BS Laid Bare, This Year

Mitt Romney launched a new ad yesterday in Iowa Choice: The Record , comparing himself to Mike Huckabee. On the staple social issues, he says, the two are the same, sharing the same values (at least in hetoric). But on immigration, the ad says that Romney opposed driver’s licenses and in-state tuition for illegal aliens, while Huckabee supported in-state tuition for illegal aliens. Romney is stretching it, of course. But, he has to: it’s desperation time. Huckabee supported a failed bill to let he children of illegal aliens who had gone through Arkansas high schools and qualified academically, apply for a specific merit scholarship program IF they were drug-free and applying to become citizens. Huckabee says, 1) that we shouldn’t punish the children after years of work, for the earlier crime of their parent(s), and 2) that we should prefer a productive tax-paying citizen to a lower-wage potential tax-taker.

Also yesterday, Huckabee introduced his 9-point Immigration: Secure America Plan . You’ll see there is nothing objectionable about this plan. And, the desperation accusations of Romney and Thompson aside, the more important thing is that there is nothing inconsistent with what he’s always said: Secure the border, immigrants must return home and if they wish, initiate the process of legal immigration. I will say that if you are a Tom Tancredo conservative who wants to punish and/or purge Hispanics from The United States, Huckabee does not say that, and he doesn’t intend it. If that’s what you want, he isn’t it. And really, it does not describe anyone in this nomination race, but Tancredo and a not-so-strident and curt Duncan Hunter.

But, Bill Cli…err Mitt Romney will tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear, as in he aforementioned commercial, for instance. Also, to put a cherry on Mike Huckabee’s posture on immigration, Jim Gilchrist who started the Minuteman program to monitor the border, endorsed Mike Huckabee, today: Jim Gilchrist Endorses Mike Huckabee . That flush you hear may be the sound of Mitt’s money going down the toilet. And Fred Thompson’s campaign aid Mary Matalin appeared on Hannity & Colmes Tuesday night, saying vaguely that Huckabee is a tax-raiser and weak on immigration.

In a more than ¾ Democrat state, Mike Huckabee pushed through the largest (the only) broad-based income tax cut in Arkansas history. He cut and clipped at scores of other state taxes. But yes, under Mike Huckabee, sales and fuel taxes were raised to do extravagant things like…oh, rebuild the most dilapidated highway system in the country (with the state’s full approval) and fund an improvement in the Arkansas education system in response to a state Supreme Court order. But, Huckabee didn’t just throw money at the education system as is usually done. He implemented measurable accountability standards, which were met because they had to be, with student performance improving. And the roads went from the worst in the county to the most improved.

So, what we have here is demonstrated flip-floppers accusing a non-flip-flopper of flip-flopping That’s an ambitious strategy. But like I said, there is no choice: Romney is a wealthy man who has big-time investment tied up in Iowa, and Thompson has done nothing but fade since his late entry into the campaign. Rigorous and compelling campaigning isn’t Thompson’s style, anymore than is the strident conservatism that the 1^st Amendment infidel (McCain-Feingold sponsor) now feigns. But wealthy men like Romney watching his huge investment slip away, don’t like it when they can’t buy what they want. Just ask The Club for Growth’s huge benefactor, billionaire Jackson Stephens Jr., who didn’t get the cooperation he wanted from Governor Huckabee in Arkansas, and so has had The Club for Growth on a dishonest jihad against Mike Huckabee all year.

One of the things The Club for Growth has harped on all year is that during the 10¹/₂ years of Mike Huckabee’s governorship, the overall tax burden on Arkansans went up 47%! Pretty scary, huh? They leave out the fact that in that time period, the average tax burden in all states went up twice that much! And, it increased more than Huckabee’s 47% over 10¹/₂ years in 4 years under Governor Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. Both had Democrat legislatures, by the way. But, Huckabee’s record looks pretty good now, doesn’t it? And, where are The Club for Growth’s attacks on Mitt Romney?

Remember that I called The Club for Growth’s campaign dishonest? It isn’t about growth and economic vitality. Besides Jackson (Steve) Stephens Jr.’s vendetta, big money people don’t like The Fair Tax that Mike Huckabee supports, which eliminates income, corporate, fuel, capital gains, death taxes…everything, and replaces them with a 23% sales tax on new items.

You might say that a simple explanation for their dislike is right in the name: people accustomed to being on top, don’t like to just be treated “fairly.” They have teams of financial advisors who get most everything written off from taxation as “business” expenses. The net effect of this is to shift the overall tax burden downward. Under The Fair Tax, they won’t have to pay their accountants to prepare their taxes. But, every extravagant expenditure will have an equally extravagant tax. You aren’t taxed according to your production minus write-offs. You are taxed according to your lifestyle.

The sad irony is that there will be some people who buy all of this blather and vote for a manifestly more liberal (or elastic, in Romney’s case) candidate over a genuine conservative one. And, there’s more attacks to come: desperation time, remember? Everyone knows that negative ads will be run right before the Caucuses: probably about Wayne Dumond, the rapist who the parole board released after 30-some years of a life sentence, while Huckabee was governor, who then raped and killed someone else. Yes, Governor Huckabee had agreed with the release and had expressed so. But, 6 years afterward, during a campaign, when some of those Democrat appointess hadn’t been reappointed by Huckabee, Huckabee’s agreement was called “pressure.” Huckabee of course, now regrets the release, but he had denied clemency so a parole board could parole Dumond with oversight, a few years later. But, those details will not be the point of a negative campaign commercial.

And, if you really care about the sanctity of life, Mike Huckabee’s conviction about that, isn’t just words. I’m pretty confident that the others would pass their terms as president without moving the country away from its socially deadly indifference to the sanctity of life. We’ll see how many people buy the noise in Iowa. A significant part of Huckabee’s positive reception has been that when voters see and hear him, they don’t see and hear the manipulation and deception of the accusations. That is natural for most politicians and journalists take it for granted in all of them. And with widespread Internet access today, the truth can usually be found. BS is getting harder to sell.