Looking for My Candidate: Mike Huckabee

Well, here's a good way to lead into my examination of Mike Huckabee.

Mike Huckabee reacts to Benazir Bhutto's assassination by calling for greater awareness of Pakistani-born illegal immigrants.

Now, if I didn't already have vote-killer reasons to avoid Huckabee, looking at the end of this article and seeing Newt Gingrich and John Bolton among his advisers would about do it.

The statement also shows that Huckabee can't be trusted with either diplomacy or national security. Instead of focusing attention on Bhutto's assassins, the Musharif regime currently claiming that Bhutto died from hitting her head while ducking back into her car (and was not hit by any bullet or shrapnel whatever, despite testimony from doctors)... he instead plays the immigration card. Never mind that most Pakistanis coming to America are fleeing the Musharif regime... to Huckabee, dark-skinned people, be they Latino or Muslim, pose an intolerable threat to good, honest, and above all white Christian Americans.

Nitwit.

But, despite this, on to the scoring, again based on alignment to my personal views as given here:

WAR: Supports permanent occupation of Iraq. Supports treating terrorism as a war to last pretty much forever. Supports rebuilding and expanding military. 25%.

SEPARATION OF POWERS: Favors strong executive, supports USA-PATRIOT. 0%.

HEALTHCARE: Opposes universal health care. Favors tort reform for medical issues, streamlining paperwork and bureaucracy to reduce costs. Has no problem with universal health care plans or universal insurance mandates on the state level. 66%.

TAXATION AND BUDGET: Supports FairTax. Would cut spending, but specifies no particular program; instead calls for Presidential line-item veto power. No promise of moratorium on borrowing money. 50%.

CIVIL LIBERTIES: "Our nation was birthed in a spirit of faith - not a prescriptive one telling us whether to believe, but one acknowledging that a providence pervades our world." Supports mandatory school prayer, Bible study. Advocates ending government spying on citizens. Supports USA-PATRIOT. Supports torture, Guantanamo. 0%.

IMPEACHMENT: Avoids issue. 0%.

IMMIGRATION: Universal deportation of illegal immigrants. Those that don't deport themselves will be effectively banned from ever immigrating legally. Would reform system to make it more efficient, but at the same time make it more difficult for the poor and the unskilled to immigrate. 0%.

TRADE: Supports GATT, WTO, NAFTA; openly calls globalization a blessing. Calls for "fair trade before free trade," but makes no specific proposals. 0%.

ENERGY: Vague support of a future comprehensive energy-independence plan to include all alternatives to petroleum, including subsidized corn ethanol and biodiesel. No mention of how this program would be funded. 20%.

ENVIRONMENT: Claims that most extinctions are caused because the species involved are NOT game animals. (???) Does not believe in human-caused global warming. 0%.

TORT REFORM: Supports tort reform on medical issues. 25%.

AVERAGE SCORE: 16.9%

VOTE KILLERS:

IRAQ: Supports permanent occupation.

THEOCRACY: "[Some of my opponents] 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 is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards."

RANKINGS TO DATE

Candidates in italics are not in consideration due to vote-killer positions.

Ron Paul - 28.2%
Mike Huckabee - 16.9%

Next time: Duncan Hunter, while he's still in the race to be examined.