MTP Transcript for Jan. 28, 2007

GOV. HUCKABEE: I would seek always to promote the view that life is precious and should be protected. Would I be able to singularly do that? Of course not. But I think it has to be won on, on a battlefield of one heart at a time rather than pieces of legislation at a time.

MR. RUSSERT: You said this to the Des Moines Register: “Let’s face it. In our lifetimes, we’ve seen our country go from ‘Leave it to Beaver’ to ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ from Barney Fife to Barney Frank.” Why, why include Barney Frank, a gay congressman, in that reference?

GOV. HUCKABEE: I think it was a matter of a rhetorical device to talk about the different cultural shift that we have, and it wasn’t any particular attempt to be derisive of him. But, but there has been a huge cultural shift in this country, Tim. And I think that’s why many Americans are seeking leadership that has a positive and optimistic spirit, that wants to take this nation—what I call vertical politics rather than horizontal.

I just completed a book in which I talk about the difference between horizontal politics, where everything is left or right, everything is liberal or conservative, everything is Democrat or Republican. I think the American people are hungry for vertical politics, where we have leaders who lift us up rather than those who tear us down.

MR. RUSSERT: But some would suggest by including Barny Frank in that

reference you are tearing a gay man down. You’re against gay marriage, you’re

against gay civil unions. Is—do you have a problem with gay people?

GOV. HUCKABEE: No. I have a problem with changing institutions that have served us. And I, I think I would rather characterize not what I’m against, but what I’m for. Before we change the definition of marriage to mean something different, I think our real focus ought to be on trying to strengthen heterosexual marriages because half of them are ending in divorce. That’s a real problem in this country. There are a lot of kids who are growing up in a very, very confused and conflicted world because—not because we have same-sex marriage, but because we’re seeing a real failure in the tradition heterosexual marriage. That’s where our focus needs to be. Because if we want to end poverty, get a kid through high school, let him grow up in a stable, two-parent home and make sure that that child doesn’t have a child before he’s 21 and has a full-time job. That’s a 93 percent chance that child will never grow up in a single day of poverty if those are the criteria.

MR. RUSSERT: Should...

GOV. HUCKABEE: So we ought to be working more to build strong families rather than just to create new versions of them.

MR. RUSSERT: Should gay couples be allowed to adopt children?

GOV. HUCKABEE: That’s a question that, that I think, again, goes back to the heart of what’s best for the child. Unfortunately, so much of this argument has been framed about what, what the same-sex couple wants. But the real question needs to be child-focused, not couple-focused. And, Tim, that’s true for whether the couple is same-sex or whether they’re heterosexual. In our state, as in most, the criteria for adoption is always what’s in the best interest of the child. That ought to be what’s front and center.

MR. RUSSERT: So is it in the interest—best interest of the child to have a gay, gay parents?

GOV. HUCKABEE: That’s a question I’m not sure that, that we have a positive answer to. And until we absolutely could say it, then, then I—I’m always hesitant to change those institutions.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that you’re born gay or you choose to be gay?

GOV. HUCKABEE: I don’t honestly know. I really don’t. I think there are—there are people who would argue vociferously on both sides of that. But I think that the point is, people are, are who they want to be, and we should respect them for that. But when they want to change the institutions that’ve governed our society for all the years of recorded human history, then that’s a serious change of, of culture that we, we don’t just make readily or, or hurriedly. It has to be done with some, some deep thought.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me ask you about a controversial aspect of your governorship. Wayne Dumond...

GOV. HUCKABEE: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: ...a rapist who was convicted, sentenced in Arkansas, the parole board voted not to parole him in September of—in August of ‘96. You announced that you were going to commute his sentence, and then the parole board reversed course and agreed to parole him, and you supported their decision to parole. He was, was freed, left the state, killed and raped someone else in Missouri. Do you regret supporting that parole?

GOV. HUCKABEE: You know, looking back, certainly I wish that I had known more than I knew, but here’s what I knew: I never commuted his sentence; his sentence was commuted by my predecessor. When he was parole elibigle, he had not yet made parole. And I supported that he was parole-eligible. Later, the parole board did, in fact, give him their parole, supervised.

MR. RUSSERT: Did you talk to the parole board?

GOV. HUCKABEE: I did. But it wasn’t about Wayne Dumond. I went there, even though there are some tabloid reports that tried to make it that I did, I went there to get acquainted with them because I hadn’t appointed any of them. Out of all...

MR. RUSSERT: You never mentioned Wayne Dumond?

GOV. HUCKABEE: No, they brought it up to me. And, of course...

MR. RUSSERT: So you did talk to the board about him?

GOV. HUCKABEE: Only thing I said was this: They asked me did I think that he should be paroled, or something to that effect, and I simply said, “I think that his case has got to be given, you know, a serious look.” What he apparently did when he left was horrible, Tim. But, you know, the issue is, he is a person who did a horrible thing before and after. I think all of us regret and have deep, deep, painful thoughts that someone could do something like this.

MR. RUSSERT: You or your staff did not pressure or try to convince the parole board—parole board in any way shape or form?

GOV. HUCKABEE: No, we didn’t. And, in fact, here’s the, the part that never gets really pointed out. That parole board had all been appointed by either Bill Clinton or Jim Guy Tucker, my predecessors. I don’t think I had that kind of power. If I’m that persuasive, I’ll be the next president of the United States.

MR. RUSSERT: But, in hindsight, you regret announcing that you were going to commute his sentence.

GOV. HUCKABEE: Sure. I, I—of course I do, because it, it turned out not to be as we thought, that he had an exemplary prison record. And he’d been commuted by Jim Guy Tucker while he was acting governor, and Bill Clinton knew all about it.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me ask you about the lead right now in the Republican primaries, one of them, John McCain. You said this: “I have a hard time seeing [Sen. John McCain] being elected president, just because I think, at times, some of his views have alienated very important segments of the Republican Party. I’m not sure he can mend the fences with the evangelical wing of the party, the pro-life part of the party.” You stand by those words?

GOV. HUCKABEE: Well, sure, I said them. I, I have a lot of respect for Senator McCain, he’s a great American hero. But I do think that there’re going to be some challenges that he’ll face, and some of them have to do with issues that, that really have alienated many conservatives. But I also think that they’re going to be issues in, in relationship to even campaign finance reform and how that’s really affected the whole election process.

MR. RUSSERT: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat, has announced for president, the former first lady of Arkansas.

GOV. HUCKABEE: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: Will she be a formidable candidate?

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