By ANDREW DeMILLO, Associated Press Writer
The U.S. shouldn't try to kill Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Mike Huckabee
declared when he first ran for office. No women in combat anywhere. No
gays in the military. No contributions in politics to candidates more
than a year before an election.
His statements are among 229 answers Huckabee offered as a 36-year-old
Texarkana pastor during his first run for political office in 1992. In
that unsuccessful race against Sen. Dale Bumpers, Huckabee offered
himself as a social conservative and listed "moral decay" as one of
the top problems facing the country.
Now that he's a front-runner for the Republican presidential
nomination, he's being asked anew about some of the views and comments
he expressed in the survey by The Associated Press. Over the weekend,
he said he wouldn't retract answers in which he advocated isolating
AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased funding for
finding a cure and said homosexuality could pose a public health risk
-- though he said today he might phrase his answers "a little
differently."
Some of the words in his answers to the questionnaire are indeed
strong.
Asked about gays in the military, for example, he didn't just reject
the idea but added: "I believe to try to legitimize that which is
inherently illegitimate would be a disgraceful act of government. I
feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle, and
we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk."
Earlier this year, Huckabee said, "Nobody's going to find some YouTube
moments of me saying something radically different than what I'm
saying today."
The full questionnaire offers in written form a chance for voters to
see what he was saying as he began his political career.
In the questionnaire, he:
* Called for the elimination of political action committees and
campaign contributions from lobbyists. He also said candidates should
not be allowed to receive contributions until one year before an
election and said there should be limits on the amount of out-of-state
money they could accept., however as Arkansas governor, Huckabee formed a political action committee
based in Virginia to raise money for non-federal candidates that
allowed him to travel and raise his profile for a potential
presidential run. The Hope for America PAC shut down earlier this year
as Huckabee entered the White House race.
* Said he would not support any tax increases if elected to the
Senate. Huckabee's record of raising some taxes as Arkansas' governor
has drawn fire from fiscal conservatives in the presidential race.
* When asked whether the U.S. should take any action to kill Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein, Huckabee replied: "The U.S. should not kill
Saddam Hussein or anyone else." The U.S . military captured Saddam, an
Iraqi court convicted him and he was hanged last December.
traditional view that women should be treated with respect and dignity
and not subject to the kinds of abuses that could occur in combat."
Huckabee's vocal opposition to gay marriage and abortion have
attracted evangelical Christians' support and vaulted him to the top
of the field in Iowa.
But some of his earlier comments offer a harder-edged presentation of
those stances than he has presented as he's tried to portray himself
as a conservative who won't "scare the living daylights " out of
moderates and independents.
"I think the model he saw that had been successful in other Southern
states was this very hard right message and that's what seemed to be
the most natural for him," Hendrix College Political Scientist Jay
Barth said when asked about the AP questionnaire.
"He's become much smarter about successfully using language that
expresses views without being hard-edged," Barth said.
Now that he's a front-runner, Huckabee himself said Tuesday he
expected more attention to be paid to his years in Arkansas.
"When you're a governor for ten and half years you make thousands of
decisions every year," he said. "In office that long you're going to
have a lot of decisions people can pore through. The good thing for me
is a lot of campaigns instead of spending money on advertising or even
campaigning, since they don't seem to have a lot of activity, are
spending an enormous amount of money hiring researchers to dig through
every piece of paper that was filed in Arkansas."
Huckabee's 1992 comments on isolating AIDS patients run counter to a
statement he released last month calling for increased federal funds
to find a cure. Huckabee says the earlier remarks came at a time when
there was confusion about how AIDS could be transmitted.
He said Tuesday he would be willing to speak with the family of Ryan
White, an Indiana teenager who died of AIDS in the 1980s and whose
mother has objected to the 1992 Huckabee comments.
"It's so alarming to me," Jeanne White-Ginder said in an interview
with the AP.
...
On other subjects in the questionnaire, Huckabee:
* Opposed passing a law that would give workers time off to care for
an ailing family member. In 1993, Congress passed the Family and
Medical Leave Act, which entitles eligible employees to take up to 12
weeks of unpaid leave for the birth or adoption of a child, to care
for a close relative with a serious health condition or if the
employee could not work due to health problems.
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