Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 190
Trump Is Everywhere
“This whole process is to elect a Republican nominee. It’s not to provide a media circus. It’s not to provide entertainment to the masses and to create a show that would be delightfully pleasant for the opposition to watch.”
— Mike Huckabee, quoted by the Washington Post, commenting on the growing worry about a wide-open nominating contest featuring a historically large and diverse field.
“I don’t have to defend everything that I’ve ever done.”
— Mike Huckabee, in an interview with CBS News, when asked about his role promoting a dietary supplement that claims to cure diabetes.
“Behind former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s warm smile, inclusive rhetoric, and gee-whiz populism lies an ethics record that would make a Clinton blush. His greedy, cheesy money grabs in Arkansas were a preview of today’s greedy, cheesy money grabs,” National Journal reports.
“As part of what the New York Times called ‘unconventional ways to fund a campaign,’ the newly minted GOP presidential candidate recently pitched a dubious medical treatment via infomercial… But that’s not all! Huckabee is allowing his mailing list – the names and email addresses of his political supporters – to be used to peddle cancer cures based on Bible verses.”
“When there’s cronies involved and getting a special deal, and when other countries are cheating, and Americans lose jobs, I’d like to think the U.S. government would stand up for the U.S. workers rather than let them take it in the backside.”
— Mike Huckabee, in an interview on MSNBC, arguing against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
Mike Huckabee told ABC News that his opponents in the race for the White House who are senators should either resign or drop out of the contest.
Said Huckabee: “If a person has a job that the taxpayers are paying for, shouldn’t that person do that job?”
He added: “I just believe it’s a matter of integrity to say, ‘I don’t want this job that I just got elected to, I think I want another job.’ OK, then resign the job … you have, and go out there and seek the one you want.”
Mike Huckabee “drew roaring cheers from supporters on Tuesday as the latest entrant in a sprawling field of Republican presidential candidates by declaring himself the guardian of so-called entitlement programs, warning, ‘Let them end their own congressional pensions, not your Social Security!,'” the New York Times reports.
“But his pledge to fend off any tinkering with the popular Social Security and Medicare programs put him at odds with his Republican opponents, exposing growing fault lines in the party over an issue that has long been considered a political third rail.”
“The religious right remains the largest voting bloc in the Republican Party, and that gives Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, the potential to play a big role in the presidential nominating contest,” the New York Times reports.
“But Mr. Huckabee, who was set to announce his presidential bid Tuesday morning, will have a harder time winning Iowa than he did in 2008, when religious conservatives had serious reservations about the two main candidates, John McCain and Mitt Romney. This year’s conservative favorites do not have Mr. Romney’s vulnerabilities among evangelicals, like Mormonism or past support for abortion rights.”
“Eight years later our debt has more than doubled, America’s leadership in the world has completely evaporated and the country is more polarized than ever in my lifetime.”
— Mike Huckabee, quoted by Yahoo News, formally announcing his presidential bid
Matt Lewis: “The first is that he spent the last several years as a Fox News host. Now, let’s be honest: It’s unlikely that many people reading this have ever watched Huckabee’s Saturday night show—except to see if he was going to announce for president… But millions of Americans did watch his show—and guess what? Many of these same Americans will vote in Republican primaries. I think we probably underestimate the impact of hosting a weekly show on Fox News.”
“Lastly, though, I think there is a huge underserved constituency in the GOP—and that constituency is what might best be termed populist conservatives. These folks tend to be white and working-class and who feel they’ve been left behind in America. They are culturally conservative—but they also want to keep government out of their Medicare.”
Mike Huckabee targets “Bill Clinton’s Arkansas” in a new video which notes “all the apparatus of the Democratic Party” were “aligned against” Huckabee, and yet “all of a sudden this Republican comes out of nowhere and wins.”
“I do not come to you tonight with the ability to speak Spanish. But I do speak a common language. I speak Jesus.”
— Mike Huckabee, quoted by the Wall Street Journal, speaking to a Hispanic audience.
“I think it’s fair to say that Christian convictions are under attack as never before. Not just in our lifetime, but ever before in the history of this great nation. We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity.”
— Mike Huckabee, quoted by Politico.
Nate Cohn: “The most important name that you haven’t heard much about in the Republican primary race is nonetheless a familiar one: Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who took the pageantry of presidential announcements to a nearly parodic level on Friday by appearing on national television to announce that he would announce whether he would run on May 5.”
“Mr. Huckabee may not be receiving much attention, but he is as important as any of the other second-tier candidates in the race, like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul. He has demonstrated appeal to a crucial bloc of Republican primary voters: the religious right. If he runs, he will be one of the most significant figures in the primary season, with the ability to deny a crucial segment of voters or even states to another candidate.”
Mike Huckabee (R) suggested that young Americans planning to join the military should wait until President Barack Obama leaves office to do so because his administration has an “open hostility toward the Christian faith,” the Huffington Post reports.
Said Huckabee: “I’d wait a couple of years until we get a new commander in chief that will once again believe ‘one nation under God,’ and believe that people of faith should be a vital part of the process of not only governing this country, but defending this country.”
Mike Huckabee is expected to return to Fox News this evening to make his 2016 presidential campaign official, TV Newser reports.
Huckabee said he is “moving toward” announcing a second bid for the White House and will “make a little news” later tonight.
“There’s been more pressure this week to put sanctions on Indiana than Iran. The reason that those corporations put the pressure on Indiana and Arkansas was because the militant gay community put the pressure on them.”
— Mike Huckabee, in an interview with Michael Smerconish.
“My base is really beyond just evangelicals. I think the untold secret is a lot of the support that I have, and that I anticipate I will have, is from the working-class, blue-collar people who grew up a lot like I did – not blue-blood, but blue-collar.”
— Mike Huckabee, quoted by The Hill, brushing off the challenge to his base in the GOP presidential race from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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