Social Conservatives Taking a Stand with Huckabee

The Republican establishment has looked down its nose at social conservatives far too long, tolerating us because they need our votes. But now the tables are turned. The grass roots are looking up at the establishment with the will of a Lech Walesa, demanding that fiscal issues take a back seat to moral issues for a change. It’s long past time for the moral and social issues of our times to be given more than just lip service. It’s now time for our fiscal policies to be informed by our social policies rather than sacrificing our morality to our economic standing in the world.

This is a quote from an article by Paul Edwards. I personally will always vote moral issues first. I am a fiscal conservative, too (and think Huckabee is based on his stance on the Fair Tax, cutting taxes, in Arkansas, etc.), but that will always take a back seat to a baby's right to live, protecting marriage as between a man and a woman for life, government backing abstinence education, etc. By the way, Dick Morris agrees with me that Huckabee is a fiscal conservative.

In Arkansas, the income tax when he took office was 1 percent for the poorest taxpayers and 7 percent for the richest, exactly where it stood when he left the statehouse 11 years later. But, in the interim, he doubled the standard deduction and the child care credit, repealed capital gains taxes for home sales, lowered the capital gains rate, expanded the homestead exemption and set up tax-free savings accounts for medical care and college tuition.

Most impressively, when he had to pass an income tax surcharge amid the drop in revenues after Sept. 11, 2001, he repealed it three years later when he didn’t need it any longer.

He raised the sales tax one cent in 11 years and did that only after the courts ordered him to do so. (He also got voter approval for a one-eighth-of-one-cent hike for parks and recreation.)

He wants to repeal the income tax, abolish the IRS and institute a “fair tax” based on consumption, and opposes any tax increase for Social Security.

And he can win in Iowa.

When voters who have decided not to back Rudy Giuliani because of his social positions consider the contest between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, they will have no difficulty choosing between a real social conservative and an ersatz one.

Romney, who began as a pro-lifer and switched in order to win in Massachusetts, and then flipped back again, cannot compete with a lifelong pro-lifer, Huckabee.