Huckabee's Cut and Paste Immigration Policy

Huckabee needed to come up with an immigration plan in a hurry last month. He was beginning his remarkable ascent in opinion polls, but was under attack from GOP rivals for a "liberal" position on immigration while governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. His record in Arkansas, supporting tuition breaks for illegal immigrants and opposing a federal roundup of undocumented workers, made him vulnerable to criticism from the right.

When the campaign announced the governor's nine-point immigration plan on Dec. 6, it noted that it was "partially modeled" on Krikorian's proposal three years earlier. But Huckabee took credit for the plan in the Republican debate on Thursday night, and Mitt Romney's campaign is crying foul. A Romney "Fact Check" said that the Huckabee plan had lifted "whole sections of Krikorian's editorial without quotes or direct attribution."

A point-by-point comparison of the two plans supports the Romney critique. Huckabee's is virtually identical to Krikorian's, with the exception of two points: Build the Fence and Establish an Economic Border. Huckabee says that his proposal for a flat-rate sales tax, known as the "fair tax," would create an "economic disincentive" for illegal immigration, by forcing undocumented workers to pay taxes.