From the NYT Columnist, Leslie Wayne, discusses Mike Huckabee and the Club for Growth:

 The Club for Growth, a politically influential anti-tax group, has dubbed Huckabee Tax Hike Mike and poured money into anti-Huckabee advertisements that were broadcast in early-nominating states, with more on the way. Huckabee “spends money like a drunken sailor,” according to the group’s news releases, and it has sprinkled YouTube and the airways with videos that mock him and his policies.

But the record offers a more complex and nuanced picture. While taxes did rise in the 10 years that Huckabee was governor, the portrayal of him as a wild-eyed spendthrift is hardly apt. For the most part, Huckabee’s tax initiatives had wide bipartisan support, with the small number of Republicans in the overwhelmingly Democratic state Legislature voting for the tax increases and many maintaining that the state was better for them. (MORE)

David Broder finds principles in two GOP candidates:

Huckabee was asked to defend a bill he sponsored that the questioner said “gave illegal aliens a discount for college in Arkansas by allowing them to pay lower in-state tuition rates.”

The former governor corrected him. The bill, he said, “would have allowed those children who had been in our schools their entire school life the opportunity to have the same scholarship that their peers had, who had also gone to high school with them and sat in the same classrooms. … It wasn’t about out-of-state tuition. …”

Romney was not appeased. He said Huckabee sounded like a Massachusetts liberal, giving the taxpayers’ money to people who are here illegally.

To which Huckabee replied: “In all due respect, we’re a better country than to punish children for what their parents did. We’re a better country than that.” He, too, was applauded.

I think we are that better country. And I hope the Republicans agree. (MORE)

This is good stuff!

Kerry