Former Gov. Mike Huckabee
2008 Conservative Political Action
Conference
Omni Shoreham Hotel
Washington, DC
February 8, 2008
[DEMOCRACY IN
ACTION transcript]
...that I'm a conservative. After all I come from a state that
doesn't have a whole lot of history of conservatism and certainly not
Republicanism. Well a lot of it is that as you know I get asked
all these God questions in the debates, and I guess in a way it's
appropriate because my conservatism is rooted in my understanding of
the Scriptures. And here's why. Ecclesiastes Chapter 10
Verse 2 says that a wise man heart directs him toward the right, but a
foolish man's heart directs him toward the left. There you have
it.
Let me explain some things about the way I grew up in South Arkansas,
where there were no Republicans native to Hempstead County. I
came from the little town of Hope. I know you've heard of it
before. And yes there was another obscure unknown governor who
couldn't win the presidency who came from Hope, Arkansas too. But
as I've often said, give us one more chance, folks.
I was on an airplane, and a guy sitting next to me several months ago
was I think just trying to stir up some conversation so he turned to me
and he said, hey mister, I've got a joke I want to tell you. It's
about this politician from Hope, Arkansas. I said, excuse me,
sir, but now I need to let you know something before you embarrass
yourself. I am a politician from Hope, Arkansas. He looked
over at me and he said, oh, that's all right son, I'll tell it real
slow.
When I grew up, I came from a family where there were three basic
heroes in our household. Jesus, Elvis and FDR. Like so many
kids of the South, it was sort of just imbred in us that we were all
Democrats. Now it wasn't because folks there were so much
liberal, but there was just sort of this gravitation toward it.
In fact there were only seven Republicans that I knew of in my entire
home county. Every one of them had moved in from either Kentucky,
Indiana or Illinois. None of them were native to Hempstead
County. There used to be a saying that, there are no Republicans
here except the ones that either moved in or have been messed with.
Well I was one of those guys that at some point got messed with.
And here's what happened. As a teenager I went to work for work
for a gentleman by the name of Haskill Jones. He was the manager
of the local radio station and he gave me a job. I look back and
I think what an incredible thing. Here's a guy that looked at a
14-year old kid and saw something in him and said, I want you to work
for me. And he was one of those seven Republicans who had moved
in from somewhere. He loved this country. He was a great
patriot. He understood the blessings of America.
And even though I had not grown up in a Republican household, I
understood something about the blessings of America. I was raised
to love this country. I was not allowed to be unkind toward
it. My parents, though they were not well educated, just
hard-working blue-collar types that barely could make the rent payments
on the little rent house we lived in on Second Street in Hope,
Arkansas. A father that worked two jobs, one as a fireman, the
other as a mechanic. The kind of dad who got grit and grime under
his fingernails every single day because he did the work of heavy
lifting and hard labor. The kind of household where the only soap
we had in our house was Lava soap. That means I was in college
before I found out it's not supposed to hurt when you take a
shower. My father never graduated high school. In fact no
male upstream from me in my entire family lineage had ever graduated
high school. I would be the first, and the first to ever go on to
college.
My mother, my mother was the oldest of seven children and grew up in a
household where her early childhood was spent with dirt floors, no
electricity, outdoor toilets. I'm a generation away from the
abject poverty that plagued so many peopleof the deep South, who went
through the Great Depression and a world war, but a part of what we
often call the greatest generation because they did not live for their
own comforts, they lived so their children would have a better life
than them. And that's why many of us live better today than we
ever could have dreamed. And because of what they and others like
them in their generation instilled in me, I grew up believing that no
matter where you started in this country, it wasn't where you had to
stop.
And that was the greatness of America, is that we had individual
freedom, that our freedom was not tied to the group to which we were
automatically or arbitrarily connected. Our freedom was tied to
our own individual souls. It was a gift from God, not our
government, and therefore no one could take it from us, because no one
gave it to us. It was instilled in my that because freedom was
individual, personal responsibility is also individual, and was upon
me. And that I could not expect somebody or the government to do
for me what I was supposed to do for myself.
When I went to work for Haskill Jones, this great patriot and
Republican, he began to help me crystallize what I understood was part
of a greater movement. This was in the 1960s. In 1968 and
1969 when this country was literally burning with riots and
dissent. And we remember the Democratic National Convention when
the whole world was watching and they were. And there was a real
definite choice that year. A choice would be be a country of law
and order or law of mayhem. And that further helped crystallize
my view that I believed in law and order not mayhem. I believed
that some things were right and some things were wrong, and when we
went with the right, we had strength, and when we saw that there was no
moral center and there was nothing that really ever could be defined as
a moral absolute, then we were lost and confused.
I also was handed a book by Haskill Jones when I was a teenager.
It was a book that was called It's a
Choice, Not an Echo, written by Phyllis Schlafly. And that
book had a tremendous impact on me as a teenager. Quite frankly that
book reminded me that in all of our lives, we should not simply be
echoing the sentiments of others, but making deep personal choices
about what we believe and most importantly why we believe it.
I realize that it is not politically correct to say what I am about to
say, but I've believed it since I was a teenager, and I will not recant
it now. The reason that America is a great nation is because
America is a special nation. And the reason America is a special
nation is because it was founded by people who were first on their
knees before they were on their feet. We are a nation rooted in
our faith.
I have--I've had the incredible privilege and joy to have visited
almost 40 countries across the world. I've seen some magnificent
things, experienced some dramatic and exotic cultures, tasted some
delicious foods, experienced the hospitality and the warmth of many
peoples of many nations. I've sat and visited with heads of
state, with heads of companies and with ordinary people in virtually
every part of this world, whether Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon,
Turkey, Egypt, nine times to Israel, to Russia, to all parts of Asia,
Europe, Central America. But in all of my travels and in all of
the ways in which I've touched other parts of the world, I have yet to
find any other country, as enchanted as I was with it, for which I
would consider giving up even for a moment my citizenship in the United
States of America to trade it for residence any where else on
earth. We are a special nation.
And we are a special nation because throughout our history we have been
people who have made choices rather than simply echo the voices of
others.
I know that there is some speculation that I might come here today to
announce that I would be getting out of the race, but I want to make
sure you understand. Am I quitting? Well let's get that
settled right now. No, I'm not.
And the reason, and the reason is simple. Because I go back to
that which helped crystallize in me a conservative viewpoint as a
teenager when it wasn't easy or popular to be a Republican or a
conservative in my home town. Because I do believe that America
is about making choices and not simply echoing that of others.
Let others join the me too crowd. But I didn't get where I am
today, and I didn't fight the battles in a state that, when I became
its governor was 90 percent Democrat, by simply echoing the voices of
others. I did it by staking out a choice, stating that choice,
making that choice and fighting for that choice to believe that some
things were right, some things were wrong, and it's better to be right
and even to not win that it is to be wrong and to be a part of the
crowd...
...When I was a teenager there was a phrase that came in the late 60s
and early 70s that sort of was a mantra for many of us as conservatives
and quite frankly I remember it on bumper strips. It said, My
country, right or wrong. And I guess many of us subscribe to that
view that it is my country right or wrong, but the real history of that
statement goes back to the 1800s with a Senator from Missouri named
Carl Schurz, who served from 1869 to 1875, a German immigrant who came
to this country later elected to the U.S. Senate, once served in a
president's cabinet after that, died in the early 1900s. But the
full context of the statement is this. He said, my country right
or wrong. When it's right, we will keep it right, and when it's
wrong, we will make it right. And ladies and gentlemen that ought
to be the heart cry of every conservative. When it is right, we
will keep it right, but when it is wrong, we will make it right.
I want to say again that freedom does not exist in a vaccuum. It
has to have moral clarity. We have to believe that murder, lying,
stealing are wrong or freedom doesn't work. Freedom has to always
operate in the context in which responsibility is the other wing of the
airplane on our individual freedom and choice. If we as a nation
ever fail to understand that then we will disintegrate and become like
many of the cultures that we today have to confront and in fact fight,
who do not believe that it is wrong to murder, even to murder one's own
child for the sake of the political cause of islamofascism. What
separates us from that very culture out to destroy us is that it never
would be conceivable to us that we would strap a bomb to the belly of
our own children and march our child into a room full of innocent
people, to detonate the bomb in order to make a political point.
Because we believe some things are right and some things are wrong, and
we would believe it wrong to kill our own children for a purpose
beneath that.
But we also believe that there are some things that are right.
For example, as conservatives we believe that it is right to protect
the sovereignty of the United States and to make sure that we never,
ever for any circumstance under any purpose ever yield one ounce of our
sovereignty over to some international tribunal. That's why we
have to fight, that's why we need to fight against the Law of the Sea
Treaty and make sure that it gets a good burial at sea. That's
why we should say no to Kyoto, because it's not giving over our
sovereignty. And its why that any time some United States judge,
who has taken an oath to the Constitution of the United States, should
invoke some international law as a basis upon which to make a decision,
he should be summarily impeached for having done so.
It is right, it is right to have a strong military. In fact one of the
mistakes that we have made is we have allowed ourselves to believe that
the peace dividend of the Clinton Administration is something that is
anything less than has become now the war deficit, because we have
failed to keep our military spending up to the level at which we can
have the troop strength that we desperately need. That's why in
the next election cycle, and hopefully in the next administration we
will return to the kind of at least GDP spending that we had during the
Reagan years, because quite frankly the quickest path and the surest
path to peace is to make sure that we have the kind of military that no
one on Earth wants to engage in a battle knowing full well they don't
stand a chance.
It is right, it is right for us to be on the offense against
islamofascism and not wait until they attack us, and on this we need to
salute the president for the fact that he has not been willing to wait
until they attack us again on our soil. Let us--unlike any war we
have ever fought in this nation, this is not a war for soil, this is a
war for our soul. We will either win it or we will lose it and
this nation must rally to the point where we recognize there is no
compromise, there is no alternative, we must win, they must lose;
islamofascism must disappear from the face of the Earth or we will.
It is right, it is right for us to believe in a government that gives
to us lower taxes and less government and controls spending. And
I know that you believe with me that that is the what, but let me share
with you the why. Because I think sometimes in the political
debates of today we miss the point. This goes to the heart not
just of a political argument, but to a moral one. When government
takes more from us, and confiscates more of our earnings than it has a
right to confiscate for the basic purpose of government, which is not
to provide for us, but merely to protect us so that we may provide for
ourselves, then it has robbed us of our capacity to raise our own
families and to engage in what gives us strength economically, and that
is a free market system.
The reason that our tax system is irreparably broken is because in this
city it is not really run any more by 535 members of Congress, but the
35,000 lobbyists, 70 to one to the members of Congress, who manipulate
the tax code and creates winners and losers. The reason that I am
a strong supporter of the Fair Tax is that it ends 66,000 pages of
gobblydegook in the name of the IRS tax code and it ends once and for
all the completely nonsensical concept that we are to penalize
productivity while subsidizing irresponsibility. That is
counterintuitive to a strengthened economy.
I talked to a man in Manchester, NH who was a machinist at the machine
shop I was touring. He told me of his daughter who was going to
Cornell grad school at the cost of $54,000 a year. Which my first
thought was thank you, God, my daughter doesn't want to go to Cornell
grad school. But then he told me, he said you know I'm working a
second shift so I can help my daughter, but the problem is working the
second shift has put me in a whole new tax bracket. Most of what
I'm making in the second shift the government's taking away from me in
higher taxes. Hated to tell him, but the truth is if he gets in
that higher tax bracket there is other issues as well. If he saves the
money, we tax it. If he invests it, we tax the dividends from the
stock market. If he buys and sells, we'll tax the capital
gains. And if the poor guy keels over dead from working too hard,
we'll tax him at his death. No wonder people are frustrated.
You know there's one way he can get some federal help for his
daughter. He can quit working altogether, sit home and watch ESPN
all day, and then she'll qualify from assistance. Now can anybody
tell me that makes sense?
I've got a better idea, I've got a better idea than the nonsense, a
better idea than the nonsense of that 66,000 page tax code that cost
American businesses $250 to $500 billion a year in compliance costs,
that's choking the life out of small business. It's a shame that
the Republican Party used to be the champion of the small business
owner, and we need to be again because the fact is 50 percent of our
jobs come from there, 80 percent of our new jobs, and even big business
starts out as small business. Most big businesses depend upon the
supplies from small business. And today the reason many small
business owners find it hard to survive and compete is because the
competition that they face the fiercest is not from their competitors,
its from their own government with excessive taxation, regulation and
the threat of litigation. We can change that.
I'd like to be the president that puts the IRS out of business, nails
the going out of business sign on their front door and takes these tax
forms like this [tearing papers] and says to every American, good bye!
[flinging torn papers]
We should demand transparency and accountability from our
government. I would propose that every time the federal
government makes any expenditure, it posts it on the Internet within 24
hours so you could find out exactly where every dollar of the federal
budget goes down to what it costs to mow the courthouse lawn in your
hometown. Wouldn't that shock some people to find out exactly how
our tax money comes in and how it goes out?
I believe that it's right to demand that government should facilitate
and not complicate the free market system. I think it's right to
believe that mothers and fathers raise better kids than governments do
and we don't need governments telling us how to raise our kids and grow
our families...
...And I believe it's right to understand something that comes from the
very heart of our founding and that is that life is sacred and should
be celebrated and elevated. And ladies and gentlemen I know that
there are some even in the conservative movement who think that the
issues such as the sanctity of life don't belong in the discussion, but
let me tell you why they do, and why of no circumstance will I ever be
able to do anything less than not just support, but to be willing to
lead a human life amendment to the United States Constitution, and hear
me out as to why.
From the beginning of this country, our Founding Fathers said it in
eloquent words when 56 men put their signatures on a document, and they
said, we hold these truthes to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights, among these life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. At the heart of that statement is this radical idea
for 1776 that flew in the face of everything that had been a part of
their culture in which ancestry, name and net worth were what made a
person have worth or not. They said, we're all equal.
Today I stand here because of their willingness to put their blood on
the line to give a kid like me to be as equal as the aristocrats.
None of us would probably be sitting here talking about our freedom had
it not been for their courage in recognizing the equality of all of
us. But at the heart of understanding that is that if we are
indeed equal then it means that all of us have intrinsic value and
worth and no one has more than another, and nothing external gives us
greater or less worth. Not our abilities or disabilities, not our
net worth, not our job position, not our last name, our ancestry, not
our race, not our gender. Not one thing makes us more or less
equal.
I believe that the sanctity of a human life is rooted in who we are as
a culture and a civilization and should we turn our back on this
fundamental truth, we have turned our back on the very essence of who
we are as a people, that has always given us that understanding that we
leave no man on the battlefield and even when a boy scout is lost in
the woods of North Carolina we go looking for him because we believe
his life has value and meaning and we care as if it were our own.
That's what makes us a great, wonderful, God-blessed nation.
Let me also say that it is right for our country in believing in our
sovereignty to demand that we have something that every nation on Earth
accepts and in fact assumes would be a part of its nation's
essentials. A secure border. How we can ever believe that
we can be a sovereign nation or a free nation without securing our
borders is beyond me. And ladies and gentlemen our national
government has miserably failed to do something that most of us, all
across this country realize. This is a great nation that welcomes
people. We're not hostile. We've always been a nation of
immigrants. Most of us come from ancestors who immigrated here
from somewhere. But we're also a nation of law, and we believe
that if you knock on our front door and you're hungry, chances are
we'll ask you to sign the guest book and we'll try to feed you and help
you. But if you break through the window in the middle of the
night, God help you.
The sad thing is when our own government puts the ladder up against the
window, it's a little hard to blame the person climbing up the ladder
as much as it is the government who puts the ladder and says go ahead
and climb. Let's fix what's wrong.
I had a boyhood pastor who used to tell me if you don't stand for
something, you'll fall for anything and I believe that that's perhaps
true now more than ever.
I want to just conclude with you today by just sharing with you that
sometimes in the course of elections, a lot of things get said, people
question other people's motives or maybe their qualifications or their
credentials, and mine certainly have been questioned from time to time
as to whether I was a true conservative.
Well let me tell you, the critics who have been saying some of those
things weren't with me when I was being put in the back of parades in
Arkansas because I had the audacity to be a conservative in a state
that didn't really welcome them. They weren't there when my door
was nailed shut upon my election as lieutenant governor in 1993, nailed
shut by the Democrats in the State Capitol, who kept it nailed shut for
the first 59 days that I was in office. And I'd get on an
elevator, they'd get off; I'd walk down the hall, they'd turn the other
way. Or the times when I'd go into cafes and restaurants to
campaign and people refused to shake my hand because I had the audacity
to be a Republican in a state where that just wasn't acceptable.
Believe me, I understand what it is to go into a state capitol where
there had never been a general broad-based tax cut in 160 years and
propose one and three months later sign it into law and 94 times after
that sign tax cuts into law in a state that didn't know how to handle
that before. That's a conservative folks against the headwinds
that weren't easy.
To reform welfare in a state that believed that it was an entitlement
and to take half the people off and get them jobs, not just take them
off welfare, but to get them employed and to see the lowest
unemployment numbers in our state and the highest employment numbers
and the largest number of new jobs and a 50 percent increase in per
capita income and the cut in capital gains tax and the elimination of
the marriage penalty and the doubling of the child care tax credit, and
the indexing of the income tax for inflation, and the freezing of
property taxes for elderly people so they did not lose their homes
because the government made them end up having to move away. I
understand something about the necessity of that.
I remember when legislators were on the Capitol steps having news
conferences every day calling for, demanding that we have a special
session to raise taxes, and I finally created the tax me more
fund. I said there's nothing in the law that says you can't pay
more taxes if you feel like you're not paying enough. And I had
envelopes printed. Every where I made a speech I'd hold them
up. I'd say you feel like you're not paying enough, here's an
envelope. Would you like to fill it up? Here. Take
one. Eighteen months later $1,200 was all the people of Arkansas
thought they had been undertaxed; a thousand of that was given by a
liberal senator who started the whole process of screaming at it.
I spent ten and a half years term as governor fighting the corruption
of a one party political machine that I happen to know a little bit
about because I'm the only person who's ever run against the Clinton
political machine and beat it four times. And if you think we've
got an easy race this year, let me assure you we don't.
I stand in this race and I stay in this race not to be a fly in the
ointment, because I believe as Phyllis Schlafly's book taught me in the
1960s, that our party, that our country is about a choice, not an
echo. If people want an echo, they can get it from somewhere
else. If they want a choice, I plan to give it to them.
There are only a few states that have voted. Twenty seven have
not. People in those 27 states deserve more than a coronation;
they deserve an election. They deserve the opportunity to have
their voices and their votes heard and counted.
I know the pundits and I know what they say. Well the math
doesn't work out. Folks I didn't major in math, I majored in
miracles and I still believe in those too.
A few nights ago when the tornadoes tore through the South, one of
those tornadoes hit the community of Brandenburg, Kentucky. I got
an e-mail yesterday from a lady named Lisa Young in Brandenburg,
Kentucky. It's a pretty remarkable story because that tornado
didn't just hit her town, it hit her house. But she e-mailed me
to say that despite the damage to her home, she said there was one
thing that was pretty remarkable and she wanted to make sure that I
heard about it, and I did. She said she had a yard sign, a Mike
Huckabee yard sign up in her yard, and she said when the tornado had
gone through, she said what was amazing to her, was standing pristine
without a hint of damage or even leaning, she said was that yard sign
still standing in her yard. She said Mike, I don't know what that
means, but all I know is that in Brandenburg, Kentucky your'e still
standing. And folks, I want you to know across America,
everywhere there's still a vote to be cast, I'm still standing.
Thank you. God bless you. Thank you very much.