Is Mike Huckabee a Top Tier Candidate?

Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR)

The list of Republican candidates for the White House grew ever longer this past week, with Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina both deciding to run for the highest office in the land, and perhaps most noteworthy, 2008 presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee decided to give it a go eight years after he gave John McCain a run for his money.  Unlike Carson and Fiorina, Huckabee has actually won elective office before and probably should be given press consideration (anyone who counts Carson and Fiorina as part of the "most diverse presidential field ever" should seriously reconsider who actually should qualify as a "serious candidate for president" since they'll be lucky to make the Top 5 at the Iowa Straw Poll, much less an actual primary).  So let's give it a shot, shall we?

Huckabee is one of the biggest wild cards in the 2016 Republican Primary, mostly because it's hard to tell if there's still an appetite for the former Arkansas governor in the primaries.  In 2008 Mike Huckabee did very well because, even in the days before the Tea Party, there was a strong appetite for a more socially conservative candidate to emerge as the Republican nominee.  At the time the leading contenders for the nomination were John McCain and Mitt Romney, neither of which has a particularly noteworthy record as being a social conservative (both have taken more moderate stances on either abortion or immigration in the past).  As a result, Huckabee was a voice for the socially-conservative wing of the party when they had none.  This cycle, however, that's not going to be the case.  Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida (not to mention everyone's favorite Dr. Seuss orator Ted Cruz) can easily claim a stronghold when it comes to socially conservative issues that Huckabee simply cannot.  Yet Huckabee's role as a former preacher and as a FOX News correspondent who has dedicated most of his career to social issues does give him a leg-up on these newer faces, even if it's on a set of issues that no Republican wants to talk about right now due to the general election in the distance.

This is because Mike Huckabee's base-of-support may be larger than we initially think.  The political talking classes may not be focused on the so-called Religious Right, but it's not like this isn't still a powerful voting bloc, especially in a GOP Primary.  Wide swaths of Americans have moderated their opinions on issues like immigration and gay marriage during the Obama presidency, but there are still important sections of the Republican caucus that view immigration and gay marriage and abortion as the most important issues of the day, and they are going to be looking for a candidate who doesn't want to sweep these issues under-the-rug.  Mike Huckabee is frequently underestimated as a candidate by political prognosticators primarily because there's no way he'd win a general election.  Even as recently as twenty years ago Huckabee's talk about amending the Constitution to be more in-line with the Bible and talking about how gay marriage is the same thing as trying to quit drinking would have been socially prudent, but you have wide swaths of younger people who have given up on regular church attendance and who are extremely liberal on these types of issues, and to the general public, this is anathema.

But the general public doesn't vote in a primary, and Mike Huckabee is smart enough to know this.  Only devout members of a political party turn out for something like the Iowa caucuses (have you ever been to a caucus-it's like an event basically begging lay voters not to show up?), and those that do come do so with specific issues like abortion and gay marriage on their minds, not the general "vote on the economy" malaise of a general election.  As a result, I wouldn't underestimate Mike Huckabee, despite the fact that I think he'd be a disaster for the Republicans in the general rivaled only by someone like Ted Cruz.  Charisma and likability (he's good at these things when he isn't saying AIDS patients should be separated from society and comparing gun control to Nazism), do mean something, and while it's hard for the media, perched in New York and Los Angeles and Washington DC to believe, there's an appetite in Middle America for someone like Mike Huckabee to be Number 45.