinet status, so that the FEMA director will report directly to the president. He plans to streamline the Department of Homeland Security, to make it more efficient and effective. He wants to increase chemical plan and port security standards at the federal level, but give states the right to make and enforce stricter-than-federal port standards.
Education:
Huckabee favors strong support of arts and music education as a part of normal, traditional curriculum, saying that these aspects of education contribute to a future generation of creative workers, enabling America to compete more rigorously in a global economy. He supports home schooling, charter schools, and school choice programs. Huckabee wants to curb federal intervention in state school programs; with regard to NCLB (No Child Left Behind), allowing states to develop their own benchmarks for measuring success.
Health Care:
Huckabee wants to completely overhaul the health care system, but opposes universal federal healthcare. He wants to adopt policies that encourage innovation in the private sector to bring down costs and subsequently improve free market access to healthcare. He wants to decrease medical liability, make health insurance deductible for individuals, and make health insurance more easily portable from job to job.
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