A double shot of Huckabee today

Posted on November 30, 2007

I spent the day in Concord today - which is fortunate since the bomber was in Rochester! Started at a C of C lunch with Gov. Mike Huckabee as speaker.

The bomber in Rochester was not the only unusual thing to happen in NH today - Gov. Huckabee was introduced to the C of C by NH Gov. - DEMOCRAT - John Lynch! Another very unusual thing was I shook the hand of Gov. Lynch - only the second time in the 5 years since he became Governor (it took a lot of artful - and not so artful - dodging on my part to avoid it during the four years I was a senator while he has the Gov).

Huckabee gave a very good speech, might have been his standard stump speech but I enjoyed it. He talked about his issues: fixing health care by changing its focus from treating disease to preventing disease; an energy policy geared to ending our dependence on energy sources that feeds the terrorists; ending illegal immigration; re-engineering our education system to be a 21st century model - not a 19th century one; and ending the drain on our economy represented by the IRS.

During the Q & A I asked if his support of the FAIR tax (replacing the income tax with a retail consumption tax) was predicated on a constitutional amendment abolishing the income tax so that the taxpayers do not make the mistake Connecticut did - voting to allow an income tax “to replace the property tax” - and then finding they have both an income and property tax. His answer was yes it was and he then elaborated on the reasons why the change from the income tax to the FAIR tax made so much sense. He does a very good job of explaining it, he should YouTube it and get it to a much wider audience! (Here is a video - not YouTube but Good).

Later I attended an event for Mike held by my friend Caroline Virtue at the Chen Yang Li restaurant in Bow. This is a standard location for political events and was about as full as I’ve ever seen it.

Although I have been to hundreds of political events over the past decade here in NH - most of the people there were new to me, they were not the “usual” crowd. These were mostly people who had heard of Mike and wanted to find out more about him. They did, everyone who wanted to, spoke to him face to face, he spent most of the event just going through the crowd.

I was impressed with the Governor. I am not at all surprised that the polls all show him rising - it is simply the result of retail politics and a candidate that is credible with the right message.

» Filed Under Legislators, War on Terror, Taxes, Mike Huckabee, Presidential Primary, World politics, National Politics, Immigration, North Carolina, New Hampshire, NH Politics