del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
YahooMyWeb
Google
Facebook
What's this?
A Des Moines Register poll released Sunday showed the former Baptist minister has taken the lead in Iowa, with a month remaining before its Jan. 3 caucuses. Huckabee led former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney 29 percent to 24 percent in the poll -- with former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani clocking in at a modest 13 percent.
Speaking to a blue-blazered and wine-sipping audience of 150 at the Keene Country Club Saturday night, Huckabee emphasized his conservative credentials while showcasing his trademark humor.
"If Jesus had ever spoken at one of these banquets, there would have been another beatitude in the New Testament," he said. "'Blessed are the brief for they shall be invited again.'"
Huckabee's dinner address followed a series of brief speeches given by surrogates from several other campaigns -- including Romney's oldest son, Tagg, and former Gov. Walter Peterson, who has endorsed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Tagg
Peterson took a different tack, mentioning McCain's recognition of the threats posed by climate change and his support for campaign finance reform -- hardly bedrock Republican issues.
Huckabee, for his part, steered a course somewhere in between, dishing out the requisite conservative sound bites -- but in a low-key, ministerial tone, which has earned him praise from moderates and even the occasional liberal.
"I refuse to accept the idea that the greatest generation is the generation that has already lived and is dying off," he said. "I want to believe that the greatest generation in America hasn't even been born yet, but if that's going to happen, we've got to do some heavy lifting to prepare for that next generation."
Huckabee praised the sacrifices of his parents and dwelled for a moment on his humble roots -- he was the first male in his family to graduate from high school -- and then launched into a critique of his Republican rivals, Congress and, of course, Hillary Clinton.
"There are some people in our party who are pretty down in the mouth about our future, and I understand we had a tough year last year in the elections," he said. "But I think we've got an opportunity to once again remind America what we stand for, and when we do that I'm confident that our party will be the majority party once again."
The reason retaining the White House again is so important for the party, Huckabee argued, "is because it'd be a very different kind of America if Hillary Clinton gets elected president. And the reason I know that is because nobody who's running for president knows Hillary Clinton better than I do."
Huckabee, who shares a hometown with former president Bill Clinton -- Hope, Arkansas -- and moved into the governor's mansion four years after the Clintons left it, highlighted those facts throughout the night in an effort to draw a stark contrast between himself and the Clintons.
"Nobody else running for president has ever run against the Bill and Hillary Clinton political machine, and I have," he said. "And I actually beat it four times -- and I can tell you, it is one formidable headwind to work against."
Huckabee breezed over most issues of substance in his 25-minute address, elaborating only on his plan to scrap nearly every federal tax on the books and replace them with a sales tax.
"What would happen if we had a tax code so simple that a 7-year-old running a lemonade stand could actually figure it out instead of a 77-thousand page tax code that's taller than I am?" he asked.
Not once did he mention the word "Iraq," and only in criticizing Congress did he briefly touch on foreign policy.
"We sent them to come up with a way to make us energy independent so that one day we could tell the Saudis that we didn't need their oil any more than we needed their sand, and they could keep both of them. And we would no longer let the Middle Eastern people hold us hostage, wrecking our economy as well our environment."
Instead, Huckabee focused his words on broad, patriotic themes, reiterating his message that only he could revive a slumbering Republican Party and guide it back to dominance.
"We didn't lose (the 2006) elections because we were too conservative and too committed to Republican principles. We lost because we forgot what those principles were," he said. "We will win again when we once again not only stand for them consistently and authentically, but we will win when we once again communicate to the American people that our purpose in running for office is not just to get there, but to get the job done with competence once we are there."
Paul Heintz can be reached at pheintz@reformer.com or 802-254-2311, ext. 275.
