Huckabee was interview by Newsweek in their latest web edition. Because of the length I will not repost the entire article here, but will include some of the Q&A. In the article, Govenor Huckabee talks about his campaign finances, Hilary Clinton, and why he is in the race against such tough competition. As always, Mike Huckabee answers the questions amazingly well.
Be sure to check out the full article here.
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Oct. 11, 2007 - Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee seems well-suited to win a core Republican constituency: conservative Christians and other “values” voters. The Arkansas preacher and former governor is pro-life and opposes same-sex marriage. He’s also articulate and amiable, and he plays a mean bass guitar. So why doesn’t he get more backing from hard-core conservatives? Even as his poll numbers inch up—he’s at 12 percent in Iowa, and has 7 percent support nationwide in a recent Gallup poll, up from 4 percent in August—he hasn’t attracted significant financing. He raised only $1 million in the last quarter, compared to $11 million for the front runner, Rudy Giuliani. Recently, Huckabee met with a group of correspondents and editors in NEWSWEEK’s Washington bureau to make his case. Excerpts:
Why don’t you seem to be doing better with the Christian conservative crowd?
They’re out there saying they are desperate for a candidate; they don’t like Giuliani or other people. You seem to fit in most ways what their ideal candidate might look like. And yet when we raise your name with them, they say, “Well, he can’t win.”Well, you keep telling them that and that will help a lot. [Laughs.] It’s beginning to change: In Iowa I’m tied with [Fred] Thompson; I’m several points ahead of [John] McCain. People are beginning to realize that with a very limited level of resources, we’re in the same hunt as these guys ... Sometimes people will pose the question to me: is it disappointing about the money you’ve raised? And I say, “No, from my perspective, I’m amazed at how far we’ve gotten. When I look at how much money some of these guys have spent, if I were them, I’d have to be on a couch getting some serious counseling, because it would be very depressing to [have spent] tens of millions of dollars …” In some cases they’ve written checks out of their own accounts for a bunch of dough, and they’re barely polling ahead of a guy who has been tagged as "he’s not raising much money."
What were your dealings with Hillary?
Personally, I didn’t have a lot of dealings with her; I had more with her husband. And even those were somewhat limited, because it wasn’t like we were hanging out together. But I understand something about some of her passions and priorities. I know a lot of the people she was very close to. Arkansas is a small enough state so that everybody knows everybody. Heck, most everybody is kin to everybody, so it even gets more intimate than that. So, I know her to be a person of incredible discipline, extraordinary focus. Very different from her husband, who is the ultimate accommodator. She is not a natural accommodator. She may evolve into that for the campaign, but it is not her basic nature to accommodate the opposition … You know I always had, frankly, a decent and good relationship with her and with Bill Clinton and see no reason that I wouldn’t continue to, even if we were opponents. It doesn’t have to be uncivil. But I do think the Republicans tend to underestimate her, because I hear a lot of them say things like, “I hope she’s the nominee; boy, that will energize the base.” What they don’t understand is it will energize her base, too, and that’s a pretty good-sized base.
You’re behind in money and polls in a big way: what is your path to leapfrog past Romney and Giuliani and McCain and everybody else.
You say you’d be great against Hillary Clinton, but how do you get there?First of all, people forget: four years ago it was Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt duking it out for first and second place in Iowa, and when A and B start fighting, C often wins. And so, I like being C. It’s a much better position than being the dead carcass of A or B … I mean I’ve got as much cash on hand right now as John McCain and no debt. Has he raised more money than me? Sure he has. But he’s spent more money, and I’m ahead of him in many of the national polls and certainly in the Iowa polls. So am I better off or worse off than he is? I’d say I’m better off. I haven’t laid anybody off, I haven’t fired anybody. I didn’t have to borrow money.
Read the full article here.
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