Posted on 05/05/2015 4:19:15 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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.
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. Some candidates might be outright good fits, like Scott Walker, an evangelical Christian and the son of a pastor.
Mr. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister who won the Iowa caucuses and five state primaries in 2008, has retained at least some of his support among evangelical Christians, averaging around 8 percent in the polls — as much as fresh-faced candidates like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul.......
[SNIP]
Mr. Huckabee still has the potential to be a spoiler again. He could deny another conservative a large enough share of evangelical voters. He could even win himself. Mr. Huckabee remains a compelling retail politician with strong ratings. He led an NBC/Marist survey of Iowa as recently as two months ago. He has won Iowa before, after all.....
But the limits of Mr. Huckabee’s appeal were ultimately about his message and record. Fiscal conservatives were very skeptical of Mr. Huckabee, who raised taxes and increased spending as a governor.....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"Should he run for president, Walker may very well turn out to be the 2016 cycle’s evangelical favorite—not because he ticks off a laundry list of culture war talking points, pledges fealty to a “Christian nation,” or because he’s made a show of praying publicly to curry political favor. Although by no means universal, some conservative evangelicals—those who eschew the fever swamps of talk radio, yet share the same political stances of the religious right—are weary of the old style of campaigning. They’re turned off by the culture war red meat, the dutiful but insincere orations of piety.
Emphasizing that ours is a “Christian nation” and pushing “hot button issues” as a style of campaigning has been detrimental to evangelicals, said Mary Jo Sharp, who teaches apologetics at Houston Baptist University and analyzes political campaigns as part of a class she teaches there. “It’s very difficult to hear” that kind of rhetoric, she said. “Christians are not supposed to be the dividers.”
Over the course of his political career in Wisconsin, Walker “hasn’t presented as any kind of culture warrior,” said Hunter Baker, Associate Professor of Political Science at Union University, a Southern Baptist school in Jackson, Tennessee. “One of the worst things that ever happened with conservative Christians,” said Baker, was that they “give in to a tribal impulse,” by questioning “are we getting the respect we perceive we once had, are we losing ground, we need to mobilize, we need to increase our force.” That, he added, “is a losing strategy. It gives people the sense you’re working from resentment.”................................
Huckabee is running for one reason: to thwart conservatives!
Remember last year when he made endorsements in both North and South Carolina to split the conservative vote so the Establishment candidate won!
He’s a shyster, pure and simple!
you gotta love it when a liberal tries to write about conservative voters - thinking the “fever swamp of talk radio” is mostly about cultural and social issues. What maroons these faux elites are....
He’s in it to spit the early gop primary proportional vote and aid Jeb going into Florida (winner take all).
So the New York Times thinks that Mike Huckabee is still the voice of Evangelicals in the Republican primaries. I’d say they were laughably out of touch with conservative politics but at least this is better than the normal MSM stories about Christian voters being stupid, easily-led zombies who will vote however the preacher tells them to vote.
You’re absolutely right. If these leftists actually listened to conservative talk radio versus blindly attacking it on ideological grounds, they’d know social and cultural issues don’t come up very often.
The man was practically a Communist when he served as governor. Who would want him?
EXACTLY - low information commentators and journalists talking to low information voters....
Yes Huckabee is a communist as his record shows. But Huckabee is also a con man who is fooling conservatives into thinking he is also a conservative
Do you really believe that? I cannot buy into such. That may be the net effect, but it's hard for me to accept that is his intention. (And, to be clear - Huckabee makes my skin crawl.)
I forgot to incude you in post #11.
[to thwart conservatives!]
I believe, it goes a lot further than just Huckelberry, I believe, the GOPe is so worried about true Conservatives getting a foothold, they are encouraging and perhaps are funding ALL the RINO’s in their party to squash any and all Conservatives.
That,in my opinion, is why the small r republicans is so large and it’s being perpetuated by all the media, including the much over lauded Fox network.
Just tag them The Charge of The GOPe Rino’s.
He’s a Christian, so all Christians are obligated to vote for him...
/s (tagged “sarcasm” because it’s a board requirement, but you all should be able to recognize it. It was positively dripping off this post.)
Do you think Huckabee believes he can win? I don’t think he does. So, since Bush is the GOP-e pick, how does Huckabee splitting the evangelical vote help or hurt Bush? Going in Huckabee must know that he’ll pull votes away from other non-Bushes, essentially diluting any strength an anti-Bush candidate would have racking up delegates being proportionally awarded - then coming out of Fla, Bush could have a large delegate count with “winner take all” primaries being moved up by 2 weeks (basically, proportional primary dates have been cut in half, from a month to 2 weeks).
Well said!!! The huckster is as sleazy as the Clintons.....a real scumbag.
Unfortunately, the evangelicals in my area (Ohio Valley) support Huckster because he was a preacher. Sigh.
Now there will be some of the "I'm voting Huckersterbee because he's a Christian!" in the GOP, because he pulled that one trick pony, Jedi mind trick, over on the one single issue crowd some years back. However, there has been some time since then and the political landscape is different.
Huckabee made his showing against Romney and McCain, that isn’t the situation today.
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