Talk:Mike Huckabee

Initial Setup

I just created this article and threw in the only collection of Huckabee quotes I have definitively sourced. As someone from Arkansas, I can say Huckabee, for all his shortcomings, is a very quotable guy who's fond of one-liners. I certainly hope many more will be added.

--A procrastinator 06:10, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

There are 2 of the same quotes on this page.

• Anonymous

Unsourced

• My plan on securing the border? Two words: "Chuck Norris"

• I think Americans would rather have a President that reminds them of the guy they worked rather than the guy who laid them off

Speech to FRCAction (2006)

Speech to the FRCAction's Washington Briefing (22 September 2006)

On compassion

• When we say we're going to be people of compassion, we need to realize what they consider compassion may not be what we consider compassion when we sit around in our circles of politics. They're concerned about a son who may be held back in school, or about a daughter with asthma, or if one broken arm on the playground means missing the rent payment next month. Those of us who are people of faith have an obligation not only care who gets elected, but to care about lives and communities. That's how we earn the right to present policies, not only to change America, but to change the world-- when we care about life and care about people.

• We ought to be people of compassion. And being people of compassion means we deny ourselves, and our self centeredness.

• We need to get past the paperwork and to the people.

On failings of public policy

• The simplest way to an act of Fair Tax. That is the first thing I would love to do is put the IRS out of business and quit wasting the 10 billion dollars it costs to operate. If we had a fair tax it would eliminate all the various taxes hidden in our system it would be a revenue neutral its the best proposal we need to have. It's fairer, Flatter, and family friendly we had congress spend money like John Edwards was in a beauty shop.

• People who are tired of K Street corruption and Wall Street greed are ready for Main Street Values.

• We've become so polarized we've become paralyzed.

• Every single one of us as Americans need to remember that freedom did not come free, as we get on our knees tonight, thank God we live in a country where people are trying to break into, and not a country people are trying to break out of.

• Let me submit to you that we are too concerned with horizontal politics in America today. Perhaps the people out there eating dinner tonight aren't as concerned about the horizontal politics of left and right, but with the vertical politics: are we lifting them up or tearing them down.

• Let me ask you, have ever met anybody when they were really sick say, "Oh my gosh, I have a desperate disease. Get me to Havana; I've got to have the best health care in the world." - response to Michael Moore's documentary regarding health care in America

• Sometimes we talk about why we're importing so many people in our workforce. It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973. - on illegal immigration

On national politics

• In traveling, I've sensed there's a degree of frustration, even anger at the elected officials in Washington. And part if it is that there's some sense that the people's priorities haven't necessarily been Washington's priorities.

• [The voters] sent people [to Washington] to make sure that they cut spending and lower taxes, secure the borders and respected the states. Instead, spending is up, we can't seem to agree on anything about how to protect our borders, and one of the great concerns I think we ought to all be having is that the ideals of Thomas Jefferson, with a limited central government having power left to the states as so clearly laid out in the 10th Amendment is being ignored. It's as though the ghost of Alexander Hamilton has risen from the grave to restart the debate that was settled two hundred and thirty years ago.

• In some ways, politics has become captive to the whole mindset of the eBay generation, with politics going to the highest bidder. The one who can raise the most cash rather than those who raise the highest level of consciousness and conscience.

• Let me submit to you that we are too concerned with horizontal politics in America today. Perhaps the people out there eating dinner tonight aren't as concerned about the horizontal politics of left and right, but with the vertical politics: are we lifting them up or tearing them down.

• We expect government, at the end of the day to balance the budget and serve the people's interests instead of their own interests.

On Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

• Hurricane Katrina reminded us something- we all live below sea level. Protected by the levees of our health, our job, and our families. Those levees could break, and when they do, we could be in trouble.

• [In Hurricanes Karina and Rita] the government failed, but the people did not. We were once again reminded where the strength of America lies. It's not in the government; it's in the goodness and the heart of the ordinary, everyday people. And that is a powerful reminder for all of us.

On his faith's influence on government

• Let us remember, as people of faith, that our primary mission is not to have a political ideology, it's to change the world so that every man, woman, boy, and girl can experience true freedom. Not just the freedom to speak out, but the freedom within to be all God ever intended for us to be. I would suggest that we need an evangelical version of Shock and Awe. That we would show this country that the people of faith are not just angry folks mad about some things we don't like, but people who have joy in our hearts. People who want to help those without housing to find it, those without drinking water to drink it, to help people who are hungry at night to know what it is to have food. And you know, some people say, “Are you worried that the government might try to do it,” and yes I am, but I'm even more worried the church won't do it, and the government will mess up trying. That's why those of us who are people of faith need to act out of our souls and consciousness, and not expect government to do what we could do if every believer, instead of sending half of his money to the government in taxes, would give one dime out of every dollar to his church.

• Pro-life isn't just a political ideology, it goes to the very root and core of who we are and what we think about life, and the core is that we value it.

• Being pro-life doesn't end at birth, and being Christian doesn't just mean caring about someone after death.

• We don't need to focus on what we're against, but on what we're for. I don't like it when people say, ‘But you're against abortion!' I say, no I'm for life. I don't like it when people say, ‘But you're against gay marriage!' I say no, I'm for keeping marriage the only way it' ever been in history; and until Moses brings two stone tablets down from Brokeback Mountain that say we've changed the rules, we're going to keep it that way.

• I have opponents in this race who 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 -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

On Arkansas government

• Let me assure you, when I became governor (after my predecessor was being told he 'had the right to remain silent' ten years ago), there were people who were scared to death. They were just confident that I was going to replace the Capital dome with a steeple, and instead of legislative sessions we would have prayer meetings. But I promised to show I wasn't just there to be preaching, but to make progress.

• We wiped away decades of one-party corruption in the state government.