2012 Hypothetical Race: Huckabee vs. Obama
Gallop released their daily presidential tracking for Dec. 30th with the President’s Approval rating remaining stagnant at 47%. 46% of the nation continues to disapprove of the Presidents job performance. Meanwhile, the 2012 GOP speculation heightens. A recent MSNBC report (video shown below), is tagged with the headline “MSNBC Promotes Huckabee”. The gist of the MSNBC report is a positive/negative look at the potential 2012 presidential candidate, former Governor Mike Huckabee. Huckabee is noted as being a conservative who does not immediately attack Democrats or the President, rather assesses each individual issue, on the other hand, the report begins with the, now typical moniker assigned to Huckabee: Baptist Minister. The “Baptist Minister” citation is a liberal “call to alarm”. The left views Governor Huckabee as “right wing religious nut” rather than his more updated calling as two and one half term Governor of the State of Arkansas. One would think that in a political arena, the fact that Huckabee was a successful Republican Governor in a traditional southern Democrat state might trump the fact that he was, in his lifetime, an ordained minister.
Huckabee, in 2005, was one of Time Magazines “American’s 5 Best Governors":
Huckabee has approached his state’s troubles with energy and innovation, and he has enjoyed some successes. Most notably, he created ARKids First, which offers health insurance to poor children and has helped reduced the percentage of uninsured Arkansans under 18 to 9% in 2003-04, compared with the 12% for the nation and 21% for neighboring Texas. Since he became Governor in July 1996, welfare rolls have declined by nearly half, and last year the state’s economy grew 4.4%, beating the national average of 4.2%.
The attacks on Huckabee during the 2008 GOP General Primaries were based on his fiscal policy – the man who created a budget surplus in Arkansas, raised the level of education, and generally improved almost every aspect of the State’s government (Again winning not one, but two terms as Governor in a heavily Democratic state), actually increased taxes. The New York Times ran the following article on Huckabee and the attacks from a particular right of center fiscal “Club for Growth”:
During Mr. Huckabee’s tenure as governor, he did raise taxes to improve the state’s roads and schools, with the support of both Republicans and Democrats in the state legislature. He ended his tenure with an $800 million budget surplus.
Mr. Huckabee lowered some taxes as well. But, on balance, he raised more than he cut and that’s behind the Club’s disdain for Mr. Huckabee.
What was left out of that particular article, as well as advertisements denouncing the Governor, was the fact that several states were forced to raise taxes due to: Federal Mandates increasing State's services.. Additionally, one must also be reminded that America’s best President (blog opinion), Ronald Reagan also raised taxes on more than one occasion.
As conservatives try to out-Reagan one another, the one man that can lay claim to actually having governed like the “Gipper” is that rascally Baptist Preacher and former 2-1/2 term Governor of the State of Arkansas. Should Huckabee actually decide to run, he would do well to counter the naysayers with a bit of historical fact.
As of this moment, however, every prominent Republican is included in the list of possible candidates, and the President may have dodged a primary challenge from the left of the Democrat party (Charles Rangel), however, it remains to be seen if a challenge will be mounted by a more moderate Democrat (Dick Morris via Fox News as well as rampant speculation from the press in general). It is simply, a time to speculate, with no clear idea of who will actually aspire to the nation’s top job in 2011-2012.
Note: Huckabee led Obama in hypothetical match up as of 11/4/2010 in CNN poll,(Politico) The poll referred to on MSNBC is from Quinnipiac Nov. 22nd, in which overall voters would prefer another candidate to Obama: 49-43%
MSNBC Video
