On paper, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee should probably be the evangelical darling amid the great wash of Republican presidential candidates. Instead, he remains mired in the middle of the pack. His lack of traction can be traced in part to his ill-considered comments about the Iran deal and President Obama. The president, Huckabee said, “would take the Israelis and basically march them to the door of the oven.” Everyone in politics knows that if you have to play the Nazi card, you’re getting desperate.
Having served as a Baptist pastor in Arkansas before a decade-long tenure as the state’s governor, Huckabee in 2008 showed signs of becoming an insurgent populist candidate. He won the Iowa GOP caucuses and came in second to Sen. John McCain in the overall Republican delegate count. I myself really liked Huckabee: He had great executive experience, stronger social conservative credentials than McCain or Mitt Romney, and he deftly advocated the kind of “compassionate conservatism” that might work well in a general election.
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