Here is the transcript from an interview Mike Huckabee did with Radio Iowa. He talks about Larry Craig, Hurricane Katrina, campaign momentum and being a Main Street Republican. This is a great interview.
- Henderson: "This episode with Senator Craig has made Evangelical Christians in your party say, 'Why do I even bother voting Republican?' What do you say to those folks?"
Huckabee: "Oh, it's not about Republicans and it's certainly not about Evangelical Christians. It's about an individual and he'll have to answer for himself but we all do whether we're Republican, Democrat or Independent so I think people, you know, are maybe going a little far when they look at, you know, one person's actions and suddenly, you know, want to rewrite all of America's political landscape." - Henderson: "I wanted to ask you about a speech you gave at the Lincoln Day Dinner in April. You enumerated problems with Katrina -- this is the Katrina anniversary. You talked about problems with mining standards -- there's been another mining accident. You talked about problems with the Veterans Administration and I told someone that night if someone had given that speech at a Democratic convention, people would have been on their chairs cheering. People would have been crying. It was deathly silent because Republicans weren't ready to hear negative things about their president or his administration. Do you sense that Republicans are ready to hear that change message and you've been articulating that for the past few months -- do you think they're ready to hear that?"
Huckabee: "I wasn't being criticial of the president, but I was being critical of government that's shown itself to be, in many cases, incompetent. People expect their government to get results. They expect their government to show some competence and they're paying dearly for that govenrment and they have a right to expect that government will not do more than it has to do, but what is does do they do expect it to do well. Let's face it. Government hasn't performed well. We haven't closed the borders. We've not dealt with that issue that has got a lot of Americans exercised. We've not improved the health care system. We haven't dealt well with the aftermath of the Gulf Coast hurricanes. We haven't done really a superb job in terms of creating a safer work place, and yes, for miners. What we've done with veterans is disgraceful and shameful, asking these guys to go and put their lvies on the line and then come back and take a number and wait like they're at Baskin Robbins and we'll get back to them when they, in fact, are in desperate need of care. There's no excuse for that. I'll not make excuses for any government, I don't care if it's Democrat or Republican. What we need is people who will be honest and tell the American people the truth. This is incompetance and I'm less concerned about whose fault it is as is somebody willing to sit in and fix it." - Henderson: "If it's incompetence, doesn't that all trickle up to the top? Doesn't the buck stop with (the chief executive)?" (I can't hear the end of my question on the recording, as the mic is positioned in front of Huckabee.)
Huckabee: "There's always going to a matter in which leadership has responsibility, but you can't let congress escape from some of this responsibility, too. We have more than one branch of government. A lot of it is the bureaucracy, bureaucracy that is steeped in trying to be sure that we get all the paperwork done when government is about serving people, not just filling out blanks on a piece of paper. That's what I saw firsthand. The real disaster of Katrina as well as Rita is you had a lot of bureaucracy that was far more interested in seeing that the paperwork was filled out than they were that you had people standing in water up to their chest for five days and nobody getting them out of it. That should never, ever happen in this country again. People are more important than paperwork and people have a right to be expected that their government will treat them with respect and not do everything for them, but not let them stand in filthy, muddy water for days and then when they're finally brought out, ask them to stand and fill out a form. That's insulting and it should never happen." - Henderson: "So, what's phase two look like? Are you going to be a traditional candidate or are you going to strike out on your own. Barack Obama on the other side has said he's not going to run a traditional campaign, yet he's done many of the things that conventional candidates do. Do you have any ideas on how Mike Huckabee strikes out on a non-conventional path?"
Huckabee: "I think we have already done that. My message is not 'Establishment Republican.' That's one of the reasons it's resonating with so many people because people don't want another Establishment candidate. That's a losing formula for us next year. They're looking for somebody that's got not only fresh energy and ideas but that's willing to be different in saying what people know is the truth. You know, we've got to point out the elephant in a room full of elephants and frankly that hasn't been done often and so *it's time that the Republican Party face up to our need to communicate directly with the American people the things that matter to them.* I think that's why people are coming aboard our campaign and I think that's why we did well in the Straw Poll." - Henderson: "What is the elephant in the room?"
Huckabee: "The fact that the Republican Party has been seen as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street, insensitive to ordinary folks and more tied to the Wall Street or the K Street Washington, D.C. lobbyist Republicans and not to the Main Street Republicans who go to Caucuses, folks that get out on January cold nights and actually vote. You know, those aren't people that sip champagne at a Georgetown cocktail party. These are the people who just came in from the fields in the summer and in the winter who bundle up real tight on a Caucus Night. Their issues and their interests are very different than the folks who can write a big check and be done with it. These are people who are fighting for their jobs. They're fighting for the kids' college education. They're fighting for dollars to put into their health care. They need somebody who's going to honestly address some issues that are going to touch them everyday."
*As a Christian I don't believe in reincarnation, but if there were such a thing, Mike Huckabee would be the reincarnation of Abe Lincoln himself
Click on the link at the top of the post to read the full transcript.
God Bless from the Upper Peninsula in Michigan!
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