We Are Just Getting Started

Read and learn more about Huck PAC ... Governor Huckabee details the goals and plans for supporting candidates at local, state and national levels.

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It will be fun seeing governor Huckabee shake up the establishment. This is so needed to reform the Republican party so that it once more responds to the people.

Rubber Meets Road

I have often been frustrated by the two party system. I've wondered more than once if it wouldn't make sense to start supporting third (or fourth or fifth) parties that represent my views better than the big 2. I would not hesitate to say that most people probably do not support either the Republican or Democratic party as they now stand. They seem to have become despots, telling us what we will believe and what we will support rather that serving what we believe and support. And winning is all they care about. Being top dog as it were.

I've stated before that most people support the candidate, not the party. And perhaps that is why the whole system seems so dysfunctional. It probably goes a long way toward explaining voter apathy. Why vote when you don't feel you can support either candidate? Perhaps to vote for the lesser of what you see as two evils? "Of two evils, choose neither."* is good advice, but seldom practiced in contemporary politics. Often our vote is a vote against, rather than for, something.

I'm very disappointed that the best qualified candidates in both parties have withdrawn. I'm disappointed overall with the way we select candidates, because the ones who win are not usually the best qualified or even the most likely to win. So how do we address and correct this? How do we make the parties more responsive to what we want? We are, after all, the People, the ones it is supposed to be all about.

I've recently come to see that the only way to change the death grip the party system has on the election process is to change the parties from the bottom up. Rather than going away disappointed when the best candidates don't become the nominees, we have to start changing the whole system. It won't come the way candidates promise. The only way to "change Washington" is to start at the bottom of the political system and build it anew. It is to look for candidates at the local and state level who represent your views and really support them. It is to support candidates for Congress that represent your views. It is to stop letting incumbent Representatives and Senators run unopposed because we think they cannot be defeated. It is to demand that they stop thinking they were elected kings and start thinking they were elected servants of the people.

Good men and women with servant hearts could make all the difference.

*Charles Haddon Spurgeon
(Cross posted to Dei)

Change is Just Nickels and Dimes

I'm getting tired of the candidates who talk about change with no clear understanding of the kind of change we want. Barak Obama talks about hope without telling us clearly what we should hope he will do. Mitt Romney is so far removed from the life most of us live that he doesn't have a clue. I like John McCain and don't question his integrity, but don't see him getting the kind of support he will need to take the nomination, let alone win the election.

I think Mike Huckabee is the only one who understands that we are just plain tired of demagoguery and want a candidate who will stand up and be counted. I don't agree 100% with all of his positions, but he has identified all the areas where I am concerned and is addressing them. Moreover, he has shown that he can work across party lines to get things done.

I don't put a lot of faith in polls, but they do reflect trends ... and they are showing more and more that we like Mike!

Once Upon A Time

To some of you, this story will sound like a fantasy made up in my imagination. I assure you from the vantage point of many years as a political watcher, it really happened.

Once upon a time, when we chose our elected officials, we voted based on who the candidate was and what he stood for. We knew who a candidate was and what he stood for because we listened to the discourse over a period of time and could make informed choices. This process gave rise to an amazing optimism about who we were as US citizens and what our country stood for.

Over time the political landscape changed. Political leaders began to think there was nothing wrong with manipulating the electorate to achieve victory. They turned to slandering their opponents and defined themselves by who their opponents were not rather than who they were. They tailored their message to pander to the interests of which ever group they were addressing and didn't even seem to notice the contradictions. If confronted with those contradictions, they had a song and dance ready to distract us from their dishonesty. They claimed they would do one thing and did the polar opposite once elected. They seemed to think winning an election had somehow annointed them with super powers.

With these changes in the landscape, it is small wonder that the voters became disenchanted. But elections prove that they were not without hope. Even after the famous Contract with America was well and truly broken, people kept hoping their elected officials would do the right thing. This is the reason for the resounding victories of 2006, which changed the balance of power in the house and senate. The balance of power changed, but it was still business as usual and the losers were the American people.

You would think by this time we would be so cynical that we would desert the whole process, and for a long time that is what many people did. In any election in recent years, only about 50% of the eligible voters participated.

Last night in Iowa, we learned that the spirit that created America is alive and well. In spite of well oiled political machines and huge monetary expenditures, Iowans on both sides of the political spectrum cast their votes for a new vision for America. I don't know if the politicians and pundits have learned anything from this. I can only say that it gives me hope.
It gives me hope that we have turned a corner and will listen to a man of honesty and integrity as he casts a vision for a new America.

Not since Wellstone

Politicians who capture the imagination of the electorate are remarkably few. I'm talking about those few who seem to know what goes on in the mind of the people they are supposed to represent. In my lifetime I remember only very few, most notably Paul Wellstone and Mike Huckabee. Seeing Mike's Huckabus roll through Iowa brings to mind images of the green bus Wellstone used so effectively.

Perhaps what is so refreshing and unusual is the presence of civility in politics. The challenge for Huckabee will be to continue to hold to his persona as he succeeds in raising his political profile. Politics is such a dirty business as it is practiced today. Yet, if Mike Huckabee were inclined to succumb to dirty politics and attack ads, you would think we would know it by now, particularly as his record in Arkansas is scrutinized and exaggerated by his opponents.

It's just refreshing ... it makes me hope.