I said in my predictions post that Mike Huckabee will run as the snake handler candidate in the 2016 GOP primary. My reasoning was pretty simple. This cohort needs a champion and they are a large cohort. Someone will always step forward. Second, and most important, Huck needs the work. He parlayed his last run into a TV job, but that has now run its course.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee announced Saturday night that he would be ending his Fox News talk show to gauge support for a possible presidential campaign.
“There has been a great deal of speculation as to whether I would run for President,” Huckabee told his followers on Facebook. “I won’t make a decision about running until late in the spring of 2015, but the continued chatter has put Fox News into a position that is not fair to them.”
Roger Ailes is no dummy. He knows Huck is running so he put him on the clock. Whatever juice Huckabee has as a TV personality has waned as the Evangelical movement dissolved in the last decade. Those people are still there and they are still going to church, they just don’t hold much interest to TV these days. The Libertarians are the cool new toy for the cable outlets.
Huckabee, who ran for the Republican nomination in 2008 and hosted his show for more than six and a half years, had drawn renewed attention by criticizing former secretary of state Hillary Clinton last month after she said “smart power” also means empathizing and showing respect for enemies.
“How can we empathize with terrorists who think nothing of beheading innocent men, women and children?” Huckabee asked in a blog post on his website last month.
Huckabee is a savvy political animal and he should not be under estimated. He learned a lot from his last run. What he needs now is an issue that lets him break out of the social conservative reservation. Immigration would be the ideal issue, but he is an open borders fanatic.
The 2016 race is already well underway online.
Even before Huckabee had made his announcement, Rand Paul’s PAC was firing away on the digital front. Just as the Kentucky Republican’s political arm had done when Jeb Bush signaled last month he was weighing a White House campaign, Paul’s team bought prime real estate for any Google searches using the terms “Huckabee record,” “Huckabee announcement,” “Huckabee taxes” and “Huckabee common core.”
I find it interesting that the Paul camp is taking aim at Huckabee. Rand Paul’s operation has hired a few key Santorum people. Rand has been courting the Christian Right by defending Christians in the Middle East. He may be thinking that he can run a subterranean, outsider campaign in the primary. On the one hand he has that loyal libertarian following and on the other, he is picking up the cause of Evangelicals, a group ignored of late by the GOP.
Huckabee would a problem, obviously. It’s why I suspect Rand Paul eventually decides to sit this one out. Maybe he flirts with it, but eventually declines to run. He has a pretty safe seat in Kentucky and Mitch McConnell owes him some favors. That means he’ll get plenty of money to win re-election. The Huckabee move probably seals the deal.
That’s what rank and file conservatives miss. The people running the GOP are professional schemers, skilled at playing the long game within the GOP. McConnell and Boehner crushed the Tea Party during the last cycle. Now the Rovians are working on 2016 trouble makers. Huckabee will never be president and he has a manageable price for his services. He can run interference for the party with the Evangelicals, making sure they don’t rally to a trouble maker like Paul or a Ted Cruz. Once it is all over maybe he gets a job in the Jeb Bush administration.
That’s the theory anyway.
GOP Inc. needs a repeat of the 2012 Santorum/Gingrich slugfest that kept the Tea Party and snake handler vote (which is now the same thing) distracted while their guy sprints up the middle. When Christie imploded by kissing Obama and pissing off Jersey commuters, it looked like Romney might step in to replay the anointed RINO role, but now that Jeb seems to be learning his lines the old trouper won’t have to tread the boards again. Besides, while Jeb’s got his own baggage, he’s actually a more attractive candidate than Romney. The Huckser is pretty much in. I say… Read more »
He played a similar role in the 2008 primary. When it was just Mccain, Romney and Huckabee that remained, he purposefully refused to drop out, even though it was mathematically impossible for him to win.
He ensured Mccain’s victory by siphoning away enough Romney votes to himself. He has a long history of playing the part of political spoiler.