Free Republic

Mike Huckabee, Paul Ryan and Jeb Bush are in a dead heat to win the 2016 Iowa Republican caucuses, according to a new poll sponsored by The Daily Caller and Vox Populi Polling. Of the Republicans polled from April 22-24, Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, took in 20 percent; Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman and 2012 vice presidential nominee, won 19 percent; and Bush, the former governor of Florida and brother of former President George W. Bush, garnered 18 percent. Other possible Republicans are in single digits in the poll: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (9 percent); Florida Sen. Marco Rubio...

Businessman Curt Clawson's easy win on Tuesday for the GOP nomination in Florida's 19th Congressional District resonated beyond the borders of the upscale, safely Republican district. With results nearly final, first-time candidate Clawson rolled up 38 percent of the vote to 26 percent for state Senate Majority Leader Lizbeth Benacquisto and 25 percent for former state Rep. Paige Kreegel. Along with fueling the candidacies elsewhere of fellow businesspeople-candidates and "anti-politicians," Clawson's primary win in the district vacated by GOP Rep. Trey Radel — who resigned after pleading guilty to cocaine possession — is also a boost for a likely presidential...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee warned if the Republican Party ignores social issues in the upcoming national elections, then evangelical voters will simply stay home. The evangelical vote in America has been a key ingredient in deciding who becomes the Republican nominee for president. Polling bears that out. Yet the social issues near and dear to the hearts of evangelicals are under attack within Republican circles. A few years ago, former Gov. Mitch Daniels, R-Ind., wanted to declare a truce on the hot button social issues. "All I was saying was we are going to need to unify all kinds...

Sometimes politicians speak without thinking. Former Arkansas Governor and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was a perfect example of this on Saturday when he bizarrely claimed that he's "beginning to think there's more freedom in North Korea sometimes than in the United States." Huckabee was speaking in Manchester, NH at AFP's Freedom Summit.

MANCHESTER, N.H. – The Republican presidential primary is up and running in New Hampshire, where conservative prospects lined up in Manchester Saturday for the first cattle call of the 2016 cycle. Speakers at the New Hampshire Freedom Summit, which was sponsored by Citizens United and Koch-backed Americans For Prosperity, included Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, all of whom would be top tier presidential contenders should they run. Donald Trump also spoke. Huckabee seemed especially determined to show he could compete for conservative votes against politicians like Paul and Cruz, who have each...

North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R) leads a crowded Republican field for the right to face Sen. Kay Hagan (D) in November, according to a new survey conducted for a super PAC backing his campaign. Tillis scored 27 percent of the vote, compared with 16 percent for physician Greg Brannon and 10 percent for state Baptist Convention President Mark Harris. A handful of other candidates received only single-digit support.

Ten days ago, a poll by WPA Opinion Research showed former Arkansas Gov. and 2008 Republican primary runner-up Mike Huckabee tied for the lead of the 2016 GOP race. Now, another survey, this one by Suffolk University, shows Huckabee at the front of the pack, this time in Iowa, the state that will kick off the caucus and primary process. With a field so crowded, it doesn't take a huge level of support to be at the top. In the Suffolk poll, Huckabee is the choice of 11 percent of Iowa Republicans. Sen. Rand Paul and former Florida Gov. Jeb...

With the January 2016 Iowa presidential caucuses on the horizon, Hillary Clinton is the far-and-away favorite among self-described Democratic caucus-goers, according to a Suffolk University statewide Iowa poll. And while some Republicans have begun visiting the Hawkeye State, the survey shows no favorites among prospective GOP presidential candidates. Meanwhile, the Suffolk University poll of likely general-election Iowa voters shows Republican Gov. Terry Branstad with a strong advantage heading into the June 3 Republican gubernatorial primary, and he leads the sole Democrat in the race, State Sen. Jack Hatch, by 10 points in a general-election match-up. Branstad, the longest serving governor...

Let’s start off with the caveat that 2016 polls at this point share something in common with John Nance Garner’s view of the Vice Presidency — “not worth a bucket of warm piss,” although it’s often used with “spit” as a euphemism. Had we taken polls seriously in early 2006, the nominees in 2008 would have been Hillary Clinton and, er … John McCain. Still, we haven’t even seen a partial roster of people actually aiming for the nod, and yet Mike Huckabee — who came in second or third in 2008, depending how one counts — seems to be...

If former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is going to run for president in 2016, his campaign is going to have to run through the Forza coffee shop in Parkland, Wash. That’s where one of Huckabee’s many parolees, Maurice Clemmons, assassinated four Lakewood police officers in 2009, depriving nine children of a parent and setting a national perception that Huckabee abused his powers of clemency. Huckabee told The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin (the other Jonathan Martin) that he views a 2016 presidential bid as “a real opportunity for me.” The Washington Post quickly called Huckabee “a long shot” because he...

Mike Huckabee had asked me to send him my picture. He’d be sans entourage for our meeting at a Starbucks near Fox News’s midtown Manhattan headquarters, and he wanted to be able to pick me out of the crowd. Sure enough, at the appointed hour, he’s waving at me through the glass walls before he even makes it through the entrance. The barista line is long; since Huckabee hasn’t brought anyone to stand in it for him, coffee is forgone. “We’ll do our work,” Huckabee says with a shrug. Later, after he realizes he has been droning on, he implores,...

Georgia's Republican Governor, Nathan Deal, seems poised to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by strong-arming the legislature away from pushing a bill to withdraw completely from imposing Common Core education standards on the state's schools and toward implementing most of the Common Core policies this year. State Senator William Ligon (R-Brunswick) was the voice against Common Core's being forced on Georgia schools. In 2013 he led a coalition of citizens to try to pass a law that put a halt to the policies. Opposition to Common Core became so stiff that Governor Deal was forced to issue a...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said he thought Republicans ought to stay away from personal attacks on the Clintons, like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s comments that former President Bill Clinton was a “sexual predator.” “I personally don’t like to see us get into the personal issues of candidates because once you go down that road, it’s hard to ever put it in reverse and go back, and I’m just not sure that’s something we want to do,” Huckabee told reporters at CPAC. “Bill Clinton is not gonna be on the ballot in 2016 or 2014, it’s very possible that his...

Though former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told his Fox News Channel audience in early December he was no longer supporting the Common Core standards for which he had avidly campaigned, his message to one of the groups that created the standards was different.According to The Washington Post, at a recent meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), one of the organizations that created the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), Huckabee urged state education officials to get rid of the “Common Core” name because it has become “toxic.” As the Post indicates, however, Huckabee still intends to support...

In his new “Kristol Clear” prediction segment on Morning Joe, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol augured Thursday morning that Sarah Palin might run for president in 2016. “I mean, why wouldn’t she run?” he asked, causing NBC News White House correspondent Chuck Todd to answer what was probably a rhetorical question. “I think it’s a financial reason,” Todd said. “To get back into the spotlight. Get the speaking fees back up. You know, there’s some question in my mind about [Mike] Huckabee’s motivation, how much of that is about — you know, there’s a lot of people who run for...

Though former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told his Fox News Channel audience in early December he was no longer supporting the Common Core standards for which he had avidly campaigned, his message to one of the groups that created the standards was different. According to The Washington Post, at a recent meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), one of the organizations that created the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), Huckabee urged state education officials to get rid of the “Common Core” name

There are two stories here. First, you will note how Public Policy Polling reports the results of its most recent poll of most popular potential GOP candidates for president. If you click on the link and read the PPP narrative you would not realize that Sarah Palin is the choice of more Republican and unaffiliated voters of all of those mentioned. Yet they post Mike Huckabee as the choice. Just another example of how much the liberal Elite Media fears Palin. The second story is, of course that Palin has a 70% approval rating to a 20% unfavorable. Huckabee has...

Republicans rate Sarah Palin higher than every potential 2016 presidential contender, even though she is not even considered to be in the running, a new poll has found. A Public Policy Polling survey conducted Jan. 23-26 showed that the former governor of Alaska has a 70 percent favorability rating among GOP primary voters, topping six other potential candidates in the poll, even though her name was not on the list of 2016 GOP candidates to choose from. "The best-liked person we tested on this poll with Republican primary voters is actually Sarah Palin," the poll noted. In the survey of...

The Stepford Voters: Dems see women as devices by Daniel Clark While combating the liberals’ dishonest and sophomoric “War on Women” theme, Republican former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said, “if the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government, then so be it. Let’s take that discussion all across America, because women are far more than Democrats have made them to...

I realize that all presidential polls this far out from election day are hot garbage but there’s no way I’m missing an opportunity to troll my Huck-hating readership as golden as this one. Two words, my friends: Huckabee/Christie?Although Huck’s now technically the GOP frontrunner, he’s not the pol with the highest favorable rating among Republicans. That’d be Sarah Palin, who’s at 70/20 and has the highest numbers among both women and men. PPP didn’t offer her as an option in its presidential polling, presumably because they think she’s unlikely to run. Following the controversy over his ‘Uncle Sugar’ speech Mike...