“I’M NOT SURE THAT I SUPPORT THE TROOP SURGE …”
Gov. Huckabee Confronted With The Videotape
“That’s a pretty clear contradiction. … you didn’t say you supported the surge, you said, ‘I’m not sure that I support the troop surge.’ … according to this evidence you did not support the surge before Mitt Romney. … I don’t know how you can have it both ways on that, governor.” – ABC’s George Stephanopoulos (ABC’s “This Week,” 1/6/08)
In Last Night’s Debate, Gov. Huckabee Mad False Claims About The Troop Surge:
Huckabee Claimed He Supported The Surge And Wrongly Claimed Gov. Romney Didn’t. “I supported the president in the war before you did. I supported the surge when you didn’t.” (ABC, Republican Presidential Candidate Debate, Manchester, NH, 1/5/08)
This Morning, Gov. Huckabee Was Confronted With The Fact That He Did Not Support The Surge While, In Fact, Gov. Romney Did:
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: “That’s A Pretty Clear Contradiction.” STEPHANOPOULOS: “You also, you and Mitt Romney went at it on the surge as well. Here is what you said last night.” HUCKABEE (TAPE): “I supported the president in the war before you did. I supported the surge when you didn’t.” STEPHANOPOULOS: “But last January when you were asked on another program whether you agreed with Mitt Romney and John McCain on support of the surge, you said this.” HUCKABEE (TAPE): “Well, I’m not sure that I support the troop surge if that surge has to come from our guard and reserve troops, which have really been overly stretched.” STEPHANOPOULOS: “That’s a pretty clear contradiction.” (ABC’s “This Week,” 1/6/08; www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPkCgQhW3gI)
Stephanopoulos: “Well, You Didn’t Say You Supported The Surge, You Said, ‘I’m Not Sure That I Support The Troop Surge.’” HUCKABEE: “What I said was that the surge I supported but the concern that I had was because as the commander in chief of the National Guard…” STEPHANOPOULOS: “Well, you didn’t say you supported the surge, you said, ‘I’m not sure that I support the troop surge.’” (ABC’s “This Week,” 1/6/08; www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPkCgQhW3gI)
Stephanopoulos: “According To This Evidence You Did Not Support The Surge Before Mitt Romney.” STEPHANOPOULOS: “But, do you retract your statement from last night? Because according to this evidence you did not support the surge before Mitt Romney.” HUCKABEE: “No, I don’t retract because I did support the surge. Separate the surge from the fact that I said that we need to have a different approach when it comes…” (ABC’s “This Week,” 1/6/08; www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPkCgQhW3gI)
Stephanopoulos: “I Don’t Know How You Can Have It Both Ways On That, Governor.” STEPHANOPOULOS: “I don’t know how you can have it both ways on that, Governor. The surge did require the guard and reserve troops to be used so you either support it or you don’t.” HUCKABEE: “And I did support it.” STEPHANOPOULOS: “That’s not what you said on January 24th.” HUCKABEE: “Well, what I was speaking to was the specific overuse of guard and reserves over a long period of time and I do stand by that, George.” (ABC’s “This Week,” 1/6/08; www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPkCgQhW3gI)
Watch Gov. Huckabee Confronted With The Videotape Here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPkCgQhW3gI
FACT: One Year Ago, As Gov. Romney Supported The Surge, Gov. Huckabee Did Not:
Gov. Huckabee, January 2007: “Well, I’m Not Sure That I Support The Troop Surge.” MSNBC’s NORAH O’DONNELL: “We have a Rudy Giuliani, who supports the president’s plan on Iraq. We have Governor Mitt Romney, who also supports a troop surge. How are you different from any of those candidates.” HUCKABEE: “Well, I’m not sure that I support the troop surge, if that surge has to come from our Guard and Reserve troops, which have really been overly stretched.” (MSNBC’s “Live,” 1/24/07)
Watch Gov. Huckabee NOT Support The Troop Surge In January 2007: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLquRK7sNs0
Oh Really?
Gov. Huckabee Once Claimed “People Aren’t Going To Find Me In A YouTube Moment From 10 Years Ago Saying Something Substantially Different Than I’m Saying Today.” GOV. HUCKABEE: “I think it’s a combination of convictions that are consistent. People aren’t going to find me in a YouTube moment from 10 years ago saying something substantially different than I’m saying today.” (CNN’s “The Situation Room,” 7/23/07)
January 6th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I wonder if Romney could turn the stupid “Flip-Flopper” into a positive. Make an ad that plays on “Flip this House” (House flipping…buy a broken down house, renovate, and sell for a profit). “I’m Mitt Romney and yes I am a Flipper…I’ve flipped dozens of broken businesses making them profitable again…I flipped the debt and scandal ridden Olympics, turning a profit and restoring honor and integrity…I Flipped the Massachussetts Budget from a $3 Billion shortfall to a surplus that we used to expand health coverage…And I’ll Flip Washington too by saying “NO” to earmark pork-barrel spending, holding government spending BELOW inflation, preventing Social Security from going Bankrupt, and improving the efficiency of our government. It’s time someone turned things around.”
January 6th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Huckabee is using a rhetorical device, riddling in some cases and metaphors frequently, to advance his points to his audience and also uses it when he doesn’t know what he is talking about. He did this in last nights debate and on the Fox News show this morning. This is why he uses the horizontal = status quo, vertical = change argumnent. He adds onto this device with a rythum, a tempo in his speech patterns.
- People will agree that vertical and horizontal do exist
- the staus quo represents the horizontal / or what isn’t working
What is the solution?
We need to break from the typical way of doing things - we need to go in a new direction -
What is the new direction? Vertical. The opposite of horizontal.
What does vertical mean? Here is where you get to fill in the blank. Use your imagination. Whatever, isnt going right in your life, city, state, country, the world, et all, and how you would fix it is the correct answer. In short, I will help you if you elect me President to solve your problems.
Now you can replace vertical and horizontal with other opposing, yet related things.
Huckabee does this with war, economics, money, religion, health and his personal touch adn experience all day long. He asks the question to create a doubt - one that a person may have about an issue and then provides a truthful answer, in part, that has vitually no heft, or substance and at its core is only tangentially related.
EXAMPLE -
Huckabee: “Today we hear a lot about the War on Terror, how we need to fight it,” said Huckabee, who lost 110 pounds several years ago when he was governor of Arkansas. “Let me ask this question: Who’s going to fight it in the future if we’re a generation so sick that we don’t have the capacity to show up for work?” HUH?
Huck shifts the issue from foreign policy to weight control. How do we win the war on terror? By losing weight. Who has lost the mother lode of weight? Uncle Huck.
Then he brings in the expert to back up his claim -
“Dr. William Rowley, who worked 30 years as a vascular surgeon and now works at the Institute for Alternative Futures, said 61 percent of U.S. active-duty military personnel are overweight.”
The statistic has been introduced. A number. What does it mean?
Huckabee said that statistic disturbs him. (translation we are heading for a catastrophe, crisis, a disaster if we can’t control the weight of our soldiers and future soldiers )
“You’ve got a serious situation with a generation of kids coming up so unhealthy they won’t be able to pass the military physical,” Huckabee said in an interview after the panel discussion. “We keep talking about the war on terror — who’s going to fight it if we don’t have enough people who are healthy enough to show up and pick up a backpack?”
HUCK”S assertion - - if we don’t lose weight, we will lose the war on terror.
Really?
Who does this type of argument appeal to? Over weight people. How many people in America would like to lose a few pounds?
Now comes the poltical expertise . . .
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, said during the panel discussion that the eight fattest states in the nation are all in the South.
“I don’t know that fried has anything to do with it,” (in other words, keep eating garbage) Barbour said. “But we weren’t raised eating right in the South. (its a locational problem, not your over eating) But the good news is we can do something about it.”
(barbour uses this device as well)
(We not you, the collective not the individual, even though it only takes an indiviual to open his or her mouth and shove an enormous amount of calories down the hole, can fix this)
Conclusion; elect Huckabee and he will help you to lose weight, and help and lead America to win the war on terror.
HUCKS
January 6th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Stephen, I know that was just an example but it was a funny one that could apply in another way like; let’s stop Romney from being negative. Let him clean up his own back yard, or in other words regarding your example; let’s see Huckabee help his own son lose weight first.
January 6th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
After I learned that Huckabee was endorsed by the NEA in New Hampshire, the first Republican ever is what I heard, I did some internet research on him and found a LOT. The most remarkable thing was that he had 87 state computer hard drives destroyed when he left office. Good articles on that are at computerworld.com Feb 2007 and arkansasleader.com in July 2007. Besides this issue, there were ethics investigations because of the gifts he accepted ($112,000 in one year alone), many of which were from people who received state appointments from him. A Dec 14, 2007 politico.com article about the gifts has this astounding paragraph:
“Huckabee twice sued the commission, once seeking a statute of limitations on ethics complaints and in another suit he sought to narrow the scope of prohibited gifts. Ironically, he was represented before the ethics commission by Crass and one other lawyer who in 1998 donated their services — as gifts.”
Stephen’s Jan 6 comment is very enlightening - I had noticed that Huckabee argues like a Democrat, but I did not really understand the method. Even if any of the issues in my comment above eventually proved to be nothing, the media would never let go of them if Huckabee became the GOP nominee.
January 6th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Judicial Watch listed the Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians, Huck is #6
1. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)
2. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI)
3. Senator Larry Craig (R-ID)
4. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA)
5. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-NY)
6. Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR)
7. I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby
8. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)
9. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
10. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)
6. Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR): Governor Huckabee enjoyed a meteoric rise in the polls in December 2007, which prompted a more thorough review of his ethics record. According to The Associated Press: “[Huckabee’s] career has also been colored by 14 ethics complaints and a volley of questions about his integrity, ranging from his management of campaign cash to his use of a nonprofit organization to subsidize his income to his destruction of state computer files on his way out of the governor’s office.” And what was Governor Huckabee’s response to these ethics allegations? Rather than cooperating with investigators, Huckabee sued the state ethics commission twice and attempted to shut the ethics process down.
January 6th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
This is just simply amazing to me. This man promotes himself as God’s candidate, one of integrity and honesty?
Once again, I find hypocrisy in a Baptist preacher.
January 6th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Two quick points.
1. McCain is desparate. His entire political career ends if he loses New Hampshire. He has nothing to lose. He’s like a cornered rabbit fighting for his political life. Too bad that as long and as distinguished a career as his must come to and end with him being at his worst. I’ve often been frustrated by Senator McCain, but there have been times when I was so glad he was there to take a stand. Unfortunately, he’ll probably be remembered more for his petty, vitrialic politicizing than for the good of his career.
2. Who would you rather have lead this great country? A seasoned turn-around corporate patriot? Or the guy that gets laid off. Huckabee couldn’t be more wrong employing that snappy but fabulously, utterly wrong metaphore. Of course we want the experieced executive. Huckabee is a putz.
Romney has the right motivation (service, compassion, selflessness), the right credentials (all of them, too many to list, several times better than the next qualified candidate), and the right plan for America. That the press (both MSM and conservative!!! ) are complicit in the mischaracterizations of the Governor Romney is not a little bit disheartening. I have never really liked George Stephanopolos, but his drilling Huckabee today was very, very welcome.
January 6th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Sephen nailed it. Thanks Stephen. Hillary triangulates, Huck peddles in non sequiturs. Unfortunately, his followers don’t know what a non sequitur is and are therefore easily taken in by his nonsensical logic because it seems to make sense. Peel back the covers, though, and there’s nothing there…
January 8th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Please, oh please get this letter to as many evangelicals who will be voting in the South Carolina Republican Primary:
http://reasonandrevelation.blogspot.com/2008/01/evans-not-hearting-huckabee.html
It is written by an evangelical Christian from Arkansas who gives 7 reasons why he can’t support Huckabee in this Republican Primary. It is well written and very well documented and very fair. Please get this out EVERYWHERE!!!!
January 8th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Please, oh please get this letter to as many evangelicals who will be voting in the South Carolina Republican Primary:
http://reasonandrevelation.blogspot.com/2008/01/evans-not-hearting-huckabee.html
It is written by an evangelical Christian from Arkansas who gives 7 reasons why he can’t support Huckabee in this Republican Primary. It is well written and very well documented and very fair. Please get this out EVERYWHERE!!!!