Mike
Huckabee looks to social conservatives to power 2016 bid
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[May 05, 2015]
By Alistair Bell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Mike
Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor and unabashed culture warrior, enters
the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday
facing competition for the support of social conservatives who backed
him in 2008.
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The ex-governor of Arkansas, 59, became a national figure by
staging an upset win in Iowa's kickoff nominating contest during his
2008 presidential bid.
This time around other Republicans with national recognition have
emerged as rivals for the role of leading crusader on social issues
such as abortion rights and gay marriage.
Polls show Huckabee's support among Republican voters is only in the
single digits. Huckabee's expected announcement is at 11 am (EDT).
"I do think that this time he is going to have a lot more
competition for the votes. I think that Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum
are both really jockeying for that hardcore evangelical vote," said
Sam Clovis, a social conservative activist in Iowa.
Cruz, a senator from Texas, declared his candidacy in March.
Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, won Iowa in 2012.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/May/05/images/ads/current/best_friends_sda_010515.png) Huckabee says he has some experience that his rivals lack: How to
fight Democratic favorite Hillary Clinton. He encountered the
remnants of the Democratic Clinton political machine during a decade
as Arkansas governor, a job that Bill Clinton had held before moving
to the White House in 1993.
"I hear some people say we’re going to have to have someone who
knows how to fight. I'll tell you what, if you battled the political
machine that I battled, you know how to fight," Huckabee told
Republican activists in New Hampshire last month.
Huckabee will make his announcement in Hope, Arkansas, which both he
and Bill Clinton call their hometown.
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Huckabee is perhaps the Republican presidential hopeful who speaks
most clearly about the economy to working Americans.
"I put America and its workers first. Too many in the political
class put Wall Street and Washington elites first. They aren’t
fighting for American workers," Huckabee wrote in an op-ed in Iowa's
Des Moines Register in March.
He is at his most strident when combating what he sees as
immorality.
He attacked one of the entertainment world's most famous couples,
Beyonce and Jay Z, in his new book "God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy."
In the book, Huckabee asked whether rapper Jay Z was "arguably
crossing the line from husband to pimp by exploiting his wife as a
sex object?" He also wrote sarcastically that bisexuals should be
able to have more than one spouse.
(Editing by Bernard Orr)
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