This is part 1, go here for the rest of the speech.

“Metamucil”

FoxNews did their best last night and this looked to be a heckuva curve ball … but, Mike hit it out of the park.

h/t: TommyforHuckabee

David Letterman interview with Mike Huckabee:

Here’s an interesting article over on NationalReview.com (I guess Kopel wasn’t a party to the endorsement of Mitt?).  Portion of column:

From the viewpoint of a Second Amendment supporter, it doesn’t matter whether Mitt Romney is an expert varmint stalker. It does matter whether he is sincere in his support of the Second Amendment. His stories last week about his lifetime of hunting give reason to doubt that President Romney would be a reliable defender of gun-owner rights.

Last week, Romney declared, “I’ve been a hunter pretty much all my life.” Asked for details, his staff said that he had only been hunting twice — once when he was fifteen, and last year, on an excursion for major donors to the National Republican Governors’ Association. On Thursday, he said that his staff was wrong: “I’ve hunted small game numerous times, as a young man and as an adult. I’m by no means a big game hunter. I’m more Jed Clampett than Teddy Roosevelt.”

No state in which Romney has lived shows any record of him having ever possessed a hunting license. However, hunting licenses in Utah are not public records, and in some states, a hunting license is not necessary for some types of small game and/or for hunting on private land.

According to the Associated Press, “His staff refused Friday to provide details about his hunting history, including whose gun he used, with whom he hunted and whether he hunted in Utah as a college student or as an adult. He does not own a firearm, despite claiming to earlier this year.”

As a Second Amendment supporter, I don’t care about Romney’s hunting history. I’ve never hunted, nor has Don Kates, who is one of the most influential pro-Second Amendment scholars ever. I know plenty of outstanding pro-rights legislators and activists who have never hunted, or who haven’t been hunting for many years.

When Second Amendment supporters vote, they know that they’re choosing a political official, not a game warden. If we voted based on hunting prowess, we would have voted for John Kerry, who — besides going on a some hunting publicity trips during the campaign — also went trap shooting in Wisconsin and proved that he is skilled with a shotgun.

While Kerry claimed to be a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment, his Senate record showed that he voted against gun-owner rights 95 percent of the time.

( … snip … )
Other than the 2005 proclamation, there is little evidence of executive leadership by Romney on Second Amendment rights; rather, he tended merely to accept reform bills which could pass even the Massachusetts legislature.

But Romney occasionally considered the Democratic-dominated Massachusetts legislature too soft on gun owners. In the summer of 2002, the Massachusetts house overwhelmingly passed a bill to relax the state’s lifetime ban on gun ownership for persons convicted of some misdemeanors. Faced with a bill that had passed the left-leaning House by a huge margin, Governor Romney declared his opposition, while allowing that he would back a much “more narrow proposal” (Boston Globe, July 17, 2002, page B4). (The narrower proposal was eventually included in the 2004 bill which he did sign.)

Running for re-election in 2002, he bragged, “We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts. I support them. I won’t chip away at them. I believe they protect us and provide for our safety.” At the least, Romney generally didn’t show leadership in making Massachusetts’ terrible gun-laws even worse. For example, his 2002 anti-crime plan included no new gun control (Boston Herald, August 21, 2002).

Romney’s website brags about how he balanced the Massachusetts budget “without raising taxes.” That depends on what the meaning of “taxes” is. Unmentioned on the Romney website is how he dealt with a state budget gap: namely, by quadrupling the fee for a Firearms Identification card (FID) to $100. Without a FID in Massachusetts, you are a felon if you possess a single bullet, even if you don’t own a gun. The FID card is required even to possess defensive pepper spray. Thus, an impoverished woman who wanted to buy a $15 can of pepper spray was forced by Romney to spend $100 for the privilege of defending her own life (North Shore Sunday News, August 8, 2003).

This year, Romney has been portraying himself as a staunch Second Amendment advocate. But when he was interviewed by Glenn and Helen Reynolds, he displayed little understanding of the Second Amendment and had difficulty articulation anything more than platitudes and slogans.

Later in the column, Kopel contrasts this with Huckabee:

Huckabee Gets It
Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee also appeared on Hewitt’s show and displayed a more tolerant attitude, showing that he knows guns and understands the Second Amendment in a way that Romney and Gingrich plainly do not:

HH:…What about assault weapons, or what is called assault weapons in the law? Should Americans be allowed to have them?

MH: Absolutely. Americans ought to be allowed to have anything they want to have, as long as they’re law abiding, legal citizens. The 2nd Amendment was not there for hunting. I get so offended when Democrats talk about it as if you don’t need an assault weapon to hunt. Well truthfully, most Democrats wouldn’t know an assault weapon from a BB gun. I’m a hunter, I have been my whole life. But the 2nd Amendment is not just about hunting. It’s about protecting your family, your property, and it’s honestly about defending ourselves against a tyrannical government, should it ever go haywire on us.

HH: What about machine guns, Governor?

MH: I’ve got friends who own them. They have the legal process to own them. But once again, I’m not afraid of a law abiding citizen owning anything. I’m afraid of a criminal getting his hands on a gun. That’s where the crackdown needs to be. This country’s gone crazy. It’s cracking down on law abiding citizens, and turning their heads at people who break the law. That’s the polar opposite.

Huckabee’s broadminded attitude is supported by the facts: Pursuant to the National Firearms Act of 1934, the purchase of a machine gun requires a months-long process involving a background check and letter of authorization from local law enforcement (Form 4), plus fingerprinting, registration of the owner and the gun, and a $200 tax. There has never been an instance of a legally-owned, registered machine gun being used in a violent crime, except for the lone case of one Ohio police officer’s misuse of a personally-owned gun.

Then Kopel moves back to Romney and the influence of the NRA:

Unreliable Friends of Convenience
Mitt Romney’s attitudes on guns — like his double flip-flop on abortion — appear to have more to do with political expediency than with conviction. While an expedient and cynical “friend” like Mitt Romney would probably be better for gun owners than would a sincere and fierce enemy like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, it is still worth wondering what President Romney would do if his political calculus changed yet again.

George H. W. Bush was another gun-rights friend of convenience, who (like Romney) bought himself a lifetime NRA membership shortly before running for president. And when circumstances made it convenient for Bush to become a gun-control advocate instead of a Second Amendment defender (only a few weeks after he took the oath of office and swore to defend the Constitution), Bush switched sides, and spent the remainder of his administration promoting restrictions on the Second Amendment.

Ever since “the revolt at Cincinnati” — the 1977 NRA Convention when pro-rights members seized power from an Old Guard that wanted to get the NRA out of political advocacy — there has been an easy way to predict who will win the presidential election. If the Republican is endorsed by the NRA Political Victory Fund, he wins (Reagan 1980 and 1984, G.H.W. Bush 1988, G.W. Bush 2000, 2004). If the NRA does not endorse the Republican, he loses (G.H.W. Bush 1992, Dole 1996).

h/t: Huckabee Forums

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Here’s the first part of the Larry King interview ( rest of the interview here):

H/T: As usual, TommyforHuckabee over at Huckabee Army Forums

h/t: TommyforHuckabee over at Huck’s Army Forums