Huckabee: Democrats Are Vulnerable in 2012

Former Arkansas governor on unemployment numbers, GOP field

This is a rush transcript from "Your World," October 7, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

ERIC BOLLING, GUEST HOST: Well, did you hear this?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Is it strong enough of a Republican Party for its nominee to beat this president?

JOSEPH BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. It’s strong enough to beat both of us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLLING: My next guest could not agree more with Joe Biden, the V.P...

Former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee joins me now.

Were you surprised he said that, Mike?

MIKE HUCKABEE (R), FORMER ARKANSAS GOVERNOR: Sometimes, Joe Biden is just too honest for his own good.

I think it was a very honest and accurate statement. It is not the kind of statement that a political consultant would ever trot a vice president out and say, yes, go out there and tell everyone that we are vulnerable.

But they are vulnerable. I appreciate Biden for having the -- frankly the just candor to say, yes, we could be beaten. It is true.

BOLLING: Do you think he was doing that or was he trying to lower the expectation?

HUCKABEE: No, I think Joe Biden is genuinely a decent human being. And I think he wants to tell the truth. And sometimes he can’t help himself.

And in this case, he was being more truthful than he was political. And I found it kind of refreshing. But I have a feeling that his staff is getting a good dressing down from the White House staff this afternoon.

BOLLING: Hey, Huck, the unemployment rate today was released. And we saw for the third month in a row 9.1 percent. Now, granted, the economy created a few jobs, but if you take out Verizon, there were somewhere around 58,000 jobs created and none last month, so, this economy is not really producing the jobs that we need.

HUCKABEE: If this were an airplane, the engine is stalled. And only one thing happens when the engine on an airplane stalls. You start a spin to the ground.

I am not saying that we are in a spin, but this is a president who owns this economy, whether he wants to admit it or not. And he told us, you pass this stimulus bill, that unemployment rate will go down below 8 percent and never go back up. It has not gotten near 8 percent.

How we would love an 8 percent unemployment figure. He is in trouble because the economy has been mismanaged.

BOLLING: All right, Mike, let’s -- one of the GOP candidates that has moved up in the polls since the Florida straw poll, Herman Cain.

He has had some interesting tax plans, some you like, some you don’t. Let’s take a listen to what he had to say with Neil a couple of days ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST OF "YOUR WORLD": Nine percent personal flat tax, 9 percent corporate tax, 9 percent sales tax. Everyone likes the sound of it. I like just the sound 999.

HERMAN CAIN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes.

CAVUTO: It’s very easy for me to comprehend.

CAIN: You don’t pay the sales tax on used homes and used cars. Just think what that’s going to do to unblock that inventory that they have in used homes. That’s going to open up a bigger market for new homes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLLING: What do you think of that?

HUCKABEE: Well, I think it’s a great step.

Now, I am a Fair Tax guy. I still think that the best way for us to get revenue is to assess revenue at the point of consumption, not at the point of productivity. We need more productivity, not less. So we shouldn’t punish and penalize the productivity that creates an economy.

BOLLING: Mike wasn’t -- wasn’t Herman Cain on the Fair Tax -- he was on the Fair Tax bandwagon for a while, wasn’t he?

HUCKABEE: Yes, he still is.

Herman, though, realizes that it is hard to explain the Fair Tax in a presidential election. And so I think what he is saying -- and I have heard him say it publicly -- is that he still is a Fair Tax guy. That is where he wants to go, but the intermediate step is the 999.

And I think, frankly, the 999 is appealing to people because it is simple. People want a simplified a tax code, not this ridiculous 67,000 pages of gobbledygook that no one understands.

And it is killing us because we spend so much time complying with tax code, rather than producing something, in fact, estimated half-a-trillion, $500 billion a year just complying with the tax code.

BOLLING: OK. Hey, Mike, Marco Rubio this week told us he wasn’t interested in a V.P. spot if he were asked. Would you be?

HUCKABEE: Right now, it is not something I think I am thinking about or anyone else is.

My -- the only thing I considered was running for president this year, and I decided not to do that. It is way too early to start talking about number two. Let’s get a number one guy picked.

BOLLING: All right.

Mike, it’s only -- it is October already.

HUCKABEE: It’s going to happen.

BOLLING: All right, your show, 8:00 p.m. tomorrow night.

HUCKABEE: We have got Herman Cain. We have Newt Gingrich.

BOLLING: Hey, there you go.

HUCKABEE: We have Jon Huntsman -- three of the presidential candidates -- and much more.

(CROSSTALK)

BOLLING: "Huckabee."

Thank you very much, Mike.

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