Press Release

Governor Mitt Romney: "You also heard my comments, my remarks today, about Governor Huckabee's article in Foreign Affairs. To accuse the President of an arrogant, bunker mentality is, in my view, more fitting from a person running from the Democratic Party than from our own. It sounds like something Barack Obama or John Edwards would say. Not what you'd hear from someone running for president as a Republican. And I think it was a very serious error. With that, I'd be happy to take any questions you may have."

Reporter: "Yesterday, you said you weren't going to compare your foreign policy experience with Governor Huckabee's. In light of this article that has come out now, does that show a lack of judgment on his part in terms of foreign affairs?

Governor Romney: "Well, having looked at the article, I must admit some things were also surprising. His suggestion that foreign affairs was like a children's playground is not exactly the allegory I would draw in mind. It's a far more serious and complicated and monumental effort than kids in school, but I'm sure I'll have more thoughts about his article. But I was disappointed in the quality of the thinking and the quality of recommendations there. But that which really stood out, of course, was the accusation that the Administration, the accusation of the President's administration as being arrogant, bunker mentality, an administration that had been counterproductive both here and abroad. We've been safe here. How can one possibly say that when we have been safe in this country and we took action abroad at a time when the Taliban had made Afghanistan a safe haven for terror, Libya was developing nuclear technology and Iraq was a partner in efforts of terror."

…

Reporter: "Governor Romney, just a few minutes ago you called Governor Huckabee a great friend. Did it surprise you the Foreign Affairs article that came out today?"

Governor Romney: "It did surprise me. His comments surprised me. They disappointed me. I expected a great deal more from the article than I saw, but the attack on the presidency was something uncalled for. It was unnecessary and inaccurate." (Governor Mitt Romney, Media Availability, Humboldt, IA, 12/15/07)

Also, here's an interesting exchange about Huckabee's comments on FoxNews with Bill Sammon:

I already posted this at NY for Mitt, but knew we'd get a larger audience by posting here, too.

I saw this story earlier in the week at Evangelicals for Mitt. Here's today's story:

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told the Christian Broadcasting Network he had a theology degree, he told voters in Iowa he had a theology degree, he repeated the claim in last month's CNN YouTube debate ... but, his campaign now says, it was not true.

Huckabee's claim began unraveling following his offhanded comment about Mormonism in a New York Times interview last weekend.

In the interview, Huckabee's account of his education made no mention of his having earned a theology degree.

Chafets wrote: "If young Mike Huckabee was ever rebellious or difficult, there's no record of it. He preached his first sermon as a teenager, married his high-school sweetheart and went off to Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia. There he majored in speech and communications, worked at a radio station and earned his B.A. in a little more than two years.

He spent a year at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Tex., before dropping out to work for the televangelist James Robison, who bought him his first decent wardrobe and showed him how to use television."

This preacher--without a theology degree--has a lot of expaining to do.

Update by Slick Willie:

As if getting caught once weren't enough, it appears Huck is continuing to fabricate his resume.

When questioned about the fact that he has no theology degree, Huckabee responded,

"I have a bachelor of arts in religion and a minor in communications in my undergraduate work. And then I have 46 hours on a master's degree at Southwestern Theology Seminary.

So, my degree as a theological degree is at the college level and then 46 hours toward a masters -- three years of study of New Testament Greek, and then the rest of it, all in Seminary was theological studies, but my degree was actually in religion."

If Huck's degree is in "Religion" as he claimed, he should suffer some ridicule.

But if WorldNetDaily is right, and Huckabee's degree is actually in "Speech & Communications," not "Religion," he has moved from puffery to flat-out lying.

Almost having a theology degree does not equal having a theology degree no matter how much New Testament Greek you study.

This type of deception is an absolute application killer when applying for a job or graduate school. How could it be acceptable for a president?

Victor Davis Hanson is one of my favorite public intellectuals. He has been the preeminent voice defending the war in Iraq. He is also very good on illegal immigration and pointing out the liberal bias in education. Really, you won't find a better reasoned defender of foreign policy conservatives. He posts occasionally over at the Corner. Here's his take on Huckabee's Foreign Affairs essay:

I don't know much about Mike Huckabee, but found his aw-shucks Foreign Affairs essay strange to say the least (e.g., cf. "The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad." )

But what he offers inter alia is the rehashed plan of invading the nuclear, nominal ally Pakistan ("I prefer to cut to the chase by going after al Qaeda's safe havens in Pakistan." ) while reaching out to Iran, the de facto non-nuclear enemy, by offering normal diplomatic relations—of course, only after strengthening sanctions and declaring the Revolutionary Guards terrorists. He laments losing the good will once shown by Iran in its 2001 shared goal of defeating the Taliban-almost like lamenting the needless estrangement of the Soviet Union in 1946 after we once had been so close in working to defeat Hitler.

Nowhere is there any suggestion that a new President Huckabee might find the world not all that bad—at least without the Taliban and Saddam, and with consensual governments in their places, without a WMD program in Libya (and according to our brilliant intelligence agencies, one in Iran or North Korea either), with staunch US allies like Sarkozy in France and Merkel in Germany.

Don't know what to make of the Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox evocations and the general prose style of the piece (e.g., "We played Brer Fox to his Brer Rabbit. We threw him into the perfect briar patch")—other than these references and other similar metaphors and similes sound like some beltway policy wonk in DC playing at Will Rogers, or throwing in here and there perceived Arkansas-isms as proof of down-home authenticity.

I think that VDH gets at some of the flaws of the Huckabee foreign policy philosophy. Mostly Huckabee's statements show a lack of depth and understanding. There is very little recognition of what truly drives foreign powers and how we should interact with them. Indeed, Huckabee seems to be at public opinion's mercy. When public opinion drives one's policies, one must talk out of both sides of one's mouth. Huckabee has done just that. He is sometimes the hawk, sometimes the dove with very little intellectual coherence to help see a pattern as to why. This kind of confusion leads to inconsistent positions: overly hawkish towards Pakistan, overly dovish towards Iran, etc. Also, as VDH discussed, Huckabee's analogies seem rather inept. While some use analogies to simplify the complexities of an argument, Huckabee uses analogies to mask the argument, hoping the audience will be asuaged by the utter cute-ness of the comparisons he makes.

Timotheus: Rather than post separately on this subject, I wanted to invite readers to peruse excerpts from Romney's Foreign Affairs essay. Romney's managerial experience exudes competence in all aspects of our foreign policy. Looking at that side by side with Huckabee's should be a real eye opener. Besides, do you really want a guy who has a soft spot for ciminals in charge of protecting America from terrorists? I don't think so.

And this from the AP: "'I can't believe he'd say that. I'm afraid he's running from the wrong party,'" Romney said to a gathering of about 100 supporters in a restaurant here. "'I had to look again — did this come from Barack Obama or from Hillary Clinton? Did it come from John Edwards? No, it was Governor Huckabee.'"

Labels: foreign policy, mike huckabee, Victor Davis Hanson

Jonathan Martin of Politico starts the speculation . . . but we'll see how it plays out.

Read about it over at this post on Iowans for Romney.

It would be HUGE.

Jeff Fuller

Taking the Rasmussen crosstabs from September and December we can readily gauge the specific demographics who have soured on Rudy.

• Overall, Rudy's "very favorable" rating dropped nearly 10 points (from 36% to 27%) and while his "somewhat favorable" rating remained pretty constant (42%) his "somewhat unfavorable" number jumped 13 percentage points (from 10% to 23%). Note that Rudy's "very unfavorable" number held constant at 7%.
  
  
• First, the sexes. While women trended slightly more toward the "unfavorable" column, men left in droves. For example, Rudy lost 16% of men out of his "very favorable" column.
  
  
• Ages? Most of the age brackets fell towards "unfavorable" ratings by about 6% but 30 to 50 year olds bailed in a big fashion. In this group, Rudy lost 16% of his favorable ratings.
  
  
• Nothing spectacularly noticeable among marrieds and voters with children. Both groups trended downward for Rudy.
  
  
• The most conspicuous demographic were high income families. For the "100K" plus column almost 30% left Rudy's favorable column!
  
  
• Religion. As can be expected, Rudy performed the worst among Evangelicals.

Of course, the big stories are Huckabee moving from 3% to 27% in two months and Romney moving from 11% to 23%. But here's the real clincher. While Rudy lost 10 points, Thompson went from 23% to 9%. OUCH!

I just wanted to follow up on the Bork endorsement. Being a law student, such an endorsement is especially meaningful to me.

I assume that most are aware of his nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987 by Ronald Reagan. After elevating William Rehnquist from Associate Justice to Chief Justice, upon the retirement of Warren Burger, and filling the new vacancy with Antonin Scalia in 1986, Ronald Reagan was given another chance to fill the court with conservative jurists. With the vacancy from Lewis Powell's retirement in 1987, Reagan nominated Robert Bork. Of course that nomination was famously rejected by the Senate, leading to the later elevation of Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court (who subsequently upheld Roe v. Wade in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and wrote the opinion in such decidedly illogical cases such as Lawrence v. Texas and Romer v. Evans).

Bork is famously remembered for his failed nomination, but Bork was and has been much more influential in conservative thought. Indeed, Yale professor of law and political science Bruce A. Ackerman wrote in 1988 in the Harvard Law Review:

I begin where Chief Justice Burger ended [in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee]: when judged by normal personal and professional criteria, Robert Bork is among the best qualified candidates for the Supreme Court of this or any other era. Few nominees in our history compare with him in the range of their professional accomplishments -- as public servant, private practitioner, appellate judge, legal scholar. Few compare in the seriousness of their lifelong engagement with the fundamental questions of constitutional law. Of course, Bork's answers to these questions are controversial. But who can be surprised by that? Even those, like myself, who disagree with Bork both can and should admire the way he has woven theory and practice, reason and passion, into a pattern that expresses so eloquently our deepest hopes for a life in the law. The Republic needs more people like Robert Bork. 101 Harv. L. Rev. 1164

The endorsement of such an accomplished and influential person in conservative thought and conservative circles is deeply telling about the candidacy of Mitt Romney. Not only does it indicate the type of principled jurists that Romney could be expected to nominate for the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts, but it also is telling about the intellectual underpinnings of Romney's view of conservatism.

Labels: endoresements, judges, Robert Bork

According to the Politico, Judge Robert Bork has endorsed Governor Romney.

"Throughout my career," the legal scholar says in a statement to be released today, "I have had the honor of serving under several Presidents and am proud to make today's endorsement. No other candidate will do more to advance the conservative judicial movement than Governor Mitt Romney. … I greatly admired his leadership in Massachusetts in the way that he responded to the activist court's ruling legalizing same-sex 'marriage.' His leadership on the issue has served as a model to the nation on how to respect all of our citizens while respecting the rule of law at the same time."

The AP has a nice biographical article of Mitt as his father's legacy. While it covers some familiar ground, it is a good introduction on the character behind the man that we will hopefully call our next President. Here is a sample:

"Asked recently to name his most treasured possession, Mitt Romney had a quick answer: A 1962 Rambler his sons gave him on his 60th birthday. The relic was manufactured during George Romney's final year as American Motors chairman."

"The youngest of George and Lenore Romney's four children, Willard Mitt Romney was born on March 12, 1947, a 'miracle baby,' his father wrote, because Lenore Romney no longer thought she could become pregnant."

"Mitt developed a passion for his father's business and sat alongside George Romney as he pored over auto trade publications. The son absorbed the smallest details of the auto industry, down to the minutiae of each car's design."

"'I used to brag that you could show me one square foot and I could pick out the model and the year of the car,' he said."

"Although they lived a privileged life in the Detroit suburbs, Romney's parents sought to instill working-class values by making sure the kids pitched in with chores. That included shoveling before dawn during snowstorms."

Over at Bill O'Reilly's website you can vote for Mitt in his poll (it's between McCain, Rudy, Huck, and Mitt . . . poor Fred got left off---OUCH). The key is that Ron Paul is not included so some other candidate that isn't Paul will actually win an online poll for once.

This is a big poll and will be announced on Bill's TV show and Radio show with millions watching/hearing the results. It would be a nice boost to our upward-moving campaign to have Mitt win this one convincingly.

Send an email to friends/family encouraging them to vote too! Let's win this one guys!!!

Jeff Fuller

Check here for local airtimes.

Labels: Meet the Press

So there he sits, his Texas Ranger at his side! What was Huckabee afraid of? Did he think that O'Reilly was so mean that he could not show up without Chuck Norris as his body guard? ("There is no chin underneath Norris' beard... there is only another fist!")