Mike Huckabee, current presidential candidate and former governor of Arkansas who came in 2nd to Senator John McCane in the 2008 Republican Primaries, spoke to a group of Rabbis and political activists during a fundraiser hosted by Dr. Joe Frager. Mike was upbeat and confident and wouldn’t back down from a statement that he had made, comparing the perils of the Iran deal with to the memory of Jews being shoved into the ovens of Auschwitz, even though the statement was roundly criticized by the likes of Hillary Clinton, President Obama and the rest of the (predictable) liberal media. At the fundraiser were survivors or children of survivors of the Holocaust and they gave Mr. Huckabee a solid round of applause for his comparison. They and indeed all who attended were in agreement that the comparison was apt and appropriate.
Mr. Huckabee went on to explain that Iran has threatened the West, the U.S. and Israel for 36 years ever since the Iranian revolution and that we have to learn from history to take threats seriously as what happened in Nazi Germany started with threats. Huckabee went on to say that the president should never have been granted the power to make an executive action - rather the agreement should have been designated as a treaty from the start, in which case, Obama would have had to have 2/3 of the Congress to make it effective as opposed to what it is now that it is effective with a majority 60 votes. He feels it never should have been farmed out to the UN either.
Mike has a better approach to the Iran nuke problem which is to have ratcheted up the sanctions and at the very same time build up our energy production, thereby depriving our non-allies like Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran of their energy export business and thereby diminishing their financial power. Russia is misusing its financial power by taking over Crimea and fomenting unrest in the rest of Ukraine, Saudi Arabia is using its petrodollars to fund madrases which is the brainwashing engine to Al-quada and Isis and Iran is using its petrodollars to foment its terrorist activity in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen and Iraq.
The former governor is extremely critical of the 159 page agreement that our president signed with Iran. With each page, he says, it gets crazier and crazier. He classifies our role in it as a surrender and an embarrassment to our country. He feels that 3 components should have been prerequisites to the agreement to even take place: 1)release of our 4 hostages 2) acknowledgment that Israel has a right to exist and 3) there can be no more threats to the U.S. or Israel. He feels Obama is a feckless president and didn’t take the opportunity to give the 2009 Iranian revolt any moral support. Huckabee, although very happy about the prospect of a release from prison of Jonathan Pollard, he feels that this is Obama’s pacification to the Jewish voters for his horrible deal with Iran. The deal, he says, affords Iran the capability of making a bomb in 10 years.
Mr. Huckabee, with a strong religious background, having once been a minister, has been to Yad Vashem 3 times starting all the way back in 1973, 42 years ago. The strong message he derived from those experiences was that we should not deny the possibility that such evil could happen again. The modern world
wants to forget even though we are confronted by the likes of such savages as those mullahs who rule in Iran. He says that Obama’s agreement is no different than the pacification that we saw pre world war II by Neville Chamberlin and what we need again now is a Winston Churchill. Huckabee’s strong conviction
for a strong Israel, despite himself being a gentile, is because if Jews are hit by a nuclear bomb, who is to say that Christians or Huckabee’s Christian grandchildren wouldn’t be next?
Mike is equally critical of the state of the economy. He says that too many people are working 2 and 3 part time jobs to make ends meet. When asked which is more important between national security and the economy, he likens it to which of the 2 wings of a plane is more important. The answer is - neither one because both are needed for the plane to fly. The economy is a life force and so is national security. He also believes in the nation claiming back moral clarity - that we know the difference between right and wrong. Huckabee maintains that the Republicans have lost recent elections because Republicans did not offer
up ‘full spectrum conservatives’ and that is what he is offering the Republican party and ultimately he hopes the general election to become the next president of the U.S. He explained that with a mere 4% more voters from the Christian Evangelist group, Romney would have been our president for the last 4 years.
The former governor says that the fact that he is not high up in the pols now is immaterial because at this time in the 2008 polls, Rudolph Giuliani came in first and Fred Thomson came in 2nd. Huckabee reminds us that he won governorship in Arkansas, a state which then had a plurality of Democrats in the state houses and won a surprising 49% of the African American vote. Huckabee prides himself in having been a guest for the liberal show of Jon Stuart more than any other politician aside from Bill Clinton. He recalled the time when he got a standing ovation from Joh Stuart’s liberal audience when Huckabee proclaimed that life in the form of an 8 week old fetus as well as a 100 year old is worthy of protection by the rights we derive from G-d.
Mr. Huckabee comes across as extremely sincere and the guardian of traditional values. What I urged him at the end of the talk, during the question and answer period, is to come prepared for the cynical press and people of popular culture with scientific facts and figures and comprehensive substantiation for the positions that he takes because too many people from the left or even in the middle would be tempted to dismiss him as a Bible-belt ideologue considering all the built up bias there is against people of religious or traditional beliefs. In my opinion, if Huckabee makes the extra effort to enhance his message, whether it be the Iranian deal or his position on being pro-life, with scientific facts and figures, he could very well win the Republican nomination and ultimately the presidency. I wish him the best of luck.
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