Opinion
Huckabee and Romney: Still no love lost
By: Jeff Dufour
Editor at Large/Columnist, "Yeas & Nays"
11/19/08 12:05 AM EST
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Mike Huckabee sure seems to be considering another White House run in 2012. After all, it's only two weeks past the 2008 election, and he's already out with a memoir-cum-campaign tome, "Do the Right Thing."
More telling, however, is that he apparently expects Mitt Romney to be an opponent of his once again. About 10 percent of the pages in the book have at least one reference to Romney, and they're usually none too kind.
It begins on page four, when Huckabee discusses his win in the Iowa caucuses. "It's ... common for the losing candidates to phone to congratulate the winner ... it's just a matter of both protocol and courtesy," Huckabee writes. So John McCain called him, as did Rudy Giuliani. "The call from Romney," however, "never came, which we took as a sign of total disrespect -- something that would continue to be a source of angst among our team, even though we had grown used to this type of treatment from the Romney camp."
Then it's onto issues, where Huckabee accuses Romney of being insufficiently conservative on taxes, guns, abortion and marriage.
Then it's back to the disrespect angle, something Huckabee writes "trickled down through [Romney's] ranks. ... He was usually accompanied by a phalanx of eager young aides who bullied their way through events as if they were all carrying badges, guns and the authority to move the 'little people' out of Mitt's way."
Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for Romney, was having none of it. "This is petty stuff," he said. "We need to focus on moving the party forward with new ideas. Unfortunately, Mike Huckabee seems more interested in settling scores than bringing people together."
