Former Arkansas Governor and Republican Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee visited voters in Mount Pleasant on Thursday at the Grand Opening of Mount Pleasant’s newest restaurant: Miss K’s Homemade Delectables.
Huckabee watched as the business owners, Krista Watts and her daughter, Tasha Upton, cut the red ribbon with an oversized pair of scissors to signal the official opening of the business. Back inside the building Huckabee spoke about the state of small business in America. “It’s a tough environment. In many cases it’s not just the competition that someone faces from maybe another vendor across town, a lot for times the toughest competition we face is from our own government. Government has made it hard to be able to function, operate business because many times you don’t make business decisions any more, you make tax decisions.”
Huckabee says that corporate taxes and payroll taxes are making it more difficult for businesses to expand in the United States. He bashed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, calling it a “rushed” trade deal that Congressional Republicans pushed through that will ultimately send jobs overseas.
He touts his experience as the republican Governor of a deep-blue state, home base of the so-called “Clinton Political Machine”, as what sets him above the rest of the Republican field. Huckabee pledged to fight for pro-life reforms if elected. He proposed a military solution to deal with ISIS, and said that he would make sure the military was well-funded if in the oval office.
He also weighed in on the race to replace outgoing Ohio Representative John Boehner as speaker of the house, saying that while he did not have a prefered candidate, he thinks there are a lot of good choices. “There’s some really, really good people, people of integrity and honor. They went there to do the right thing and I think they just need the leadership that will help them at least, even if they loose the battle, at least stand for the right thing and to do it openly.”
Huckabee also weighed in on gun violence in the wake of several recent mass shootings, blaming the violence on cultural decay. “You know, a lot of the reasons that we have had these outbreaks of violance is a complete breakdown of the character of our civilization and culture. People who don’t respect others, people who elevate themselves above others. You can’t kill somebody if you think they’re an equal. The way that we have debased each other as human beings we’ve created an environment in which I think it’s much easier for people to do that.”
Huckabee criticized the Obama administration’s approach to the civil war in Syria, calling the administration inconsistent, “On every single day, our position seems to change. We don’t really have a policy, we never have had, that’s the problem. Putin has a clear objective, he wants to prop up Hussad. Our Objectives was to put a red line, no chemical weapons, then we didn’t really mean it. Our position was, lets arm the rebels, but then we didn’t figure out which rebels we were gonna arm, so that didn’t work out real well.”
Photo taken by Rob Sussman of Huckabee in Mt. Pleasant on Thursday.
Huckabee currently polls around 2.7% nationally, according to the RealClearPolitics average, tied up with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. He fares batter in Iowa, where he polls around 4.3%, behind former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
