Former AR Gov. Mike Huckabee's Positions on National Policy

by Will Hall, Baptist Press: Former Gov. Mike Huckabee as a Southern Baptist was interviewed by the Baptist Press [excerpts on Huckabee positions]:
On Courts: I want to appoint judges who understand it's their purpose and role to interpret the law, not to make it. They need to be not only strict constructionists, but they need to have a clear understanding of what the limitations of the court [should] be. . . . One of the areas of a litmus test would be that they recognize that they are to interpret United States laws and not to base their decisions on international law, and that's a trend that's beginning to take place in the federal court system that is extremely unacceptable. We have judges -- even at the appellate court level -- acting as if the precedent on which they base a decision is international law or some unofficial, so-called "treaty" that ties us to a U.N. doctrine. That should never, ever be the case for a United States judge. They have one document from which they can judge, and that's the U.S. Constitution.

On Illegal immigration: I think we first have to secure the borders, and we don't do that because we dislike immigrants. We do it because we love our freedom and want to protect and preserve it. The only way you can do that is if you know who's coming into your country . . . who might come in with a truck filled with a dirty bomb. You can't do that if you have open borders. So, it's not a matter of disliking people who aren't like us, it's a matter of doing the one thing that government is supposed to do, and that is protect our security. We have to have actual secure borders. . . .

On Iraq: We have to demonstrate that we have a will to win. If we do anything other than that, we are going to embolden Al Qaeda. The Democrats' approach is to just walk away and hopefully nobody will notice. Well, I promise you Al Qaeda will notice. . . . there are only two choices, we can win or we can lose and if we leave, just because we don't have the stomach to stay there, we lose -- that does two things: it demoralizes our military, as well as the Iraqis', and it emboldens our enemies in Al Qaeda and the rest of the jihadist world. That's what we can't afford to have happen. We can argue whether we should have gone, we can argue whether some of our decisions about how we're conducting the war . . . . What we can't do . . .is to make the even greater mistake of losing this war, and that's what an arbitrary, automatic pull-out would in fact be. I think we continue to push for acceleration of getting the Iraqis where they can control their own security. That's the right thing to do, and that's what we're doing. It's slower than any of us want. None of us want to be there a single day more than is necessary, but the only thing worse than staying too long is not staying long enough to let our military finish the job and to give the Iraqis time to get things where they can govern themselves. It will never be perfect. Even when we are able to pull away, it's not going to mean that sectarian issues and violence won't continue in Iraq, because it will -- it's been going on for 1,600 years -- we're not going to fix it. But, we need to make it so they can at least govern themselves -- imperfect as it will be.

On National debt: The best way . . . is to create a more vibrant economy. I think the way to do that is to replace the very punitive tax system that we have now -- which penalizes productivity -- with the fair tax option, which would change the entire tax structure from one of taxing people at their earnings and instead tax them at the point of consumption. We would eliminate all income tax -- both corporate and individual -- taxes on savings, dividends, capital gains and inheritance. And you would replace it with a simple consumption tax that would be levied at the time of purchase at the retail level. What it does, it ends the underground economy for drug dealers, illegals, gamblers, pimps, prostitutes. It creates a system where you are not penalized for working the second job or for going into business or making a profit, and it provides for a much more vibrant economy. . . .

On health care: First, it has to be changed from an intervention-based system to prevention-based. The whole system now is based on waiting until people are catastrophically ill and then coming in with extraordinarily expensive coverage. What has to happen is to begin to put the focus on prevention instead of intervention. For example, we cover a $30,000 foot amputation, but not a $150 visit to the podiatrist. . . . it takes less money to prevent and to screen and to deal with diseases at the early stage than it does to wait until they're advanced. So then with those who have chronic disease -- diabetes, hypertension -- the focus needs to be on managing those diseases. If you say we're not going to cover the medicines . . . because medicines are expensive. What's more expensive is several days in the hospital because they didn't have the medicine.

On education: Education needs to be student-focused, not school-focused. Unfortunately the history of education in our country is that we really focus on perpetuating the schools and the institutions as opposed to really empowering students. We have to make the curriculum exciting and desirable. We've got 6,000 kids a day that drop out of school, largely because they're bored, not because they're dumb, and that has to change. The only way to change that is to make sure the curriculum is developing both the left and the right sides of the student's brain. Part of what has to happen is that rather than cut music and art programs they need to be restored and put front and center as a vibrant part of the educational curriculum. What we've kind of gravitated to is a left-brain focused education system that says: "We're not going to deal with music and art. Those are extracurricular and expendable and extraneous things. We're going to focus on math, reading and science." . . . The capacity of a student to think creatively is really what makes education work . . . [Read More]

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