With the summer spotlight around here on the Democrats and the Citadel debate, I admit to being a little less informed about the Republican presidential candidates. But with the Red Man Group coming to Myrtle Beach soon, I realized it’s time to study up.
My father is a big fan of Mike Huckabee, and was glad to see him perform well in Iowa’s straw poll, so I began with him. The Cato Institute doesn’t like Huckabee much, because he spends too much on domestic programs. That’s fine with me, especially if we pull some of that money from an inflated defense budget.
Huckabee is undeniably a moral conservative. He’s adamantly opposed to abortion, gay marriage, etc. . .but I have to say, he expresses his viewpoints very intelligently. I disagree with him, but at least he seems to have thought this stuff out. And we know he can commit himself to what he cares about. Just look at the change here.
Ontheissues.org is a great resource for quotes from the candidates. . .
Huckabee on the environment
The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it’s all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it. It’s the old Boy Scout rule of the campsite: You leave the campsite in better shape than you found it. I believe that even our responsibility to God means that we have to be good stewards of this Earth, be good caretakers of the natural resources that don’t belong to us, we just get to use them. We have no right to abuse them.
Source: 2007 GOP primary debate, at Reagan library, hosted by MSNBC May 3, 2007
And on abortion. . .
I always am going to err on the side of life. I believe life is precious. I hav been in the pro-life camp since I was a teenager. It’s because of my view that God is the creator and instigator of life. But those of us in the pro-life movement have to do also some expanding. Life begins at conception but it doesn’t end at birth. And if we’re really pro-life we have to be concerned about more than just the gestation period. [My administration] passed pro-life legislation, but we also did things that improved the environmental quality that would affect a child’s air and water; that he had a better education, & better access to affordable health care. So I think that real pro-life people need to be concerned about affordable housing, safe neighborhoods, access to a college education. That, for me, is what pro-life has to mean. (Continuing) I would seek always to promote the view that life is precious and should be protected. But I think it has to be won on a battlefield of one heart at a time rather than pieces of legislation at a time.
Source: Meet the Press: Meet the Candidates 2008 series Jan 28, 2007
Having been raised in a conservative, Christian family, I’m often left defending my more progressive positions to family and friends. Environmentalism and Christianity should go hand in hand, yet a church-led movement has twice elected the most environmentally destructive president we’ve ever had. If Huckabee’s “stewards” comment is to be taken at face value, it’s a welcome change from the right.
I also have no problem with people who are pro-life, and I agree with Huckabee that we should “err on the side of life.” What frustrates me is people who really think they can stop abortion with laws dictated from the top, rather than “one heart at a time.” Overturning Roe vs. Wade is pointless and would further divide our country. I have no problem with pro-life activists working at a local level, just as I’m okay with pro-choicers doing the same.
Of course, it’s still incredibly frustrating that a vast majority of Republican voters choose a candidate based on issues like abortion and gay marriage, which aren’t going away and the federal government really has little control over (these issues are personal matters - again, changing minds, now laws), while ignoring issues like the environment that require immediate federal oversight.
Whoever Huckabee is, he’s surely better than Giuliani, who Michael Graham claimed in his column last week would win S.C. if the vote was today.
Read these brainless quotes from an essay Giuliani recently wrote for Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. Salon did a great recap here.
We are at the dawn of a new era in global affairs, when old ideas have to be rethought and new ideas have to be devised to meet new challenges …
The United States must not rest until the al Qaeda network is destroyed and its leaders, from Osama bin Laden on down, are killed or captured …
We must seek common ground without turning a blind eye to our differences with [China and Russia] …
It is clear that we need to do a better job of explaining America’s message and mission to the rest of the world, not by imposing our ideas on others but by appealing to their enlightened self-interest …
America will win the war of ideas …
We must learn from our past if we want to win the peace as well as the war …
It is better to give people a hand up than a handout.
(When Fidel Castro dies, the United States should) “help the Cuban people reclaim their liberty and resist any step that allows a decrepit, corrupt regime from consolidating its power under Raúl Castro.”
And from Salon. . .
The Palestinians must earn a homeland by proving that they are good global citizens, according to Giuliani. Otherwise, the new state will simply encourage terrorism, he writes — as if the statelessness and desperation of the Palestinians had not already bolstered terrorism throughout the region.
When Bush got reelected, I moved to California. If Rudy wins, I’m from Winnipeg and moving to Tasmania. Peace.
