© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC
Posted on 10/31/2009 11:51:58 AM PDT by neverdem
One name is notably absent from the list of prominent conservatives who have lined up against the GOP nominee in the Nov. 3 New York special election: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
She added that Huckabee had been scheduled to attend the local dinner for nearly a year and that “it would have been inappropriate for him to do anything in this race personally for Hoffman until he had fulfilled his obligation to the event’s awards ceremony.” In the conservative blogosphere, where the upstate New York contest is shaping up as a conservative litmus test for 2012 presidential contenders, Huckabee’s refusal to take sides has been the subject of pointed criticism.
Even as other past and prospective Republican presidential candidates have offered their endorsements, Huckabee has conspicuously declined to officially support Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, a decision that has left bewildered many of the social conservatives whom he assiduously courted in his 2008 bid.
“It’s very disappointing,” said Tom McClusky, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council. “You have names out there like Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson and Tim Pawlenty who are willing to take a stand. You’d think that would have pushed him to make a decision.”
“It concerns me. I think he should endorse. I think Doug Hoffman is his kind of candidate,” said Mike Mears, executive director of Concerned Women for America’s political action committee.
“I keep hoping that he is going to do it,” he said. “Conservatives are lining up behind Doug Hoffman.”
Huckabee has no plans to endorse Hoffman over GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava, a moderate who supports gay marriage and abortion rights and who has a close relationship with labor, a spokeswoman confirmed this week.
To many conservatives, Huckabee’s decision to sit out the race is especially puzzling because he has publicly signaled that Hoffman is his candidate of choice. All that’s missing is the formal imprimatur.
“Well, I think Doug Hoffman, certainly — his views represent more closely to mine,” Huckabee said in an interview on Fox News last week. “He represents not only what the Conservative Party stands for but what most Republicans stand for. He’s pro-life; he’s pro-Second Amendment;” he’s against the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
When host Neil Cavuto told Huckabee that conservatives “seem to be drawing a Maginot line” around the contest, the former Arkansas governor offered a somewhat cryptic response that might have applied to either Hoffman or Scozzafava.
“I think I have a right and responsibility to only support people who hold to principles above party and above just winning and losing,” he said.
Huckabee’s positioning is all the more curious since he headlined a local Conservative Party dinner in upstate New York last Tuesday for which attendees shelled out $125 or $375 for tickets.
Sarah Huckabee, Mike Huckabee’s daughter and top aide, would not say how much the former governor had personally pocketed from the event.
“When you’re a leader of the conservative movement, as Mike Huckabee is, you should make a bold statement,” said Mike Long, president of the New York State Conservative Party. “If you’re a leader, how do you not get involved?”
“If you want to show leadership, you’ve got to break away from the club,” Long added.
Sarah Huckabee said Mike Huckabee, who now hosts a weekend program on Fox News, had decided not to endorse Hoffman because he was directing the resources of his political action committee, Huck PAC, to Republican campaigns.
Still, Huckabee’s reluctance to formally enter the fray in New York’s 23rd District has raised eyebrows precisely because of his strong ties to social conservatives, who have largely supported Hoffman. In September, Huckabee emerged as the victor of the Family Research Council straw poll.
At the time, Tony Perkins, the influential social conservative who heads the group, praised Huckabee for having his “finger on the pulse” of the conservative movement.
While former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has also declined to endorse Hoffman in the race, on Wednesday he said, “I have chosen not to endorse the Republican in the 23rd.”
“Now we need to ask about Romney, why won’t Huckabee endorse, etc.,” Erick Erickson, the editor and founder of the influential RedState blog, wrote earlier this week.
“I’m willing to give till Wednesday for candidates to get on,” he wrote. “After Wednesday morning, it’s just for show.”
RedState speculated that ongoing tensions with former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, a former Huckabee GOP primary foe who has endorsed Hoffman, have kept Huckabee from weighing in. Huckabee is widely thought to be at odds with Thompson over the senator’s refusal to drop out of the 2008 contest until well after he was a viable candidate.
The American Spectator questioned whether the anti-tax Club for Growth’s active role in the New York race has kept Huckabee away. During the 2008 race, the anti-tax organization emerged as a chief critic of Huckabee for the fiscal policies he pursued during his tenure in Arkansas.
Both the Thompson camp and the Club for Growth gave evidence of those tensions by taking shots at Huckabee for his nonendorsement.
“We’re very disappointed that Gov. Huckabee saw fit to come into the district for a Conservative Party event and then didn’t support or contribute to Hoffman,” said a source close to Thompson.
“He’s only hurting himself with his silence,” said Club for Growth Executive Director David Keating, who noted archly that “some people might conclude he supports Scozzafava.”
Sarah Huckabee dismissed the idea that Mike Huckabee had decided to stay out of the race because of any lingering tensions with Thompson or the Club for Growth, noting that he had thrown his early backing to Club for Growth favorite Marco Rubio in the hotly contested Florida GOP Senate primary.
“It’s absurd to say he doesn’t take sides,” Sarah Huckabee wrote in an e-mail. “He has taken a stand time after time for conservative issues. Where were all the conservatives when he was saying TARP was a bad idea?”
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© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC |
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Huckabee blew it. Even RINO Pataki got it. So many pubbies had tin ears in this NY23 race.
Huckabee is not a prominent conservative or even conservative.
Huck is CINO.
Count me as not surprised.
The Huckster is a JUANnabie RINO.
Maybe he favors Olson?
But they are wrong...the risk they took was IN NOT endorsing Hoffman, and they lost.
Scozzafava Suspends New York Congressional Campaign
Can you spell ... S A R A H !!! - the RINO slayer.
"...like that grizzly guards her cubs, as a mother naturally guards her own. I will keep that vow wherever the road may lead." - Sarah Palin, July 26, 2009
“It’s absurd to say he doesn’t take sides,” Sarah Huckabee wrote in an e-mail. “He has taken a stand time after time for conservative issues. Where were all the conservatives when he was saying TARP was a bad idea?”
This conservative was disagreeing with him. Of all the various responses to the financial crisis that befell the nation, TARP is the only one that has netted any positive results.
Bye bye Huckabee, no more watching you on FOX.
I don’t understand why the article talks about Huckabee so much and only Romney a little, when they are equally prominent candidates and acted the same here.
Oh wait maybe I do understand, the article was written mostly to take down Huckabee.
It is a huge credit to Palin for leading the charge for Hoffman, and a huge discredit for Newt leading the attack against him.
I don’t see that inaction for Huckabee/Romney is such a big deal here.
I think the past year has been very good for Huckabee burnishing his conservative credentials on his show. Romney is suffering with talk of romneycare everywhere. I also wonder when Romney is going to figure out that saying anything vaguely against Palin is like an electric third rail
It’s like the old joke about the ham sandwich you can’t eat. Huckabee would’ve blown his reputation as a prominent conservative if he were prominent, and conservative.
From the get-go the one so-called conservative I never trusted and NEVER WILL has been huckabee.
This is a good thing. We’re weeding out the chicken hearts early on. Hopefully, we can raise a field of actual conservatives for 2012 instead of the platoon of political punks we had in 2008.
FRC disses Huckabible.
B U M P
Huckabee is a fraud.
The problem is that, just as a lot of libertarians don’t seem to have realized that Newt went over to the dark side after he dumped his wife and made a deal with clinton, a lot of Evangelicals don’t seem to realize what a double-talking opportunist Huckabee is.
Just look at his liberal spending record when he was governor of Arkansas. Or look at the way he lied about Fred Thompson in the southern races, which is what put McCain over the top.
I just hope the Evangelical conservatives catch on before they get snookered again. We can’t afford to have it happen twice.
The NY-23 episode has Newt, Mitt and the Huckster swept away from 2012. Palin is triumphantly standing above the RINO carcasses.
Y’all are missing his brilliance. Voting “present” often is what gets you to the White House nowadays.
The small-minded theocrats cling to Huckabee because he is a "man of God" and Palin is "not Christian enough" (and a woman).
The arguments of some of these folks (also at FR) are mind-boggling (such as suggesting that being a preacher gives him special qualification to be President).
Huckabee is a dangerous demagogue. A big-government wolf pretending to be a shephard.
I will never vote for him, much less for Romney.
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