Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor running for Republican presidential nomination who is currently averaging about 4.3 percent of likely voter support in an average of national polls, entered the 2016 race planning to stress economic issues in a way that might appeal to the working class.
But the press hasn’t paid much attention to Huckabee’s ideas about fair taxes and the like.
Instead, the focus has been on the Huckabee who worked as a Baptist pastor for 12 years and is consistently talking about things in the light of his biblical conviction. He has been unsurprisingly portrayed as the No.1 social conservative, enjoying strong voter support from evangelical Christians who are devoutly against same-sex marriage and abortion.
We take a look at where Huckabee stands by answering your likely questions (with the help of a few political experts).
So is he still No.1 with social conservatives?
That’s where we’re not sure.
Huckabee has made headlines by comparing abortion to slaughter and calling same-sex marriage absurd. But he gets “less favorable” media attention than he did during his last run for the GOP nomination in 2008, “due in part to the more crowded field, but also to his more strident persona this time around,” said Hal Bass, the Dean of Political Science at Ouachita Baptist University, an institution from which Huckabee graduated four decades ago. “He lacks the freshness and optimism that he manifested in 2008,” Bass said.
The crowded GOP field, which includes Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and others who also appeal to the right wing of the Republican Party, makes it hard for Huckabee to quickly consolidate the evangelical vote as he did in 2008. “As such, he has yet to clear the field, and I’m not at all confident that he can,” said Bass, who served as a Republican National Convention parliamentarian when Huckabee presided, and describes their relationship as cordial.
Does he have other selling points?
Yes, he’s trying to sell Hope.
Because he shares the same birthplace – Hope, Arkansas — with former President Bill Clinton, Huckabee has been making an effort to link himself to the Clintons, boasting that he has experience running against the family’s political machine.
With Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton leading in general election match-ups with any Republican candidate, the Huckabee campaign is asserting it knows the Clinton playbook well enough to be a strong challenge to the former Secretary of State.
Here are the facts: Arkansas did, in Huckabee’s 10-and-a-half-year tenure, pass most of the proposed legislation in an environment where the odds might have been stacked against a Republican governor — there were an overwhelming 89 democrats to 11 republicans in the state house and 31 democrats to 4 republicans in the senate.
But there’s a problem with comparing Huckabee to Clinton, academics say.
“By the time his (Huckabee’s) political career got under way, Clinton had moved onto the national stage,” said Janine Parry, a professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, who also serves as Arkansas poll director. “Their political lives don’t overlap so much.”
“I think it is a distinguishing talking point given the crowded field, and his need to distinguish himself,” Parry said. “But I don’t see it as something that will really propel his candidacy forward.”
Bass holds the same view, adding, “For party elites and voters nationally, what happened in Arkansas decades ago is not likely to be all that significant.”
That sounds like a dead end. Has he tried other ways to grab attention?
Of course.
Remember when we said he wanted to stress economic issues?
“I don’t like to say ‘I’m the only candidate in this race who…’” Huckabee said at a conservative gathering in Atlanta after the first GOP debate on Fox on Aug 6. “But in this case very true. The only one who advocates that we don’t need a reform for the Internal Revenue Service, we need an eradication of this criminal enterprise, the IRS.”
He surprised the audience by calling on the government to tax “illegals, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers’ to save Social Security” the other night on the debate, introducing a fair tax plan to tax everybody when they consume instead of produce, which he believes would ease the trade deficit, bring jobs and capital back, secure the border, help with the illegal immigration problem by depriving economic benefits, and, ultimately, reward productivity and punish irresponsibility.
Huckabee has also tried to set himself apart by being the sole Republican to court votes with the AFL-CIO, which usually supports Democratic candidates who are pro-labor, saying that he wants to be “president of all America, not just the part that agrees with me.”
I remember “prostitutes and pimps” … Didn’t he used to be TV host?
Also true.
When asked by Fox 411 about his favorite television show, Huckabee was quick to answer.
“There was a show on Fox News Channel called ‘Huckabee,’ which was a great, great show,” he said. “Unfortunately it’s not on anymore. When it was on it was a killer show and by far, I think, it’s the greatest TV show in a generation.”
Huckabee started the show right after his unsuccessful 2008 campaign and for the next six or so years, the primetime show usually brought in more viewers for the Fox News Channel than the sum of rival offerrings on CNN, MSNBC and CNBC that aired at the same time as Huckabee’s program. (Rating)
Huckabee, during his career as a host, slammed stars like Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and Natalie Portman. That style continues to inform his performance in this presidential campaign.
The latest — and probably the biggest — stir Huckabee made before the debate was speaking of President Barack Obama’s Iran deal as an effort to “take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.” Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is also seeking the Republican nomination, asked Huckabee to tone done the rhetoric; Obama suggested that Huckabee was playing politics and that “it is just an effort to push Mr. Trump out of the headlines.”
Billionaire Donald Trump is the current frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination.
Did the hucksterism help?
It may have.
In the Fox debate, Huckabee grabbed people’s attention with vivid and bold quotes. He said, for instance, that “the purpose of military is to kill people and break things.”
He also brilliantly closed out the debate, pretending that he was about to criticize Trump before hitting Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as being someone who “had high poll numbers but no clue about governing.”
Huffington Post did a data analysis on the Google search trend during the Fox debate. Huckabee by no means beat Trump, but he rose from the very bottom – 17th place, lowest in the entire GOP field – to 6th around 10p.m. when he said that President Ronald Reagan’s adage to “trust, but verify” should be “trust, but vilify” when it comes to Obama. “He trusts our enemies and vilifies everyone who disagrees with him.”
The debate, which drew 24 million viewers, magnified the rhetoric he’s capable of dispensing, especially when he’s backed into a corner.
What else should I know about his tenacity?
Huckabee has used his personal story of weight loss to show he has the will to tackle big problems.
After being diagnosed with weight-related health problems in 2003, Huckabee started to embrace a healthier lifestyle, eating six small meals a day, riding a bicycle every day and running four times a week. He finally shed more than 100 pounds and chronicled his journey in “Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork,” which became a best seller.
Even former President Bill Clinton, the guy who Huckabee claims to fight against, said the book “has proven that self-discipline, diet, and exercise can lead to a happier, healthier lifestyle.”
Huckabee put forth the idea of starting small and working your way up. And he started the Healthy Arkansas Initiative to encourage fitness, which helps people find a nearby walking trail, an exercising buddy and a healthy restaurant. It was so widely accepted that the National Governor’s Association adopted it for the rest of the country, renaming it “Healthy America”.
Recently, however, Huckabee has been criticized for gaining back much of the weight he lost. Still, his supporters say that his roller coaster battle with weight proves he is human and always striving to do better.