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Checking in with the two Mike Huckabees, state and national Wednesday, Jun 14, 2006 By David Sanders For Gov. Mike Huckabee, there are no more regular legislative sessions and probably no more special sessions, but as state duties wind down, the presidential campaign is moving forward. It appears that the two Mike Huckabees - the Arkansas version, the one Arkansans are treated to on a daily basis in our local newspapers and television news reports, and the Washington version, the man with whom the rest of the country is becoming acquainted - are starting to reconcile. There is the emerging personality in Washington: The chairman of the National Governors' Association who shows up in national publications, usually with glowing praise. He has moved up from the no-chance candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination to an emerging dark-horse contender with a outside chance. Huckabee (Arkansas version): First and foremost, this is the man some have come to love and, for a smaller percentage of folks, the man some to love to hate. The Arkansas version has a history of being overly hyperbolic and combative. For a time, he'd managed to put away the bellicose personality, but that was short-lived. Last week, a few callers into his monthly radio talk show awakened the vintage Huckabee by attacking the recent workplace smoking ban that he recently signed into law. Callers called the program "stupid" and "dishonest." One caller called him a "puppet." He unleashed a little hyperbole when he told a caller that he would support a ban on all cigarette sales in the state. He claimed that the loss of tax revenue that would come from such a ban (the state collected $129.7 million in cigarette taxes in 2005) would be made up by the health care cost savings. I'm not sure his math works out. Continuing on. The governor cut off the local liberal-slanted tabloid from receiving his press releases or so much as an e-mail update from his office. He has taken on this adversarial position without giving much of an explanation. He continues to play cat and mouse with the idea of rebating to taxpayers some of the state's $300 million-plus budget surplus. Huckabee, the Washington version, has taken to characterizing some of those overly concerned with illegal immigration of being affected by racism. This was a new approach to some, but those of us here in Arkansas know this as old hat. I thought that Huckabee's national persona was less combative, but then I remembered reading about him taking on the White House last year. When news that President Bush was looking to tighten up the federal budget, Huckabee fired off a hyperbolic salvo that was picked up in last Sunday's New York Times. Here are the quotes the newspaper attributed to the governor: "I certainly understand the need to balance the federal budget, but people need to remember that to balance the federal budget off the backs of the poorest people in the country is simply unacceptable. You don't pull feeding tubes from people. You don't pull the wheelchair out from under the child with muscular dystrophy." The governor needs to win as many friends in Washington as he can. Such rhetoric, especially the comment on illegal immigration and racism, will win him friends inside the Washington media circles, but not among the rank-and-file Republican primary voters. I guess the rest of nation is getting to know the real Mike Huckabee. ------- David Sanders writes twice weekly for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is DavidJSanders@aol.com. |
