Luke Skywalker
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More than a dozen presidential candidates plan to<span style="color: Red;">*</span>speak at The Des Moines Register’s Soapbox during the 2015 Iowa State Fair. Here are some<span style="color: Red;">*</span>highlights from Thursday’s speeches as the fair kicked off.
[h=3]Huckabee touts Fair Tax[/h]
Former Arkansas governor<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Mike Huckabee, the first candidate to make a soapbox appearance Thursday, stuck with his main campaign trail themes.
His<span style="color: Red;">*</span>20-minute speech garnered applause at least six times from the more than 100 people crowded around the stage. Statements about morality, abortion and eliminating the IRS got the most rousing applause.
Huckabee reiterated his support for ending abortion.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>“I’m not sure how we fully expect to invoke God’s blessing on this country if we continue the slaughter of unborn children in their mother’s wombs, 60 million of whom have passed away since 1973,” he said. “Let’s start acting like a civilized people rather than barbarians. Let’s stop the slaughter.”
Mike Huckabee speaks at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 13, 2015, in Des Moines. (Charlie Riedel, AP)
He also talked about how, if elected, he would secure the border during the first year of his presidency.
Huckabee said that if a 1,700-mile road could be built in less than a year between British Columbia and Alaska 73 years ago, a wall can be built to keep illegal immigrants from entering the U.S. along its southern border.
“Of course we can secure the border but you have to have a president that says, ‘I’ll do it and I’ll make sure it gets done’,” he said. “I will be a president that will get it done.”
He<span style="color: Red;">*</span>answered seven questions after talking, including one from a person who asked him how he would be improve the U.S. economy.
He said passage of the Fair Tax by Congress would provide a boost to the economy, growing it by 6%. The Fair Tax is a tax on consumption rather than income.
“Right now, we’re designing things, we’re creating things, but we’re making them in China,” he said. “And what we need to be doing is making them here but we can’t because there’s 22 percent embedded tax in everything we make here.
“The Fair Tax changes that and gives us the competitive edge so we bring those manufacturing jobs back.”
[h=3]Webb highlights moderate Democratic ideals[/h]
Former Virginia senator<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Jim Webb highlighted his moderate Democratic ideals during his soapbox appearance.
Webb, who has extensive military experience, spoke about the need to elect, first and foremost, a commander<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in chief.
“The No. 1<span style="color: Red;">*</span>responsibility of the president of the United States is that burden of being your commander in chief and making these ultimate decisions about foreign policy and when to use military force and when it is wise not to use military force,” he<span style="color: Red;">*</span>said.
Jim Webb speaks to fairgoers in Des Moines on Aug. 13, 2015. (Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)
Webb has been a combat marine, an assistant secretary of defense and a secretary of the Navy —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>credentials that set him apart from his Democratic challengers.
“I think it’s something that has prepared me, in the best way that anyone can be prepared, to be your commander in chief,” he said.
But Webb also hit hard on some more typical Democratic talking points, saying addressing economic inequality and social justice have been two of his top priorities since running for the U.S. Senate in 2006.
“If you’re not in the flow of capital – of owning stocks, real estate and those sorts of things – you’re probably not doing very well right now,” he said. “And we need to make sure that the American worker, who is the hardest, most productive worker in the world, gets a share of this economy as we bring it back.”
Webb said he believes there are three pieces to the American dream. Every American who has the ideas and the drive can succeed, he said. But the government also must insist that everyone has a level playing field and equal access to the American dream.
Lastly, Webb argued that the United States has long insisted on a safety net to protect people who fall on hard times, face disabilities or enter into retirement.
“It’s the American trifecta,” he said. “The dream at the top, fairness along the way and the safety net under our people.”
[h=3]O’Malley positions himself as a new voice[/h]
Democratic presidential hopeful Martin O’Malley renewed calls for affordable college tuition, a $15 minimum wage and stronger labor unions during a Thursday speech at the Iowa State Fair.
The former Maryland governor got applause on The Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox stage for knocking Gov. Terry Branstad’s July veto of $55.7 million that legislators set aside for schools. Education Week named Maryland the top state for education five years in a row during O’Malley’s term as governor, he said, while listing off a host of other accomplishments.
Martin O’Malley speaks to fairgoers during the Iowa State Fair on August 13, 2015 in Des Moines. (Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)
“We invested in infrastructure, we invested in new jobs and new industries,” he said. “And, note to Gov. Branstad, rather than cutting education, we increased our funding to education. We made our public schools the best public schools in America.”
In response, Branstad spokesman Jimmy Centers said in part, “Under Branstad-Reynolds, pre-K-12 education funding in Iowa has increased by over 35 percent when compared to the five previous fiscal years under Democrat governors.”
At 52, O’Malley is at least a decade younger than any other Democratic opponent. It’s not an issue the former Baltimore mayor highlights often on the campaign trail. He told fairgoers, however, that he expects to rise from the bottom of polls and emerge from the Iowa caucus as a “voice of a new generation.”
The remark came after O’Malley opened a portion of his soapbox appearance to questions from the audience. Retired Register columnist Chuck Offenburger asked O’Malley why he doesn’t mention his age more directly when he’s trying to woo voters.
“I think Secretary (Hillary) Clinton and Senator (Bernie) Sanders, as much as I admire them, are too damn old,” Offenburger said.
“After you get a chance to meet everybody, you usually winnow down the field,” O’Malley said of the caucus process. “And in a Democratic Party that has a gravitational pull toward the future, that choice usually narrows down to a choice between the inevitable frontrunner who is inevitable right up until the first contest and the voice of a new generation who most of the country has not heard of before.”
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