Free Republic

Heeeeeer's MIKE Just before the congressional election last fall, I called Bill Moss and told him I'd written a paper predicting its outcome. He was polite and appropriately skeptical, especially when he heard me say that not only would the Democrats win the House of Representatives and send Charles Taylor packing, but that they'd also capture the Senate. That's exactly what happened. It turned out that I had missed the 435-member House by two seats and had correctly predicted every Senate seat. I've been at the game of political prognostication since 1948. After listening to President Truman ignite the crowd...

The big national political news story of recent days has been the surge of Mike Huckabee to the top tier of Republican presidential candidates. The former Arkansas governor - an ordained Baptist minister - has captured the fancy of religious conservatives not happy with any of the previously better known contenders. It's primarily his cache' with this group that has driven his rise, owing heavily to his unflinchingly anti-abortion and pro-traditional marriage positions. But Huckabee's sudden seriousness as a candidate has raised the eyebrows of economic conservatives in the party who believe he was soft on taxes in Arkansas and...

Mike Huckabee has seized the mantle of Ronald Reagan at the end of a week in which he pulled ahead of his Republican rivals in the key opening races for the White House nomination. The former Baptist preacher and governor of Arkansas, who has taken a lead in four out of the five important early nominating states, has hired the man who guided Mr Reagan to the greatest landslide in American political history as his campaign chairman. Ed Rollins, who was national campaign manager in 1984 when President Reagan won his second term with 49 of the 50 states, hailed...

When he climbed out of the car at Fort Robinson that morning in June 1972, Mike Huckabee found himself surrounded by 1,200 other high school juniors, each a leader in his Arkansas home town, each primed for an election. Several were carrying posters touting their platforms. Others were handing out cards. Then as now, Huckabee didn't have the campaign apparatus of his peers. The 16-year-old arrived at Boys State, a prestigious and civic-minded youth camp run by the American Legion, from the small southwest Arkansas town of Hope with nothing but a suitcase and a gift for oratory. By week's...

It has been dubbed the "Huckaboom," this surge in opinion polls by Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. The former Southern Baptist preacher and Arkansas governor has jumped to the front of the pack in Iowa with a friendly face, affable personality and quick wit that distinguish him from the slick Mitt Romney or the sharp-elbowed Rudy Giuliani. But moving from dark horse to front-runner brings more scrutiny, and a closer look at Huckabee's record should give mainstream voters pause about his extreme views, questionable judgment and lack of vision on foreign affairs. Huckabee, who attributes his rise in the polls...

Romney was happy to help that scrutiny along by airing the first negative ad of the Republican campaign in Iowa, a spot this week highlighting Huckabee's record on illegal immigration. The former Massachusetts governor would not rule out focusing on prison commutations Huckabee issued while in office. (snip) O'Brien says now, "Mitt Romney has demonstrated, given the radical flip-flops he has taken from the time he ran for governor ... Romney has done little to conceal he is going after Huckabee — not to mention the national Republican poll leader, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. (snip) Concerned the race...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee soared to the top of the GOP pack in the key state of South Carolina in a major poll released Friday. Huckabee captured 24 percent of registered GOP voters, according to the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll. His closest opponent, former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, garnered 17 percent. When the same poll was conducted in July, Huckabee had only three percent of the voters’ support. The survey suggested his drastic improvement was in response to his personality – the former Baptist preacher tops the list of the most believable candidate named by likely GOP voters....

Mike Huckabee's record-setting rise to the top of the GOP field may only be eclipsed by his record-setting fall to the bottom after revelations of his views on gay and lesbian Americans and people with HIV and AIDS. During Huckabee's 1992 Senate race in Arkansas he had this to say about homosexuality: "I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk…" This might have been understandable in 1992, but he actually stood by those remarks today in justifying his comments. Plenty of ammunition This by itself would...

You don't want to believe it. You just don't want to believe that a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, two steps from power in the free world, really thought that Canada had a national igloo. When Rick Mercer comes on the phone to talk about Mike Huckabee, we expect he'll explain it was a joke. Surely, he'll assure us that the wisecracking former Arkansas governor was just playing along for a laugh in Mercer's now-iconic Talking To Americans television spots. No, what Mercer tells us should cause shudders in all igloos across the country, from split-levels to bungalows....

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee brought aboard a TV icon and seasoned campaign operative Friday to ignite a campaign that's surging in Iowa but has yet to catch fire in New Hampshire. The former Arkansas governor said he remains at a loss to explain his newfound popularity – leading in Iowa polls over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and in a new poll in South Carolina where voters cast primary ballots Jan. 19. At Liberty University on Nov. 29, Huckabee likened it to a biblical miracle, telling the student questioner it was "something beyond human.'' "There is no explanation that...

''When people come to this country, they shouldn't fear,'' declared the fast-rising Republican candidate Mike Huckabee during the recent presidential debate in Miami. ``They shouldn't live in hiding. They ought to have their heads up.'' They ought to put their hands up too, according to Huckabee's immigration plan, so the federal government can round them up, pull them away from their jobs and families and send them back to their home countries. Huckabee's policy is so hardcore that he won an endorsement this week from the founder of the Minuteman Project, a group of citizen vigilantes who have taken it...

To remain in contention for the GOP presidential nomination, Huckabee needs to show that he can broaden his appeal not just to New Hampshire but nationally as well. He's also trying to expand his campaign, which is suddenly under pressure from all the attention, to a more national operation. Friday, Huckabee announced that veteran Republican strategist Ed Rollins would take over as national chairman of his campaign in an attempt to do just that. New Hampshire poses a special challenge for Huckabee, who is polling in the single digits in the state, trailing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Arizona Sen....

Almost two years ago, a little-known governor from Arkansas introduced himself to a packed hall. He began with a story that would become familiar to Iowa ears. Mike Huckabee, a Republican presidential candidate, talked about a speech he once gave in his home state. He said the people in the back of the room were cupping their ears, as if they couldn’t hear. “I said, ‘Can you folks in the back hear OK?’ Some guy yelled out, ‘No sir, and we sure appreciate it,’” he said, and the crowd laughed. Huckabee had just laid the ground rules. No matter how...

When Mike Huckabee became lieutenant governor of Arkansas in 1993, he complained of being burdened by college tuition bills for his son, the expenses of two residences — one in Texarkana and the other in Little Rock — and the cost of commuting between the two. With an annual salary of $25,452, he said he was falling short in covering the bills. “It was costing me money to be lieutenant governor,” Mr. Huckabee recalled in a 1997 newspaper interview. To bridge the gap between his income and expenses, Mr. Huckabee and a few close political advisers came up with a...

Earlier in the year, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was near the back of the pack in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Now, he is leading the polls in Iowa and South Carolina — and running second, but gaining on, Rudolph Giuliani nationally. Huckabee talks with Robert Siegel about Iran, the mortgage crisis and the current scrutiny of his religious beliefs.There are umpteen columns and papers and briefings about Iran now. Where does it all leave you, in terms of the need to be preparing right now for military action against Iran?All options have to be on the...

GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is out with his most extensive discussion of foreign policy, and it includes one of the bluntest critiques of the Bush administration heard from the current crop of GOP candidates. "American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out," the former Arkansas governor writes in the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. "The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad." Huckabee also hammered the Bush administration for sending too few troops to Iraq to keep the peace after the invasion in 2003. "Unlike President George...

Mike Huckabee's first day as Arkansas governor is remembered most for the Four Hour Crisis. Five minutes before Huckabee was to be sworn in, the disgraced outgoing governor, Jim Guy Tucker, tried to wriggle out of his promise to resign. For the next few hours, the state flirted with a constitutional crisis as Lt. Gov. Huckabee and Tucker, the governor who had been convicted of two felonies in the Whitewater investigation, jockeyed for control, and the people of Arkansas watched in horror. Huckabee, a Republican, stood tough; he went on statewide television and threatened to call a special legislative session...

Boy, when I said that Huckabee was going to start getting hit from all sides, I wasn't even thinking of Ron Paul and that massive pile of donations he's sitting on. Paul is covering the costs of two former Republican legislators from Huckabee's home state to come to Iowa this week criticize his record on immigration and taxes. Romney can celebrate - he's no longer everybody's first target.

Two months ago most Americans knew nothing of Mike Huckabee. If they knew anything it was that he was running for president, was from the South and had once been very fat but had lost a lot of weight. Now, anyone with an interest has heard of the Republican former governor of Arkansas. He is leading polls in Iowa, the first state to vote for presidential candidates. And he is surging in South Carolina, which holds an early primary, and other big states. The former Baptist minister is giving another social conservative, Mitt Romney, a fight. And the prominent duel...

Dueling bands of Arkansas travelers hit Iowa on Thursday with drastically different accounts of Mike Huckabee's record as governor. Republican ex-legislators squared off on a Des Moines, Iowa, radio talk show, then campaigned in the state ahead of its GOP presidential caucus Jan. 3. Huckabee brought to Iowa a group of five Arkansas Republicans who praised his tenure and compared him to GOP icon Ronald Reagan. Meanwhile, Huckabee foes from the governor's native state said Huckabee was more like a former president that Republicans disdain. "He's a pro-gun, pro-life Bill Clinton," said former state Sen. Jim Holt, R-Springdale, "(with) his...