Sunday 28 February 2010

Mike Huckabee: 2012 presidential candidate?

I found an article I came across on the Washington Post website this week to be really useful in offering a current and rounded view of the possible Republican presidential candidates for 2012.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/21/AR2010022103689.html

The article names Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Haley Barbour as potential candidates and for my blog this week I am going to focus on former Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee. As I really liked Katey's image from ontheissues.org I included one for Mike Huckabee below.


Mike Huckabee, originally a Baptist minister, garnered a lot of attention during the 2008 presidential election after winning in the Iowa Republican caucuses (having been the underdog throughout). After having dropped out of the 2008 elections, Huckabee went on to write a book and host a talk show on FOX News. I have embedded a YouTube clip of Huckabee interviewing Michelle Obama on his talk show last week, an interview which was heavily publicised in America.

Having announced a programme attempting to eliminate childhood obesity, Michelle Obama was interviewed by Huckabee about the new government initiative. (If you're interested, a brief article about the ‘Lets Move’ campaign from The Guardian can be found here http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/09/michelle-obama-childhood-obesity-campaign)

Some of Huckabees Views:

Supports:

-The death penalty

-The right to gun ownership

- Privatizing social security

Opposes:

- More federal funding for health coverage

- Abortion

- Same sex marriage

- US leaving Iraq

The website WhoRunsGov? is another noteable site, one which is run by The Washington Post Company and ‘offers profiles of government decision-makers’. The link I have included is for the profile of Mike Huckabee.

http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Mike_Huckabee

To position Huckabee in the context of some of the other potential Republican candidates I thought I’d include this interesting albeit long quote from WhoRunsGov.com (I have highlighted a section I considered particularly relevant:


The ex-governor has left the door open for a 2012 presidential run. He’d start with a national profile and fundraising base and an organization that he didn't have initially. But he may have tougher competition in Iowa, because potential candidates Gov. Tim Pawlenty (of neighbouring Minnesota) and Gov. Sarah Palin (Alaska), also have populist messages and appeal to evangelical voters. Huckabee himself joked to The New Yorker that the only difference between he and Palin was that "she looks better in stilettos than I do, and she has better hair."

In his recent book, the former governor took shots at his bitter 2008 rival Mitt Romney, who could be another contender in 2012, describing him as, "anything but conservative until he changed the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for president."(15)

A February CNN poll looking ahead to the 2012 GOP presidential race found Palin was the top choice of 29 percent of Republicans surveyed. But Huckabee was close behind at 26 percent, which was within the survey’s margin of error. Even if he doesn't run, Huckabee’s endorsement will carry significant weight.

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