Featured
Today
Browse
Authors
Topics

Mike Huckabee

Michael Dale Huckabee was the fifty-fourth governor of Arkansas, and the third Republican governor since reconstruction. He term-limited out in 2006, and was succeeded by Democrat Mike Beebe in January 2007. He is an author, speaker, and Republican presidential candidate in 2008.

Republican Debates

  • We have 6,000 kids every day drop out in this country. And they don't drop out because they're dumb. They drop out because they're bored to death. They're in a 19th century education system in a 21st century world. If we really are serious, then, first of all, we make sure that we build the curriculum around their interests, rather than just push them into something they don't care. Second thing, unleash weapons of mass instruction. I'm a passionate, ardent supporter of having music and art in every school for every student at every grade level. - Republican presidential candidate debate in Johnston, Iowa. 12/12/07

  • Regarding the FairTax proposal -- "It's the best proposal that we ought to have because it's flatter, it's fairer, it's finite, it's family friendly. And instead, we've had a Congress that spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop," he said. - Republican presidential candidate debate in Johnston, Iowa. 12/12/07

  • When our founding fathers put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, those 56 brave people, most of whom by the way were clergymen, they said that we had certain inalienable rights given to us by our Creator. - Republican debate on 10/21/07

Speech to FRCAction (2006)

Speech to the FRCAction's Washington Briefing (22 September 2006)

On compassion

  • When we say we're going to be people of compassion, we need to realize what they consider compassion may not be what we consider compassion when we sit around in our circles of politics. They're concerned about a son who may be held back in school, or about a daughter with asthma, or if one broken arm on the playground means missing the rent payment next month. Those of us who are people of faith have an obligation not only care who gets elected, but to care about lives and communities. That's how we earn the right to present policies, not only to change America, but to change the world-- when we care about life and care about people.

  • We ought to be people of compassion. And being people of compassion means we deny ourselves, and our self centeredness.

  • We need to get past the paperwork and to the people.

On failings of public policy

  • The simplest way to an act of Fair Tax. That is the first thing I would love to do is put the IRS out of business and quit wasting the 10 billion dollars it costs to operate. If we had a fair tax it would eliminate all the various taxes hidden in our system it would be a revenue neutral its the best proposal we need to have. It's fairer, Flatter, and family friendly we had congress spend money like John Edwards was in a beauty shop.

  • People who are tired of K Street corruption and Wall Street greed are ready for Main Street Values.

  • We've become so polarized we've become paralyzed.

  • Every single one of us as Americans need to remember that freedom did not come free, as we get on our knees tonight, thank God we live in a country where people are trying to break into, and not a country people are trying to break out of.

  • Let me submit to you that we are too concerned with horizontal politics in America today. Perhaps the people out there eating dinner tonight aren't as concerned about the horizontal politics of left and right, but with the vertical politics: are we lifting them up or tearing them down.

  • Let me ask you, have ever met anybody when they were really sick say, "Oh my gosh, I have a desperate disease. Get me to Havana; I've got to have the best health care in the world." - response to Michael Moore's documentary regarding health care in America

  • Sometimes we talk about why we're importing so many people in our workforce. It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973. - on illegal immigration

On national politics

  • In traveling, I've sensed there's a degree of frustration, even anger at the elected officials in Washington. And part if it is that there's some sense that the people's priorities haven't necessarily been Washington's priorities.

  • [The voters] sent people [to Washington] to make sure that they cut spending and lower taxes, secure the borders and respected the states. Instead, spending is up, we can't seem to agree on anything about how to protect our borders, and one of the great concerns I think we ought to all be having is that the ideals of Thomas Jefferson, with a limited central government having power left to the states as so clearly laid out in the 10th Amendment is being ignored. It's as though the ghost of Alexander Hamilton has risen from the grave to restart the debate that was settled two hundred and thirty years ago.

  • In some ways, politics has become captive to the whole mindset of the eBay generation, with politics going to the highest bidder. The one who can raise the most cash rather than those who raise the highest level of consciousness and conscience.

  • Let me submit to you that we are too concerned with horizontal politics in America today. Perhaps the people out there eating dinner tonight aren't as concerned about the horizontal politics of left and right, but with the vertical politics: are we lifting them up or tearing them down.

  • We expect government, at the end of the day to balance the budget and serve the people's interests instead of their own interests.

On Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

  • Hurricane Katrina reminded us something- we all live below sea level. Protected by the levees of our health, our job, and our families. Those levees could break, and when they do, we could be in trouble.

  • [In Hurricanes Karina and Rita] the government failed, but the people did not. We were once again reminded where the strength of America lies. It's not in the government; it's in the goodness and the heart of the ordinary, everyday people. And that is a powerful reminder for all of us.

On his faith's influence on government

  • Let us remember, as people of faith, that our primary mission is not to have a political ideology, it's to change the world so that every man, woman, boy, and girl can experience true freedom. Not just the freedom to speak out, but the freedom within to be all God ever intended for us to be. I would suggest that we need an evangelical version of Shock and Awe. That we would show this country that the people of faith are not just angry folks mad about some things we don't like, but people who have joy in our hearts. People who want to help those without housing to find it, those without drinking water to drink it, to help people who are hungry at night to know what it is to have food. And you know, some people say, “Are you worried that the government might try to do it,” and yes I am, but I'm even more worried the church won't do it, and the government will mess up trying. That's why those of us who are people of faith need to act out of our souls and consciousness, and not expect government to do what we could do if every believer, instead of sending half of his money to the government in taxes, would give one dime out of every dollar to his church.

  • Pro-life isn't just a political ideology, it goes to the very root and core of who we are and what we think about life, and the core is that we value it.

  • Being pro-life doesn't end at birth, and being Christian doesn't just mean caring about someone after death.

  • We don't need to focus on what we're against, but on what we're for. I don't like it when people say, ‘But you're against abortion!' I say, no I'm for life. I don't like it when people say, ‘But you're against gay marriage!' I say no, I'm for keeping marriage the only way it' ever been in history; and until Moses brings two stone tablets down from Brokeback Mountain that say we've changed the rules, we're going to keep it that way.

  • I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution... But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

On Arkansas government

  • Let me assure you, when I became governor (after my predecessor was being told he 'had the right to remain silent' ten years ago), there were people who were scared to death. They were just confident that I was going to replace the Capital dome with a steeple, and instead of legislative sessions we would have prayer meetings. But I promised to show I wasn't just there to be preaching, but to make progress.

  • We wiped away decades of one-party corruption in the state government.

  • Some people ask me, ‘Are you one of those narrow-minded Baptists who think only Baptists are going to Heaven?' And I say, ‘Dear friend, I'm more narrow minded than that. I don't think all the Baptists are going to make it.' [laughs]

Other

  • When I was in college, we used to take popcorn poppers, because that was the only thing they'd let us have in the dorms, and we'd fry squirrels in the popcorn popper in the dorm rooms.


  • But I'm pro-life because I believe life begins at conception, and I believe that we should do everything possible to protect that life because it is the centerpiece of what makes us unique as an American people. We value the life of one as if it's the life of all, and that's why we go out for the 12-year-old Boy Scout in North Carolina when he's lost; that's why we look for the 13 miners in Sago, West Virginia, when the mine explodes; that's why we go looking for the hikers in Mount Hood, because we value life, and it's what separates us from the Islamic jihadists who are out to kill us. They celebrate death. They have a culture of death. Ours is a culture of life.

.
  • Here’s the clear “science:” When the male sperm and female egg join, a new and unique life form is created. At conception. Not at birth or viability, or when a lawyer says so. At conception this happens. John McCain got it right; Obama pled less scientific knowledge than a 5th grader. This life is either human or something else. Science irrefutably would declare that the life which is starting from that moment is human. It’s not a stalk of broccoli, it’s not a parrot, squirrel, or dolphin. It will never become a tree—it can only become a human. It has the entire DNA schedule that it will have for the rest of its life right then. In days it will begin to take on increasingly observable human characteristics and form, but at conception, it is biologically human. If this life is human, then the only issue left is whether this human life falls under the notion that it has a fundamental right of existence or not. If not, it is because we as a culture have decided that some human lives are simply not worth living. If we can decide that about an innocent and unborn baby, we can also decide it on the basis of less absolute criteria than that. If we make that choice (and this is all about “CHOICE,” isn’t it?) then someone may decide that a terminally ill person is not a life worth living. Maybe a severely disabled child is a life not worth living; what about a person with a limited IQ? Say that’s absurd—that an educated and enlightened society would never be so audacious as to begin to terminate life based on such arbitrary excuses? Maybe you haven’t studied Nazi Germany, in which the murder of six million Jews was justified because of their religion and millions of others were murdered because of their politics. Germany was not a primitive, superstitious culture. It was one filled with the intelligentsia and enlightened. This is an important issue. It’s why we can’t trust Obama with America’s future because he’s not even sure which Americans are worth saving and which ones aren’t. And it’s why that for many of us, McCain’s selection of a running mate really does matter. Because John McCain clearly is pro life, I will support and vote for him because Obama is not an option for me as a pro life person. I will be disappointed if McCain doesn’t pick a true pro life person and realize that should that happen, he will lose many of the very people who supported me. I cannot expect all of you to vote for McCain if he chooses someone whose record isn’t pro life. It will be a less than perfect decision for all of us---our only real choices are McCain and Obama; one will protect life and one won’t. Some will argue for a 3rd party candidate and I respect that, but in political realities, that is essentially a vote for Obama and I can’t go there.


  • We don't have a health care system. We have a health care maze. And we don't have a health care crisis. We have a health crisis. Eighty percent of the $2 trillion we spend on health care in this country is spent on chronic disease. If we don't change the health of this nation by focusing on prevention, we're never going to catch up with the costs no matter what plan we have. ... And we've got a situation with 10,000 baby boomers a day signing up for Social Security, going into the Medicare system. And I just want to remind everybody when all the old hippies find out that they get free drugs, just wait until what that's going to cost out there.

.
  • Hi, I'm Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, wanting to say 'Congratulations Canada on preserving your national igloo'.

.
  • Answering a question about whether he believes in evolution: But you know, if anybody wants to believe they’re the descendants of a primate, they’re welcome to do it.

.
  • Huckabee speaking to an NRA group during his presidential campaign: I’m pretty sure there will be duck hunting in heaven and I can’t wait.

  • I may not be the expert as some people on foreign policy, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

.

  • My plan on securing the border? Two words: "Chuck Norris"


  • I think Americans would rather have a President that reminds them of the guy they worked rather than the guy who laid them off

About Huckabee

  • I think that, that it would be hard for New Hampshire to vote for somebody who was a fundamentalist minister, affable as he is. He does seem to actually want to write, for example, a prohibition against abortion into the Constitution, which Ronald Reagan, for all his talking about it, never tried to do one time.
    • Bob Shrum,
 
Quoternity
SilverdaleInteractive.com © 2024. All rights reserved.