The former governor and current Fox News pundit may be gearing up for another presidential run. Luke Brinker takes him seriously:
While it’s early yet, public polling places Huckabee near the top of the GOP’s field; according to RealClearPolitics’ polling average, he’s in a statistical tie for first place with Rand Paul, Bush, Christie and Paul Ryan. Huckabee certainly stands an excellent chance of once again winning the Iowa caucuses, where RCP gives him a 6.2 point lead over Ryan, his nearest competitor. What’s more, his net favorability rating is the highest among the Republican pack, although a surprising number of voters remain unfamiliar with him.
Douthat deduces that a Huckabee campaign “is probably good news for Team Rand, since Huck is more likely to take votes (at least initially) from potential Paul rivals like Cruz than he is from Paul himself”:
As for Huckabee’s own odds of winning the nomination … well, they’re probably slightly better than the press and the political class assumes, because he’s a gifted politician who appeals the most important G.O.P. constituency, has a Fox News fan base and substantial gubernatorial experience, and polls as well as anyone at the moment.
But speaking as a longtime Huckenfreude afficianado, I think it’s fair to say that his moment (if there was one) came and went in 2012, a year when the party’s populists cycled through every possible anti-Romney candidate before finally settling on Rick Santorum and then losing (but surprisingly narrowly) with him. In those circumstances, what you might call Huckabee’s “Teavangelical” appeal and genuine populist background probably would have given him a better shot than Santorum or Gingrich (or Cain or Bachmann or help me I’m having flashbacks) at defeating Romney, who was, let’s face it, pretty much his ideal foil. But in 2016, with a much stronger field that might actually feature a little more populist substance and fewer corporate raider gazillionaire candidates, it’s much harder to see how Huckabee would expand beyond his big-in-Iowa base. At best, he’d be an important spoiler; at worst, his voters would ultimately jump to Cruz or Carson or even Rubio before the first ballot was even cast.
Larison dreads a Huckabee run:
On foreign policy, Huckabee has always been a hawk, but he went from occasionally saying somewhat sensible things during the 2008 campaign to being a predictable, awful hard-liner since then. In fact, he always was a hard-liner on some issues. His views on Israel and Palestine are so unreasonable that his presence in the 2016 field could only make the Republican debate on foreign policy much worse than it already will be. Especially if Santorum also chooses to run again, a Huckabee campaign would appear to add nothing to the debate that won’t already be there.
Waldman sizes up the growing GOP field:
Huck will certainly stand out as the friendliest, happiest candidate in a phalanx of grim and angry contenders. And there sure will be a lot of them. The RNC recently sent out a straw poll to its supporters and included a remarkable 32 candidates. Many of them won’t actually be running (I’m doubtful that “Ready For Pawlenty” is gaining steam), but I count no fewer than 15 Republicans whom I’d say were more likely than not to run. They’ll all be playing “Who’s the most conservative?” while bludgeoning each other desperately, and with Huckabee in the race, there’ll be no shortage of folksy aphorisms. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
The Dish 