Photo credit: Dave Davidson – Prezography.com
Former Arkansas Governor and 2008 Iowa Caucuses winner Mike Huckabee made a campaign stop at an event hosted by the Marion County Republicans at Central College in Pella, Iowa on Thursday night.
Huckabee praised the Iowa Caucuses because it allowed his campaign to compete with fewer resources.
“I spent a dime to the dollar of my next opponent. You know what is great about Iowa? It did not matter that I didn’t have the same amount of money as the other people. Thanks to folks like you in Marion County I won the Iowa Caucuses with the largest amount of votes given to any Republican who won the Iowa Caucuses and I did on a dime to the dollar, and I think that is significant for your sake. And I am grateful for that,” Huckabee said. “I don’t take it for granted that I am going to win again just because I did before. I’m spending a lot of time in Iowa because I believe that I have to earn it all over again.”
He complimented the Republican field saying many of them were his friends. He pledged to run a positive campaign. “I want to be the quarterback of the Republican football team to take on Hillary Clinton, but I don’t want to earn the job because I broke the legs of everyone else trying out. I want to get the job because I played the game better of anyone else who is out on the field,” Huckabee stated.
“I am telling people unapologetically that we need to understand where we come from as a nation. I do not think that you can explain America if you can not understand the providence of God and the relationship that His hand had in the creation and foundation of this nation. There is no other explanation other than the miracle of America,” Huckabee added discussing American exceptionalism. “No way that a bunch of ragtag farmers and merchants be able to grab muskets off the mantle and take on the British army and win except their was intervention from above. No way this country should have been able to sustain itself not only through a revolutionary war, but through a civil war, through two world wars, through tumultuous problems we’ve seen in this nation apart from somehow the sovereign providence of God believing there was a purpose for what Reagan once called that shining light on the hill.”
Huckabee said that he is afraid our light has become dim. “It has been dimmed by greed and selfishness, and dimmed by a people who have forgotten where we have come from.”
Huckabee also stated that experience and leadership were necessary for the next President. “This is no time in America who has never been in the left seat (pilot’s seat). We need leadership. People who have understood what the executive role is all about and has run something. Not only in the governmental, but in the private sector, somebody who has signed the front of a paycheck not just the back of one. Somebody who understands that you have to make the payroll out of your back pocket because the profits haven’t come in that week and the only way you can pay your help is to do it personally. People who understand the impact of Obamacare has done to small business owners,” Huckabee added.
Huckabee later during the Q&A after his remarks discussed further what the leadership needed looks like. “What leadership is all about is looking at a problem and resolving it in a creative way.”
He added that the most difficult day he had as governor was the day that something happened that wasn’t expected whether it was a tornado, a school shooting or a flood in another state that sent thousands of evacuees seeking shelter.
Speaking of the King v. Burwell decision made by the Supreme Court supporting Obamacare, Huckabee said that the decision was “an assault against common sense as well as the Constitution.”
“For the Supreme Court justices to believe they could ignore the very text of the law, well I think Judge Scalia put it best, ‘from now on this will be called SCOTUScare.’ From now on it means that words don’t mean anything when it comes to the Supreme Court. This outrageous assault on the constitutional principle of equal branches of government and the judicial branch being a true judicial branch not a political branch was pretty much ended (on Thursday) with a decision that was irrational and utterly indefensible.”
He also discussed the expected Supreme Court decision related to marriage that was released the next morning. He said that decision wouldn’t bring about marriage equality, but a marriage redefinition which Huckabee contends the Supreme Court does not have the authority to do.
“They are the Supreme Court which means they are only the supreme part of our court system one of three equal branches of government. They are not the supreme branch, and they are most certainly not the Supreme Being, and they can no more repeal the nature of marriage than they can the law of gravity. For them to believe that they have the power to do that is utterly absurd. Have we lost our minds? If we continue in this vein we will lose our country,” Huckabee warned.
During the question and answer period he was how he would resolve the conflict between religious liberty and anti-discrimination statues. “The Constitution already did that for us. We don’t have to resolve it. All we have to do is respect that religious liberty is the very first, basic right in the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution is very clear. ‘Congress shall make no law’ that infringes on religious liberty. It is not a restriction upon people of faith, it is a restriction on Congress,” Huckabee answered. The restrictions in all of the Bill of Rights in no way ever restricts you as a citizen. Not one of them says to you what you can’t do. Everyone of them says what the government can not do to step on your freedom. Religious liberty is the fundamental liberty of all. If you are unable to believe what you want to believe, you are unable to do what you want to do or assemble with which you want to assemble or publish what you want to publish or say what you want to say.”
“This nonsense that the government can determine the limits of your faith, of your conscience, is as blatantly unconstitutional as anything that has ever, ever been foisted upon the American public,” Huckabee added.
Huckabee’s communication ability has always been a strength and that was on display Thursday evening. The audience resonated with his comments on the judiciary. He was asked great questions from the audience, and gave insightful answers on a whole host of issues. Huckabee thus far has lead on the judge issue and it is resonating with grassroots conservatives in Iowa.
Huckabee was impressive and his time in Pella reminded me of why I supported him in 2008.
You can watch Huckabee’s remarks here and below:
Watch his Q&A session here or below.