Huckabee touts experience, not faith

The Republican contender, during a Friday interview with half a dozen reporters in downtown Washington, kept steering the discussion back to the decade and a half he spent as Arkansas governor ending in 2007. Soft-spoken and methodical, Huckabee responded to most questions by asserting that none of his potential rivals could match his record of navigating the tough politics of Little Rock and forging bipartisan coalitions that achieved results for the working class.

“There’s authenticity not just about what I believe, but what I have done,” he said. “If you’ve governed over a long period of time, you’ve been through a lot of things. You’ve weathered the storms; you’ve gone through the tough times. You’ve balanced budgets, you’ve worked with legislators; you’ve sat down and crafted a legislative agenda and made it happen and when it’s over you actually had accomplished something that made a difference.”

Many sitting and former governors vying for the GOP nomination are hyping their executive experience as the tonic to eight years of President Obama. Obama was elected after just a few years in the U.S. Senate and, before that, a few years in the Illinois Senate. But there was something slightly unexpected about Huckabee making a decidedly non-ideological pitch. After all, he was the candidate who won the 2008 Iowa caucuses on the strength of support from evangelical voters whom he courted with television ads that openly appealed to their faith.

“I don’t know that I agree with the narrative that 2008 my primary strength was solely evangelicals — I think that’s the narrative, that’s what everybody perceives,” Huckabee countered, before pushing the conversation back to his extensive experience as a governor and lieutenant governor, and his success at winning election after election in an Arkansas that back then was run by the Democratic Party and the political machine built by governor and later President Bill Clinton, whose wife Hillary is now the presumed Democratic presidential nominee in 2016.

Huckabee is a youthful 59. Slimmer than in his gubernatorial days but a bit heavier than in his television-host best, the genial Republican was dressed in a blue suit, crisp white shirt with French cuffs and the standard politician red tie during his back and forth with an invited list of D.C. scribes. Huckabee offered a preview of his 2016 campaign before flying off to New Hampshire for a weekend of campaigning — one that included dismissal of the GOP’s embrace of “reform conservatism” plans to overhaul Medicare and Social Security.

Huckabee ran for president in 2008 and was the surprise winner of the Iowa caucuses, the first nominating contest of the White House primary season. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, an early frontrunner who would end up being the GOP nominee four years later, faded behind Huckabee and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. McCain ended up winning the 2008 nomination after Huckabee failed to dislodge him in South Carolina.

The Arkansan-turned-Floridian transitioned to host of his own weekly television show on Fox News. Huckabee’s program commanded enough attention among conservative viewers that he was able to secure the appearance of the Republicans who ran for president in 2012 for unique, back-to-back, one-on-one interviews. He gave up the gig to presumably run for president again in 2016. He said in an interview on Fox News late Friday that he would reveal his plans on May 5 in an announcement in the town where he grew up, Hope, Ark.

This time, Huckabee vows to field a better-resourced campaign built for the long haul of the primary. He has spent months traveling the country courting donors and assembling a political operation. He joins former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum as the only three candidates in the race who have run for president previously, factors that have benefited other GOP candidates. The tougher 2016 competition could prove daunting, however.

The 2008 field wasn’t horribly weak. McCain had run previously, Romney spent tens of millions of dollars of his own wealth and other candidates appeared potentially formidable. But Republican insiders have described their party’s field this cycle as perhaps the strongest in more than a generation. Huckabee’s critics question his viability, particularly with so many new-generation Republicans running who are deemed strong candidates.

Huckabee shrugs off doubters who worry he might have the same handicap as Perry and former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida — that the party might want to turn the page on leaders from the 1990s and 2000s.

Huckabee didn’t target any of his competitors by name. But his pitch for the Republicans to field an experienced, tested hand appeared to be a subtle shot at younger executives in the race with less time at the helm than he had, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Huckabee’s touting of his ability to make friends with Democrats and work with them to move legislation appeared an even less subtle jab at the young conservative senators in the race — Ted Cruz of Texas; Rand Paul of Kentucky; and Marco Rubio of Florida.

A fan of analogies, Huckabee compared governing to flying a plane, and said his bet was that Republican primary voters were interested in hiring the most experienced pilot available at a time of great turbulence.

“If you get on an airplane and are about to fly into a thunderstorm you look up at the cockpit and you see somebody in the left seat, do you want somebody who has flown through 100 thunderstorms, or do you want somebody who just came out of flight school?” he said. “Who gives you the most comfort as you’re sitting back there in the plane?”