Gov. Huckabee in Iowa – All Hands Lining a Rocky Road

Gov. Huckabee has been slowly creeping up on the leaders in the polls and took the attendees at the value voters summit by storm.

The Newstatesman reports on the Huckabee factor:

Step forward 52-year-old Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister who was born in Hope, Arkansas (sound familiar?). A fiscal conservative in the Reaganesque tradition, he likes to call himself (with some justification) “the conservative who is not mad at anybody”. He says he is “not interested in being the candidate of Wall Street but of Main Street” and that it is simply “wrong” that CEOs “get paid 500 times what the average worker does”. In a field of flawed oddballs, above all, Huckabee emerges as a decent and likeable man. He is now quietly creeping ahead in the polls as the 2008 campaign’s stealth candidate, and has probably already done enough to earn himself at least a shot at the vice-presidential nomination.

Gov. Huckabee will be concentrating his resources on Iowa for the next 65 days in an all-out effort to win or place in the all-important first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucus.

The Politico asks weather Iowa is being reduced to a Romney-Huckabee race because Huckabee has moved into second place in Iowa and the Boston Globe reports that Gov. Huckabee is polling at 15% in that poll.

Letter to Congressman Adam Putnam on the President and Bipartisanship

Dear Mr. Putnam:

I am shocked at your comment in the Washington Post that President Bush longs for the days when both sides could get along and work together because he knows he could have that if he would actually work with others. When his party does something he doesn’t like he uses a signing statement and when the opposition does something he veotes it.

He has polarized this country and he almost never invites Democrats to the table to discuss issues and he always insists on his way or the highway. He uses executive and now administrative orders when Congress won’t bend. It is inexcusable that you could defend someone who believes that congressional oversight is useless and that the Senate should not ask questions of a nominee that he sends up. This is a tantrum after Judge Mukasey failed to satisfy his inquisitors on both sides regarding the issue of torture in general and water boarding in particular. He still refuses to answer the question of weather the practice is illegal.

If he really wants to work with both sides why don’t you try to catalyze this by setting up a meeting with him and a group of bipartisan members of congress to discuss issues instead of just 105 Republicans. He needs to talk to everyone on both sides and attempt to work out differences instead of just berating Congress for not cooperating. Congress is charged in the Constitution with being a separate and coequal branch of government that is supposed to check the power of the executive through oversight.

Thank you for considering my opinion on this matter.