A: Well, I think the great risk is not so much that we would come. The far greater risk is if we didn't. And it's not just that we would offend or perhaps insult the Hispanic audience of this country. I think it would insult our own party. It would insult every voter in this country. To act like that somehow we've become so arrogant that there's any segment of our population that we're either afraid to speak to, hear their questions, or somehow that we don't think that they're as important as another group. And it's why I think whether it's an African American audience, a Hispanic audience, a union audience, as Republicans, we ought to be more than willing to sit down, even with people with whom we might know there are disagreements. And I think, frankly, it's important for us to be here. It's important that you gave us this opportunity. And I want to say thanks for letting us have this audience on Univision.
A: Well, I was governor of the state that is the second fastest growing state for Hispanics in the country, and we faced that. Quite frankly, when we fix the situation and make the border secure and people are here legally, a lot of the sentiment goes away. But it's a terrible thing when a person who is here legally, but who may speak with an accent, is racially profiled by members of the public, and people assume that they may be illegal. It is in everybody's best interest--and most of all in the best interest of the legal immigrants--that we fix this problem, so nobody questions the legitimacy of their being here, which often happens, unfairly, unnecessarily and, frankly, in a completely un-American manner.
A: I think Hispanics want the same thing everybody wants. They want jobs. They want education. They want to know that they're going to be able to live with freedom. As we look at issues like education we'll understand that while the dropout rate from high school is 30% among all populations, it's 50% among Hispanics. We've got to change that by creating personalized education that focuses on perpetuating what's good for students, not just making what's good for the school . There's also issues and disparities between diabetes and other issues of health. So I think, if our policies reflect lifting people up, we'll get the vote.
A: An education is empowerment. The lack of it leads us to incredible, just all kinds of obstacles in our path. And we always talk about we need more math and science. But one of the reasons we have kids failing is not because they're dumb, it's they're bored. They're bored with a curriculum that doesn't touch them. We have schools that are about perpetuating the schools, not helping the students. I propose launching Weapons of Mass Instruction, making sure that we are launching not only the math and science, but music and art programs that touch the right side of the brain, and not only educate the left side of the student's brain. Because without a creative economy and a creative student, you have a bored student, and that's one of the reasons we see so many of them dropping out.
A: Well, Hugo Chavez is hardly the friend of the US. And even though we get 60% of their oil, I think it's one of the major reasons we need to become increasingly oil-free & energy-independent so that we don't have to worry about Chavez. But there's a greater issue here, and it's the fact that the people of Venezuela aren't Hugo Chavez and Hugo Chavez is not necessarily the spirit of the people of Venezuela. Even though he was elected, he was not elected to be a dictator as he has become, suspending constitutional law. My mother used to have a statement: If you give somebody enough rope, they'll hang themselves. I have a feeling that Mr. Chavez, continuing to take power from the people as he has done, will find himself unfortunately out of power, and a democratically elected government there that will give those people back the freedom that he has robbed from them.
A: Of those 47 million, one-third don't have it because they are self-insured. Another one-third don't have it because they think they're healthy and invincible. There is one-third that don't have it because they can't afford it. And then there are a lot of people who have insurance, but they're underinsured.
What we need to be doing is putting the real focus on preventing the illness in the first place. It's the difference between either putting an ambulance at the bottom of the hill or building a fence at the top. We can afford universal coverage, but not until and not even close until we first have health, rather than just focus on health coverage. Let me say the last thing we need to do is to believe that Michael Moore's idea is good and we can all go to Cuba and get health care. I don't mind shipping him down there, but the rest of us I'd like to get our care here.
We asked Huckabee's campaign how he knew that 1/3 thought they were "invincible," but we've received no response. We can find no studies that support the "invincibility" theory. [The closest is that] about 3 million people are uninsured because they decline available workplace health insurance.
Huckabee also errs in claiming that only 1/3 can't afford insurance. About 2/3 of the uninsured are considered low-income families. Huckabee would be correct to say that 1/3 of the nonelderly uninsured are living below the poverty level.
Huckabee's claim that 1/3 of the uninsured are self-insured is a meaningless statement. In fact, anyone without health insurance must rely on their own resources to pay medical bills. That's what being self-insured means.
A: The first step is a secure border, because otherwise nothing really matters. But I do think the pathway has to include people going to the back, not the front of the line. There can't be an amnesty policy, because that's an insult to all the people who waited, sometimes, ridiculously, for years, just to be able to make the transition here. If you can get an American Express card in two weeks, it shouldn't take seven years to get a work permit to come to this country in order to work on a farm. So if our government is incapable of making that process in that length of time, then we should do it in a way to outsource it. And here's why: When people come to this country, they shouldn't fear. They shouldn't live in hiding. They ought to have their heads up, because we believe every person ought to have his or her head up and proud.
A: Because we are winning. Civilians deaths are down 76% since the surge. Even the military deaths are down over 60%. And that's not the only way we know we're winning. We're winning because we see in the spirit of our own soldiers a sense of duty and honor that they are being able to carry out a mission that they were sent there to do. To take them out of it not only means we lose, but it means we totally destroy their sense of morale, and it may take a generation to get it back. But there's more at stake than just their morale. It's the safety and the security of the Middle East and the rest of the world. This is about every one of us being able to be free, to have a future, and to be able to know that we're not going to allow a vacuum there, which happens if we lose--and we lose when we walk away--to create an opening so that terrorists can build even greater cells of training there. That's why we have to stay. And it's why we have to win.
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The above quotations are from Media coverage of political races in Univision News.
Click here for other excerpts from Media coverage of political races in Univision News. Click here for other excerpts by Mike Huckabee. Click here for a profile of Mike Huckabee.
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