GOP Debate…HUCKABEE — Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Carl Cameron, “Governor Huckabee, your advisor, Ed Rollins, recently said the Reagan coalition of economic, social, and national security conservatives is gone. You’ve been quoted as saying that you’re not running for another Reagan term. Tell us, sir, what part of the coalition is gone and what has it been replaced by?“

HUCKABEE: The Reagan coalition has certainly not seen those same middle-class, working-class Republicans feeling a part of the Republican Party as they should. Over the years, sometimes Republicans have thought that one part of that coalition was more important than the other. I think they’re all important, and we need to recapture them. But we need to make sure that we can communicate that our party is just as interested in helping the people who are single moms, who are working two jobs, and still just barely paying the rent; as we are the people at the top of the economy.

That’s exactly right, folks!

We’ve gotta talk to these people making a hundred grand who have to take public transport. We have to reach out to these single moms whose 18-year-old daughters have to wake up an hour early in Los Angeles, to take public transportation to go to the ice cream scooping job. We have to acknowledge that this suffering and this pain is going on and that we’re going to have, what?

A new Reagan coalition of Big Government to fix it!
[oxymoron for the Decade]

That’s not what conservatism is.
It’s not what Reaganism was.

Reaganism did not steer such people to the governments for solutions. Reaganism steered people inwardly. It steered people to themselves. It inspired people to realize that they could be far better than they thought they could be, that they had more potential than they realized.

Reagan conservatism had as its purpose the uplifting of all people, not looking at people and seeing them as members of groups and bestowing victim status or sympathy upon them and saying, “I, a politician, in Washington will fix you.”

In all my life, there hasn’t been one Big Oil CEO, hasn’t been one Big Drug CEO. There hasn’t been a CEO of any organization that did me any harm. There hasn’t been one CEO that could! I don’t care how much the guy made or she made; I don’t care what they were being paid. Throughout the course of my life, there has not been one CEO of any large- or medium-size American corporation who has harmed me, who has tried to harm me, or who could.

But throughout my life, there have been politicians too numerous to mention who could cause me great angst with policies of increased taxes, increased regulation, and telling me what I can and can’t do with my property; telling me what kind of lightbulbs I can’t use in 2012; telling me what kind of stupid little car I have to drive in 12 years.

But no CEO is telling me this.

So this business about, “We’ve gotta start understanding victims out there and that we offer solutions when government programs,” you can call it what you want, and you can espouse that and be for it.

Do not call it Reaganism.
Do not call it conservatism.

The Democrat Party today has more wealthy constituents in its states and districts than the Republican Party does.

It’s another myth just like the Democrats are directly responsible for making the civil rights movement happen.

It’s not true! And that’s why I cringe when I hear Republicans like Governor Huckabee falling into this trap, or maybe purposely going into it, implying that Republicans don’t care about the downtrodden.

The whole point of conservatism is to lift the downtrodden.

The whole point of liberalism is to keep ’em suppressed and then lower the rich and punish achievement!

This is frankly absurd for a Republican candidate to start running and talking that the Republicans don’t care about little people.