Redstate

He wouldn't admit it. Which means:

1) It's true.
2) Huck's somehow ashamed of it.

Romney freely admitted that he raised fees so that the fee covered the cost of the service. It's hard to argue, even to conservatives, that a fee shouldn't cover the cost of the service.

Most of those fees hadn't been raised for decades. He gave a proper defense of his fee hikes. Huck dodged and weaved and then blamed a referendum, which is inaccurate.
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First State Politics

Ok Alexham, that's one response, though I'm at a loss as to why you think it's particularly effective, especially in a REPUBLICAN primary debate.

But assuming Huck said that, Mitt should have responded:

"Governor, it's obvious government needs to be funded and effective, but the important question in the mind of voters is how you go about making government effective.

And when you were put to the test, your instinct was to raise taxes rather than control spending. When faced with a responsibility to fund schools and road building, you chose to raise taxes instead of control spending.

You made the wrong choices, and they reveal your true priorities."

And if it were me up there, I'd tell him he's in the wrong dang primary. His instincts are all big government, anti-competitive nanny-statism, and frankly I'm tired of Redstate commenters shilling for him.

& Hill left behind? And we had to fix it with our own money, because all the extra federal dough is buried in Boston Harbor in the Big Dig."

Does it really matter anymore what Mitt says about anything?

The glib talking flimflam huckster man is also as slippery as an Arkansas catfish. What is with Arkansas, they put something in the water there?

Fees aren't taxes, and fees should cover costs, but often are way over the mark. That puts the excess in play, like around here, for spending on whatever the pols want. I have no idea if Mitt is telling the truth about just covering costs, but have to assume he is lacking any other information.

Fred schooling the Huckster on the law and detainees didn't sit well with the Huckster. As Fred said about AMNESTY, just paying the equivalent of a bribe, does not make the AMNESTY magically disappear.

Since I live in MA, here are some simple facts. MA is an overwhelmingly Democrat state with the legislature of both houses containing sufficient majorities to override any vetoes. MA income taxes were 5.365 when Mitt arrived, and 5.365 when he left. He did raise fees appropriately. The MA legislature arrogantly refused to accept a voter approved referendum to reduce taxes to 5.00% - they just flat out ignored the voters (of course, without penalty). Unfortunately, the Republicans let that happen without at least making a huge stink over it. Having said that, Mitt is wrong when he says he was governor for 4 years. He spent the last two, out of state, campaigning. As far as I'm concerned, that violated his commitment to the voters when he said he was going to govern for 4 years. Recent history in MA is of the last four Republican governors, three (Weld, Celluci, and Romney), either left mid-term or were absent governors. That's not good enough for me.

What he should have said was that his state needed more improvements across the board than Massachusetts. He should have gone into detail on why taxes were raised so high, which went to improve the schools. Byron York goes into more detail, but the condensed version is that Huckabee wanted to consolidate the school system, and save the state money. The state did consolidate but not nearly as much as Huckabee wanted, so he refused to sign the bill knowing it would become law. My gut tells me that Huckabee has a lot of populist rhetoric, and he truly wants to help those who need it the most, but the way he wants to go about it is not more government. This is just my gut, but I believe you can have populist rhetoric with conservative solutions. I think Rudy did an excellent job last night of talking about how conservatives need to do a better job of telling the folks that our policies are the ladders out of their situation. I know it’s hard for a lot of people to understand how a politician can go around talking about corporate greed and the low wageworker, and still be a conservative. What I would ask them is if you truly believe conservative policies help the middle class and lower class better than liberal policies; then why not give a voice to their struggles? Why are Mitt and Rudy not talking about it more often?

The problem is that Huckabee is a coward and wouldn't own up to raising taxes, even it was for a good reason. Why couldn't Huckabee just own up to the truth? That's the problem.

"Politics is the business of trying to convince fools to do the right thing."
-Braden Pace

...Arkansas' constitution requires a balanced budget....so he agreed to raise taxes to accommodate that.

That's not what conservatives want to hear. Conservatives appreciate balanced budgets as much as anybody. But the proper way to balance budgets is by controlling spending. That's the way most people live their lives, isn't it? We've got X amount of dollars coming in and, so as to avoid going into debt, we manage how much we spend and don't buy everything we'd like to buy.

We don't walk into our boss' office with a gun and demand more money so that we can have everything we want.

Another acceptable answer, I think, would be that he "realize the value" of state assets. Those are Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels' words, used to describe his really intriguing efforts to establish public-private partnerships on things like toll roads, the state lottery, and various other things. He's outsourced some functions (such as the administration of the state's welfare program) and saved money doing that, as well.

There are other ways to bring budgets into balance than just raising taxes. One thing that Daniels -- as somebody from the business world (he was Eli Lilly CEO) -- understands, is that higher taxes have a spiraling effect. States are in competition with each other for investment and industry. And there's no better way to scare off both than higher taxes.

Now, to be fair, Daniels did raise the state's income tax -- for a period of one year -- on income over $100K. He did this for a temporary fix to the budget shortfall he inherited. But, since then, he's gone about his budget work not only more creatively, but more in a more economically friendly fashion.

Huckabee's answers to the criticisms about his fiscal record leave a lot to be desired.

"Huckabee: Sure, Mitt. I'll answer your question.

During my ten plus years as governor of a swing state, I did "net net" raise taxes in that amount. "

Didn't he admit to raising them, or did he not? It appears you guys are saying that he didn't admit to it.

What's up?

Huckabee: Sure, Mitt. I'll answer your question.

My only problem was that I governed a state where the taxes were already low, at least relatively speaking. Compare the Arkansas tax burden to the Massachusetts tax burden after our governorships. If I had been the Governor of Taxachussetts--oops, I mean, Massachusetts, it would have been really easy for me to cut taxes, and drastically. So the question is Mitt, not whether you cut taxes, but why you didn't cut them further, when there was so much further to go?

As I've repeatedly said, one of the things that REALLY turns me off about Huck is this stuff.

Yes, he raised taxes in Arkansas. Certainly some of those taxes are defensible, and have been well defended here by you and several other bloggers.

Yes, C4G correctly pointed out that he raised taxes.

Yes, Huckabee has gone on to REPEATEDLY lie about those tax increases, and we've had this discussion before so I'm not going to waste bandwidth repeating it.

This is precisely the reason - one of them, but it's #1 - that Huck is absolutely unqualified to be POTUS. I have no use for someone who's willing to outright lie about simple stuff that is defensable and is easy to research to find the truth.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

Like he had already lied about that "voter approved" gas tax during that debate. Tax hikes? What are you talking about? I didn't sign any tax hikes! I cut taxes! Taxes were reduced 75% under my watch! And so was spending! The Huckabots would just eat it up.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

a Foreign Policy Lackey.

Everytime the MSM and Gov. Huckabee try to "ignore" the national security issues facing our country, another item comes slapping them in the face. It is the elephant in the room they do not want to discuss. Last was the ramifications of the assassination of B. Bhutto in Pakistan and now the events this weekend.

Yesterday, Iran speedboats 'threatened suicide attack on US' in Strait of Hormuz
http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3147217.ece
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080107/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_navy_iran_20

In a little covered September 29th speech, Gov. Huckabee came out in favor of normalizing relations with Iran. He also criticized President Bush for naming Iran as part of the "axis of evil." "We haven't had diplomatic relations with Iran in almost 30 years, my whole adult life," Huckabee said. "A lot of good it's done us. Putting this in human terms, all of us know that when we stop talking to a parent or a sibling or a friend, it's impossible to accomplish anything, impossible to resolve differences and move the relationship forward. The same is true for countries."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/01/huckabee_criticize...

Gov. Huckabee continues to try to run from his Foreign Affairs article and as he did in Saturday's ABC debate. Challenging Romney on whether he had read the whole article. This from the author whose first line of defense in December was to claim "eight or ten" had a hand in writing the article (with him) and feigning ignorance over it's contents. Alas, it was Huckabee's name on the piece:
http://youdecide08.foxnews.com/2007/12/21/condoleezza-rice-slams-mike-hu...

Huckabee tries in vain to claim that executive experience as governor trumps the need for foreign policy experience. Rudy even called him on it by contrasting Ronald Reagan's extensive foreign policy credentials before he became president as an example showing how Huckabee paled in comparison.

Gov. Huckabee's final arguement is his belief in his own judgement on critical matters. Between his multiple and continual gaffes on international affairs and national security and his proven rather poor "judgement" in relying on a "foreign policy team" to help him author such a contested article as his Foreign Affairs sophamoric piece, he only demonstrates that he is not ready for primetime.

This is a post-9/11 world. With respect to the demanding domestic issues facing our country, to discount our nation's defense and national security when choosing a president, only leads to failures adn attacks on our homeland. That is a large part of Clinton's legacy.

New Hampshire may not recognize it. Iowans did not. One can be sure that South Carolina (with the highest military and veterans residence per capita) will get it, despite the MSM and Hucksters trying to "ignore" the elephant in the room.