The Washington Times has a fascinating article up about Mike Huckabee’s record on immigration as governor of Arkansas.

Paul Mirengoff summarizes:

Mike Huckabee failed to sign an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that would have enabled the state to enforce federal immigration law. In campaigning for president, Huckabee touts his record of cracking down on illegal aliens. And Huckabee did sign a bill that had to be enacted in order for the state police to arrest them. However, signing the bill was not enough. Huckabee also needed to sign an agreement with DHS in order to secure training for state police officers. Without such training, state poilce cannot enforce federal immigration law.

But Huckabee did not sign such an agreement. And, according to Jeremy Hutchinson, the Republican state legislator who sponsored the immigration enforcement law in question, the Huckabee administration “never [made] any effort to begin negotiating with Homeland Security.”

The Huckabee campaign claims that “the clock ran out” — in other words, it didn’t have enough time to enter into an agreement with DHS. Yet, according to the Washington Times, Huckabee signed the law in March 2005, giving him more than 20 months to negotiate with the feds. His successor as governor (a Democrat) was able to begin negotiations less than 12 months after he took office.

Ah well, 20 months, 12 months… To sign or not to sign, that was the question. A question Huckabee, simply, couldn’t answer within 1.5 years time.

Seemingly.

Then there’s also this tidbit about Huckabee’s views on the economy (and other matters):

But as Huckabee now mounts his closing argument for the Iowa caucuses, he has moved full bore into the rhetoric of economic populism. “I am out to change the Republican Party. It needs changing. It needs to be inclusive of all those people across America for whom this party should stand,” he said Sunday, on CBS’s Face The Nation. On the trail, he speaks regularly of challenging the “Washington to Wall Street power axis.” He frankly acknowledges the suffering of the stagnating middle class, and even offers up government as a part of the solution. “The President ought to be aware that the people struggle,” he said in Muscatine on Friday morning. “He ought to be aware every time a decision is made — whether [or not] it’s to raise taxes — how it’s going to hurt the family out there, who can barely pay the grocery bill as it is.”

At some of these events, if you close your eyes, you would think a Democrat was speaking — Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton turned southern Baptist.

Hugh Hewitt comments:

 The GOP does not need “changing.”  It needs reminding and it needs energy in its new leader.  It needs to recommit to its traditional stand against excessive spending and the growth of government.  It needs to affirm its belief in victory in the war and to the nomination and confirmation of originalist judges.  It needs to endorse extension of President Bush’s tax cuts and elimination of the death tax.  It needs to argue for the rights of the unborn and the protection of those least able to protect themselves…

What the GOP definitely does not need is neopopulism, class warfare, and identity politics of the sort Mike Huckabee has been selling the last four weeks.  Huckabee’s lunge left may not have been premeditated, but it clearly displayed a candidate with no anchor in the GOP’s tradition of fiscal restraint, free trade and low taxes and a very limited understanding of the world’s most dangerous forces.

Now, one has to keep in mind that Hewitt is actively supporting Mitt Romney – Huckabee’s main rival in Iowa – but there is, in my opinion, a lot of truth to what he’s saying. The GOP needs to go back to its conservative roots. It needs someone who believes in fiscal conservatism, and who has a record as a social conservative as well.

If Huckabee becomes president, chances are that there will be no attempt to make government smaller or even to slow down its growth. If, however, McCain or a Romney would become president, it’s highly unlikely that the government would become bigger and bigger. What’s more, Huckabee doesn’t come across as someone who knows a whole lot about the world outside America’s borders. You all had a president who didn’t know anything about the world for seven years now, I suggest you choose someone with a bit more knowledge this time around.