Hewitt: Well, do you think, though, that the states’ governments ought to be actively cooperating in the identification of people who are not in the country legally, whether they’re minors or adults?

Huckabee: Oh, well sure, absolutely. And one of the provisions in the bill that we did propose was that they would have to be in the process of becoming citizens, or they wouldn’t be able to access the scholarships. 

Hewitt: Now as you know, you got hit by [Wall Street Journal writer] John Fund and I want to go over what the Club for Growth accuses you of, especially sales tax increases on gas, smokes, nursing homes, opposing the repeal of sales tax on food and medicine. Are you actually calling the Club for Growth now the Club for Greed?

Huckabee: Yeah, I have, because they’ve been very reckless with the truth as it relates to a record that I have of cutting 94 taxes, including the first ever broad-based tax cut in the history of my state, balancing a budget every year, going from a zero balance to a nearly billion dollar balance that I turned over to the governor that took office this year. My fiscal record is good, and don’t take my word for it, there’s a lot of documentation on my Web site. Or people can contact I think very responsible fiscal conservative Republicans like Asa Hutchinson and people like John Paul Hammerschmidt, who are elected members of Congress, who watched my record as a Republican in the state, going against a strong headwind of the Clinton machine.

People need to remember, nobody knows Hillary Clinton better than me, and nobody’s ever run against her like I have, because every time I was on the ballot in Arkansas, I ran against her political machine. And I beat it not once, twice, three times, but four times. 

Hewitt: Did you, did President Bush do the right thing when he vetoed the [State Children’s Health Insurance Program] SCHIP?

Huckabee: Well, I understand why he did it. I think that in the long run, it’s turned out well. We’ve not gotten at least a compromise on it. The problem was the President should’ve never allowed it to get to the point where the Democrats could say that if you veto the bill, you don’t love children. There was a big gap between the $5 billion and the $35 billion that Congress wanted. And the reality was that we were going to put a lot of kids in SCHIP that shouldn’t be in SCHIP. [The program] was not designed for kids whose parents make $83,000 dollars a year. But the President did not really do a good job of helping the American people to understand what that real issue was. 

Hewitt: If you had been the President, would you have vetoed it?

Huckabee: I wouldn’t have let it get that far. That would have been the difference.  I would have made sure that we took charge of the message better, and framed that issue better. Whoever frames the issue wins the debate, and in this case…