HUCKABEE: We don't know fully what the facts are. But regardless of why he did it, what he did is absolutely abominable, especially to those of us in the pro-life movement, because none of us would condone something like this.There is no legitimizing. There is no rationalizing. It was mass murder. So, I think that's a little bit disingenuous on the part of Planned Parenthood to blame people who have a strong philosophical disagreement with the dismembering of human babies to say that we would like to retaliate by sending some madman into a clinic to kill people.
HUCKABEE: Well, there wouldn't be a criminal penalty against a woman. I have often said that there are two victims with every abortion. One is the unborn child who loses its life, and the other is often that woman who is talked into the abortion, pressured into it, maybe feels she has no other option. There's no reason to criminalize her. I personally think that that would be a useless and, frankly, a harsh and unnecessary kind of attack on a woman who needs love and support and assistance, not criminalization.
HUCKABEE: If you mean coalition of the unwilling, those who refuse to lift a finger to stop this aggression, they should be isolated. And, yes, we should put sanctions on them. There's no excuse, especially for Middle Eastern nations, especially for Muslim Middle Eastern nations, to simply sit back and do nothing and let America, the United Kingdom, France, NATO countries, to let the rest of the world attack this malignant cancer called Islamic jihadism, and then sit back and protect their own special and well-funded kingdoms.
HUCKABEE: After the attack in Mali, there were numerous reports that the gunmen were going around and saying, can you quote a verse from the Koran? If they said yes, they were allowed to go free. If they couldn't, they were shot. And so the point was is that, while the president has said we need to disarm law-abiding people, it was just a reminder that we are at war with radical Islam. It's not that we are at war with all Islam, but we are at war with those who believe that the purpose they have on earth is to declare a worldwide caliphate to kill all the infidels, which would mean everyone, including other Muslims, who don't agree to their harsh, intense, anti-woman, anti-human being approach to life and who want to take us back to the seventh century.
HUCKABEE: Because the court's decision on the issue was a wrong decision. And to say that we have to surrender to judicial supremacy is to do what Thomas Jefferson warned against, which is, in essence, surrender to judicial tyranny. We had so many different presidents, including Jefferson, who made it very clear that the courts can't make a law. The Constitution is expressly clear that that's a power reserved to Congress.
Q: What about the 1967 ruling that effectively legalized interracial marriages? Was that unconstitutional?
HUCKABEE: No, it's not the same, not even close. Because you still had a marriage which was a man and a woman, and it was equal protection. But it didn't redefine marriage. That's what the Supreme Court did in June.
A: Does it solve a problem by taking the life of an innocent child? And that's really the issue. So when I think about one horror, I also think about the possibilities that exist. And I just don't want to think that somehow we discount human life. I realize there are some people that will be very different in their view of this than me, and I respect that.
A: I have been going to Israel for 42 years. My first trip was in 1973. I have been dozens and dozens of times. I have got a lot of friends there. I will be visiting with a number of officials and discussing the Iranian deal, because I think it's the most dangerous situation that we face, not just for the Middle East, but for the rest of the world. This is essentially arming and equipping a terrorist state. The Iranian government is not to be trusted. And for 36 years, they kidnapped Americans. They have killed Americans. They hold Americans hostage right now. And we're being pushed to get into a deal that gives us nothing, but gives the Iranians the capacity to ultimately end up with a nuclear weapon, and that's just insane.
HUCKABEE: Whether it's man-made or not, I know that when I was in college I was being taught that if we didn't act very quickly, that we were going to entering a global freezing. Go back and look at the covers of Time and Newsweek from the early '70s. We were told that if we didn't do something by 1980, we'd be popsicles. Now we're told that we're all burning up. Science is not as settled on that as it is on some things. I find it interesting. The Left has completely embraced the Pope's message on climate change.
Q: So what should be done?
HUCKABEE: Climate change is the wrong question. We should instead focus on good, stable energy prices and making America an exporter of energy not just for economic reasons but quite frankly to disrupt the balance of power with Russia, Iran, and the Saudis. This is a game changer. And America needs to be using the resources that it has to empower Americans, help poverty, and also change the global balance.
HUCKABEE: Well, it depends on which level of government. If the state government of South Carolina wishes to address an issue in their state, that's fine. But if you can point me to an article and section of the Constitution in which a United States president ought to weigh in on what states use as symbols, then please refresh my memory on that. But for those of us running for president, everyone's being baited with this question as if somehow that has anything to do whatsoever with running for president. And my position is: It most certainly does not.
"For those who do not think that we are under threat, simply recognize that the fact that we are now in city after city watching ordinances say that your 7-year-old daughter, if she goes into the restroom cannot be offended and you can't be offended if she's greeted there by a 42-year-old man who feels more like a woman than he does a man."
Huckabee said there was "something inherently wrong about forcing little children to be a part of this social experiment. And yet today we are the ones who are ridiculed and scorned because we point out the obvious," he said.
A: Judicial review is actually what we've operated under. We have not operated under judicial supremacy. The notion that the Supreme Court comes up with the ruling and that automatically subjects the two other branches to following it defies everything there is about the three equal branches of government.
Q: Are you saying that it's up in the air as to whether you're going to obey the Supreme Court?
A: Well, the president has to follow whatever the law is. It's a matter of balanc of power. If the Supreme Court could just make a ruling and everybody has to bow down and fall on their faces and worship that law, it isn't a law because it hasn't been yet passed.
A: The Constitution already provides what we should do. If you have probable cause, you go to a judge, you get a warrant, and then you listen in on his calls, now you've got the other branch of government that's constitutionally required to be a part of that process. You don't just give the executive branch unlimited power.
Q: Do you support NSA bulk collection of metadata?
Q: 225 different terrorist plots over the past years since 9/11 and so far, not one of them has been tied directly to the NSA's collection of metadata. So, if this is so effective, how come it hasn't resulted in the foiled terrorist plots? Those have been foiled by old fashion good police work, old-fashioned human intelligence. It seems like we're spending billions of dollars on whiz-bang technology and not enough money on human resources, which really is proven to be the most effective way of stopping terrorism.
HUCKABEE: The problem with people even 55 and younger, they've been paying in for 40 years. This was not a voluntary extraction from their paycheck. It was involuntarily lifted from them, under the guise that the government would then provide for them their money back in that Social Security or Medicare fund. One of the reasons that I'm for the FairTax is that it means that everybody will help fund Social Security and Medicare. If everybody was under a consumption tax, which is what the FairTax does, all Americans would be contributing.
A: They have it exactly wrong. In fact, it's the bottom third of the economy who benefit the most from the FairTax. The people of the top third of the economy benefit the least, although everybody benefits some. That tax study is one that has been discredited by the people who spend over $20 million, very thorough, thoughtful economic study developing the fair tax. The difference is that the FairTaxhas what's called the pre-bate, which untaxes people for their necessities. So, if you're at the bottom 1/3, chances are you really don't pay any effective tax whatsoever in the consumption tax because you are consuming less & you're getting a pre-bate, which is a rebate in advance for that what you would have spent
HUCKABEE: Well, a lot of people don't know my first trip to the Middle East was in 1973, 42 years ago, when I was all of 17. I have been to the Middle East several dozen times. Just got back from Israel last month, was there three times just last year. I have been to virtually every country that we talk about, whether it's Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, Turkey, Pakistan, India. This is a part of the world with which I am familiar firsthand. And as a governor, I also met with many world leaders, as well as CEOs of multinational corporations. And, frankly, most governors do. I think it's sometimes perceived that governors don't have much of a world view. I would tend to take issue that that is not always the case.
HUCKABEE: Well, first of all, we should have been long ago arming the Kurds. They're the most reliable force that we have in the Middle East, especially in the northern part of Iraq, that is willing and ready to fight ISIS and to do it without American blood being spilled. We have not kept our promise to the Kurds. The second thing we should do is make sure that, wherever there's an ISIS target, that we bomb the daylights out of it. We make it unpopular to join ISIS, because we need to let them know, they basically sign on to a death sentence if they want to join this hideous, savage, uncivilized group of people who think it's OK to burn people alive and cut their heads off, and not only to do it, but I think what is most despicable is that they are proud of it: They videotape it. They show it to the world. They want us to see what they do. And that makes it even more horrifying.
HUCKABEE: We don't leave anything off the table. But if they're going to be boots, they have to be more than just U.S. boots. There's got to be some boots that from come from the Saudis, the Jordanians and others.
Asked about the measles vaccine controversy, a spokesman for Perry affirmed his commitment to "protecting life" and pointed to efforts by his administration to increase immunization rates.
Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who is considering a run for president, has noted that the link between autism and vaccines was discredited. As governor, he received his flu shot at the State Capitol and encouraged all Arkansans to get vaccinated.
HUCKABEE: No, I'm absolutely against what Common Core has come to stand for. But it's totally different than what it was intended to be. The original intent, which was conceived out of the Achieve Movement from the mid-'90s that a number of governors, most of them Republicans, put forth to keep state standards, not letting the federal government get in control. And the whole idea was let the states decide the standards, but have high standards. So that was the genesis of it. Common Core originally only dealt with two things: language arts and math. That was it. And nothing, nothing in curriculum.
HUCKABEE: Absolutely. Look, we force people to go to school in our states. So as a governor, we had a kid in one of the largest high schools in the state who was the valedictorian. He came here when he was 5 years old. He had gone through the entire public school system. And then the big question was: Should he qualify, having been an Arkansas student, for the same scholarships that anyone else did? And I said yes, he should. Because you don't punish a child for something his parents did.
HUCKABEE: You know, if people read the full chapter, it's in the context of first of all saying Beyonce is a wonderful talent. My point is, she doesn't have to do some of the things that she does in the lyrics, because it's not necessary. She has nothing to make up for. But it was President Obama who said that some of the lyrics he won't listen to with his daughters because it embarrasses him. Well, here's my point, if it embarrasses you then why would you possibly think it's wholesome for your children to put it into their heads? The Obamas are great parents; they're careful about making sure their kids get a lot of vegetables & eat right. That's terrific. But what you put in your brain is also important as well as what you put into your body.
HUCKABEE: Well, I just mean that you want to treat everyone with respect. But in the culture of the south, the culture that I grew up with, I think chivalry is still alive. There's a sense of that you pay a great deal of respect and you don't come across as a bully.
Q: So you'd run differently against Joe Biden than against Hillary Clinton?
HUCKABEE: I don't know, it depends on what kind of campaign they were running. It's not an issue of sexism, it's an issue of simply understanding that every opponent, whether it's a male, a female, whether they're from the northeast or from the southwest, everybody has different nuances. In every race you have to assess what are the dynamics of this race.
HUCKABEE: This cultural divide is the disconnect between the three bubbles of New York, D.C. and Hollywood versus the land of God, guns, grits and gravy, that's where the title comes from.
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The above quotations are from Sunday Political Talk Show interviews during 2015, interviewing presidential hopefuls for 2016.
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