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Huckabee says he's ready for 'sausage grinder' Tuesday, Jan 30, 2007 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Former Gov. Mike Huckabee fielded questions about his 2008 presidential bid in Arkansas on Monday, a day after announcing on national television that he planned to join a crowded Republican field. Huckabee, who announced Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee, would not say Monday that he is committed to running. He said he still could decide not to run if he finds no public support for a campaign, although he said the prospect was unlikely. He filed papers Monday with the Federal Election Commission to form an exploratory committee, and he told reporters his campaign would be based in Little Rock. "That's very important to me. This is home. I love this state, and I hope that the campaign will be good for Arkansas," he said during a news conference at state Republican headquarters. Huckabee was scheduled to be in Iowa today and Wednesday, and in Florida Thursday. Next week he planned to travel to Washington, New York, New Hampshire and South Carolina. In his television appearance Sunday, Huckabee defended his record on tax increases he supported and the role he played in the 1999 release of convicted rapist Wayne DuMond, who was convicted of murder in Missouri after being released from prison in Arkansas in 1999. Huckabee said Monday that the questions from "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert were tough but fair and were no tougher than he expected. "If you're going to play Major League ball, you need to expect when you step into the batter's box you're going to face some 90-mile-an-hour fastballs at your head. That's part of the deal," he said. Huckabee said he wants to run because he loves America. "I think it is a wonderful place to live and a place where incredible opportunities are afforded to us, but only are going to be afforded to the next generation when people are willing to go through the sausage grinder of politics," he said. Huckabee was asked if comments he made in an opinion piece in Sunday's Arkansas Democrat Gazette lend credence to criticisms that he is too thin-skinned to handle a rough-and-tumble presidential race. In the piece, Huckabee accused one of the newspaper's reporters of writing stories that were "misleading if not dishonest" regarding, among other things, the destruction of computer hard drives in Huckabee's office before he left office. The destruction was standard operating procedure, but the newspaper stories implied impropriety, Huckabee wrote. Huckabee said at Monday's news conference that he had a responsibility to set the record straight. "In a case when a reporter says he couldn't reach any of us for comment, and in fact he had reached (Huckabee spokeswoman) Alice Stewart, who had spoken with him for 15 minutes the evening before and had answered questions, but they didn't appear in the story, that's not about, really, my sensitivity. It's about, really, I think, the question of the integrity of the journalist," Huckabee said. Talking to reporters after the news conference, Huckabee said, "Taking half-truth and presenting it as whole truth - that's Jayson Blair-Janet Cooke type stuff," a reference to disgraced former reporters for The New York Times and The Washington Post, respectively, who were found to have fabricated stories. Contacted for a response, Frank Fellone, the Democrat-Gazette's deputy editor, said Stewart left a voice message on Jan. 18 saying she was trying to reach Huckabee, and the next day she relayed Huckabee's answers. The first of the stories was published before Stewart provided any answers, but Stewart was quoted in a follow-up story published Jan. 20, Fellone said. "I regret that the former governor has made it his life's mission to impugn a distinguished Arkansas journalist ...," Fellone said. "He demeans himself." Asked why the newspaper chose to run Huckabee's response as an opinion piece rather than a news story, Fellone said, "Like any good news organization, we separate news from opinion." The decision to run the piece was not made by the news staff, he said. |
