Free Republic

Rahm Emanuel needs a few things about America explained to him. For example, "Mayor" is not synonymous with "Dad." And being coerced into doing what the government wants you to do with your life is not so compatible with liberty: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has proposed a new policy that won't allow students to graduate from high school unless they present a plan to the government on what their post-graduation plans are. The proposal would require students to prove that they're entering some sort of educational or vocational program after graduation; a job offer or entering the military would also...

 Former State Rep Mike "Tuffy" Hamilton Backdoor Deal with Hardin County Judge? (It was correctly pointed out to me that Mike Hamilton is not technically a former State Rep yet until after the November election when it becomes official so I wanted to make sure I let everyone know that my original article that said former state rep should really have said soon to be former state rep) Multiple independent sources have informed me that Bobby Franklin, the Precinct 4 Hardin County Commissioner serving over Lumberton, TX, is planning to step down soon so that former State Representative Mike "Tuffy" Hamilton can be given the...

Huckabee Radio Talk Show Off To Extremely Slow Start *** EQ EXCLUSIVE *** With mainstream media expectations so high, Mike Huckabee's new radio talk show was probably bound to disappoint. But newly-available hard data reveals a gaping donut hole where the audience should be. It's an ominous sign for Cumulus Media, Huck syndicator and new owner of ABC Radio's largest AM legacy news-talk radio stations. Widely touted as the "civil" answer to Rush Limbaugh's regime-threatening political effectiveness, the former Arkansas governor became an establishment darling earlier this year when the talk titan got caught up in the Sandra Fluke controversy....

Mike Huckabee has issued a sharp response to Glenn Beck’s derisive comments about the former Arkansas governor, saying the “inept” talk show host’s remarks “blow up in his face.” On Wednesday, Beck slapped the dreaded “progressive” label on the potential presidential candidate, saying Huckabee “is the perfect progressive candidate for the Republican Party.” Beck has equated progressivism with cancer that must be excised from America, and has sometimes derided progressives as “Nazis.” Huckabee responded on the website of his political action committee, huckpac.com. “This week Glenn Beck has taken to his radio show to attack me as a Progressive, which...

Potential GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says Sarah Palin’s wrong and Michelle Obama’s right, at least when it comes to the first lady’s push to combat childhood obesity. “With all due respect to my colleague and friend Sarah Palin, I think she's misunderstood what Michelle Obama is trying to do,” the former Arkansas governor said Tuesday on the “Curtis Sliwa Show.”

Dial down the deafening Sarah Palin buzz for just a moment: The most consequential decision in the 2012 Republican presidential sweepstakes could be whether Mike Huckabee decides to run again – and associates say the former Arkansas governor may well take the plunge. If Huckabee gets in, he will unquestionably be a force to be reckoned with in the fight for the nomination. He’d be the undisputed frontrunner in lead-off Iowa, where he won by nine points in 2008. He’d be the candidate to beat in South Carolina, which he narrowly lost to John McCain two years ago in part...

Huckabee: Sarah Palin Has a Very Different Political Direction Than I Do Thursday, December 3, Jim Hoft Huck spoke about Sarah Palin today saying, “She has a very different political direction than I do.” True. She does not pardon or release cop-killing felons decades before their sentence is up. The Hill blog reported, via Free Republic: Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) on Wednesday sought to put distance between former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) and himself. Huckabee, in an interview with Christianity Today, stressed that the two potential 2012 presidential candidates have different “political direction[s]” and questioned both of their statuses...

Nice guys finish last—at least that seems to be the lesson Mike Huckabee has learned from losing the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. The former Arkansas governor made headlines last week when he suggested on his radio show that the Democrats’ health-care bill under debate in Congress wouldn’t have covered Sen. Ted Kennedy in his final days of battling cancer. “Proponents deny that the bill would devalue older people’s lives, or encourage them to accept less care to save money. But it was President Obama himself who suggested that seniors who don’t have as long to live might want to just...

To most political observers, the near-certainty that John McCain will be the Republican nominee ends any prospects for a Michael Bloomberg candidacy as an independent. Alas, Bloomberg begs to differ. He reportedly sees the current state of play as another opening for his presidential dreams. After telling friends he believes Hillary Clinton will be her party's nominee, Bloomberg said at a recent event, "Hillary should pray I get in the race because that would help her," according to a source quoted in the Daily News gossip column Rush & Molloy. Bloomberg, whose office would neither confirm nor deny he made...

As regular VC readers know, I am one of several conspirators who is supporting Fred Thompson's campaign for President. I cannot speak for the others, but my reasons for supporting Thompson include his commitment to federalism, his candor on important issues other candidates would prefer to avoid (e.g. entitlements), and his record on regulatory reform and government oversight over the past thirty years. For National Review's pentultimate issue (the one before they endorsed Mitt Romney), I authored an article making the conservative case for Thompson. For those without subscriptions to the print magazine, here is an excerpt: Sen. Fred Thompson...

A quick note about my various Huckabee postings. As many (most) readers know, I am supporting Fred Thompson in the Republican primary (and wrote an article explaining why in NRODT). This is not the reason why I have been posting so much that is critical of Huckabee, however. Rather, I find Huckabee's record and various positions to be particularly problematic, far more so than any of the other candidates. (Note I have not been posting items critical of the other candidates, even though I prefer Fred.) In my view, Huckabee is a big government populist liberal, not a conservative. In...

Compare this to [1] Huckabee’s view on waterboarding. From the [2] Charlie Rose interview: Thompson: I’m telling you, as President, if the lives of a bunch of American citizens were at stake and I thought that there was a good chance that an individual had information and could impart information that would help save those lives, I’m just saying, that I would do whatever is necessary to get that information from that person. I would authorize that. Whatever is necessary to save a number of American lives. Thanks to Cuffy who says this locks up the [3] Jack Bauer Caucus....

It is very rare, if not unheard of, to catch a presidential candidate, especially a Republican, in the act of saying he or she would be willing to sign any tax increase that lawmakers wished for. But that's what happened to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has rocketed to a statistical tie in Iowa with Mitt Romney, largely as a result of the former Baptist minister's support from evangelical voters in the nation's first caucus state. The Club for Growth, an effective tax-cut advocacy group, has been on Huckabee's back almost from the beginning of his candidacy, sending out...

New Iowa Leader Criticized by for Indecision on Federal Student Aid. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who backed in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants, hedged Sunday on whether illegal immigrants who have gone to school in the United States should become eligible for federal student aid such as Pell grants and subsidized federal student loans. "I'm not sure that I would support that," Huckabee told ABC News, "it was a different program in Arkansas." Huckabee's failure to take a clear position on federal student aid while appearing on ABC News' "This Week with George...

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has been holding private conversations with Dick Morris, according to aides, a longstanding relationship that is raising new questions as Huckabee’s campaign begins to take off. Morris’ most prominent calling card has been with Bill Clinton — for two decades, starting in 1977, as his most influential (if sometimes erratic) political adviser and for the past decade as one of his most persistent (if sometimes erratic) public critics. But the Arkansas connection the controversial consultant and commentator established through Clinton also brought Huckabee onto his client roster, beginning in 1993 when he advised the Republican’s...

Mike Huckabee was surrounded in New Hampshire yesterday by a pack of press that's grown with his increasing poll numbers. Reporters asked him to respond to attacks launched by his Republican opponents on his tax and immigration records, as CNN's Anderson Cooper waited for his exclusive. "I'm going to let Mitt Romney explain all of his positions - and there's plenty of them to explain," Huckabee said, responding to a question about his chief rival in Iowa, who recently stepped up his criticism of the former Arkansas governor. "I'm not running so much against Mitt Romney. I want to be...

Former Arkansas Governor and Republican Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee received the endorsement of the Republican Sportshooters Association at a sportsmen’s “meet and greet and skeet shoot” just outside Spartanburg, South Carolina yesterday. “The Second Amendment is not about loving guns, it is about ensuring freedom,” said Huckabee. During his remarks, Huckabee told the crowd the story about the rusty old 20 gauge shotgun in his rifle cabinet at home that was his father’s gun, and how one day that gun will be his sons. “You don’t hear stories about fathers passing down video games to their sons,” he quipped. Wayne...

With little resources, and with a GOP presidential candidacy hovering in obscurity through the summer, the former Arkansas governor is now running in a dead heat with Mitt Romney in the lead in Iowa. The former Massachusetts governor's spending in Iowa has been 10 times greater than Huckabee's and, until this week, Huckabee had not run a single ad (versus Romney, whose ads have already run over 5,000 times). In various national polls, Huckabee is coming in a solid third behind former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson. The Washington Post's David Broder provides...

The Governor opposes and will never allow amnesty. He passionately rejected the amnesty bill that President Bush and Sen. McCain tried to ram through Congress this summer after secret meetings of an under-the-radar cabal of amnesty-loving senators. The Governor opposed the misnamed DREAM Act, which was a nightmare because it would have put us on the slippery slope to amnesty for all. Because once we open that door even a crack, we’ll never get it closed again.

Mike Huckabee, a wise-cracking, guitar-strumming, Baptist pastor has leapt into a conservative void and shot into contention in the unpredictable 2008 Republican White House race. Huckabee, 52, was hitherto best known for being born in the same town, Hope, as Bill Clinton, and shedding more than 100 pounds from his once portly frame. But, partly by exploiting discontent among Christian conservatives with the Republican field, Huckabee, a witty former Arkansas governor, has powered into second place in polls in Iowa, 65 days before the state's crucial caucuses. "The religious right vote in the Iowa caucuses is a substantial bloc, and...