Huckabee Defends Conservative Credentials
DES MOINES, Iowa _ Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says he’s as conservative “as anybody could hope to be, or want to be, or needs to be” in defending a record that has come under attack now that he holds front-runner status in Iowa.
Visiting Iowa one month before the first voting in the presidential campaign and just after a Des Moines Register Iowa Poll showed him overtaking Mitt Romney, Huckabee also likened himself to the late President Ronald Reagan.
Appearing before reporters, Huckabee was asked about a mixed record on taxes during the time he was governor of Arkansas from 1996 until last January and said that “most everybody who’s ever governed” would have the same kind of record.
“Ronald Reagan raised taxes (as California governor) by a billion dollars in 1967 after he campaigned in 1966 saying he wouldn’t. He cut taxes as president. He also raised taxes as president. Ronald Reagan also signed the amnesty bill that has created such grief for us,” Huckabee said.
“When I hear people say, `Well, Ronald Reagan would never …’ they might want to do a little history,” the former Arkansas governor said. “But does anybody in the Republican Party call Ronald Reagan a liberal? Does anybody say that Ronald Reagan wasn’t a true conservative? He’s the gold standard of Republican conservatism now.”
Huckabee also contended Reagan’s presidential bids in 1976 and in 1980 had “rankled” the GOP establishment. “He did not have the support of the insiders,” Huckabee said of Reagan. “Neither do I, and in many ways that may be a good thing.”
Facing criticism from Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, over policies regarding immigration and taxation as well as criminal sentencing, Huckabee acknowledged he’s become a target but said, “It’s a lot better than being ignored.”
With some critics calling his credentials as a conservative into question, Huckabee said he believed in lower taxes, “a strong adherence” to gun-owner rights, “the sanctity of life,” a strong military as a deterrent, and the “Jeffersonian model” of limited central government that gives more power to the states.
“All of those are conservative bedrocks,” he said. “When people call me anything but that, I think they have to be quite creative in coming to a different conclusion to end up saying I’m anything but a conservative.”
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