I am a student at The College of New Jersey and this year our College Republicans managed to get Mike Huckabee to come and speak at the college tonight and to be honest it was better than I thought it would be. In his address itself he erred much more on the side of avoiding very partisan issues and focused more on what he went through when he was running for president and he had some sharp criticisms of our political system and media that I ended up agreeing with. Then he opened the floor up for questions and I had a question prepared that every single high profile Republican should be forced to answer. The question and a more detailed recap is below the fold.
The main lecture focused mainly on his presidential campaign, how he ran it, and his criticisms of the process of running for president. I found myself very pleasantly surprised when he was criticizing the media because he didn't resort to the same rehashed right wing "liberal media" talking point (especially considering that he is now a FOX News commentator). Instead he criticized them for focusing far more on process rather than policy and neglecting to cover many issues during the campaign that he felt deserved more attention. In an example he used, during the eleven Republican presidential debates there was only one question asked about health care and no questions asked about education while everyone was asked about national security at length. This was one of the points where I found myself in perfect agreement with one of 2008's most right wing candidates.
The other point where I was in agreement with him was when he said that there should be a law that makes it so that politicians currently sitting in an elected office must resign if they decide to run for another (usually higher) office in the next election. That is something that both parties are equally guilty of and always turns me off when I see sitting senators campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire rather than doing the job that they were elected to do.
But despite all of that I did not lose sight of some of his crazy political positions and was quite prepared to ask him the following question when he opened the floor up to questions:
Thank you for coming here tonight Governor. During Obama's presidency so far almost every single Republican in Congress has opposed almost everything of substance that Obama wants to do regardless of what the actual policy was even if that policy was originally proposed by Republicans. For example, every single House Republican voted against the stimulus yet many of them have been seen publicly taking credit for securing stimulus funds for projects that would help create jobs in their districts. Now I know that you were never a member of Congress but I think you can speak for the Republican Party on a national level so my question to you is this: If Republicans in Congress are willing to reflexively oppose even their own policy ideas just for the sake of opposing Obama do you think they really have any interest at all in governing this country?
Now I understand that this question may be a little unfair to ask someone in Huckabee's position but it's not every day that you get to make a high profile Republican politician to answer to that. Because the fact of the matter is that they're not interested in governing. That would mean having to make tough political decisions and focus on the hard work of crafting policy that would help meet the needs of your constituents rather than making easy overtly political decisions.
Unfortunately for me I didn't get to the mic fast enough and the event ended before I could ask my question. Instead most of the questions that were asked to him were softballs that just asked what his opinion was on a certain issue and didn't make him have to defend some ho his crazy positions. These were most of the questions that he was asked.
What do you think of the new student loan reform that was passed with the healthcare bill?
How can we improve our education system without it costing too much? (which he didn't directly answer at all)
What do you think about Michelle Obama's efforts to try and curb childhood obesity?
Do you think the YouTube debates were a good addition to our political process?
What are your thoughts on the Citizen United case?
The best question was a kid that called him out on the his proposed national sales tax calling him out on how regressive it really was but still leaving him enough wiggle room to BS his way out of it.
The most ridiculous Q and A of the night came when Huckabee was asked about what he thought of the teabagger movement. He responded in a full-throated defense of them saying that they represented a very good demographic cross-section of America and that the majority of them identify as being political independents (of course he conveniently left out the fact that when they were asked who they voted for in the last election 85 percent of them were McCain voters). He went on to say that allegations of them astroturfing were unfounded and that they will be a very big political force in the 2010 midterms. Talk about lying through your teeth!
But I want to come back to the question I had prepared to ask him. I think that it is incredibly important that every single Republican running for Congress in this year's midterm be asked that question and provide an answer to it on the record because it exposes them for what they really are: whining obstructionists that don't want anything to get done. I have many of the same criticisms of congressional Democrats that many of you do but they are at least concerned with the task of governing the country.
So I will end this by asking all of you who read this: If you ever get the opportunity to ask a high profile Republican a question ask them the question that I almost asked Mike Huckabee tonight.