Mike Huckabee: Arkansas Blog, Arkansas Times

Governor slept here: Mike Huckabee's North Little Rock home for sale for $850,000

Max Brantley — Wed, 29 May 2013 19:58:00 -0500

Just noted on real estate listings:

The home in North Little Rock's Shady Valley to which Mike Huckabee moved after he left the Governor's Mansion in early 2007 is up for sale for $850,000. They paid $525,000 when they bought it in 2006, but reportedly have done some improvements.

The county assessor appraises the house at $448,650, however, with an annual tax bill of $5,993. It's no longer carried with a homestead exemption, as it was until sometime after we noted the Huckabees were no longer legal residents of Arkansas.

It's at 1134 Silverwood Trail, North Little Rock. The Huckabees, you may recall, built a $3 million beach home near Destin that is their primary residence. He votes in Florida, which doesn't have a state income tax, and has some of the office and gear necessary for his radio/Fox News/speaking business there.

The listing from Adkins, McNeill, Smith says the house has 5 bedrooms and 5 baths, with almost 6,500 square feet on 1.13 acres and a pool. Description:

Wonderful home w/ lots of extras & updates. 3 liv areas w/wonderful den on main has built-ins. Kit w/new granite & appliances, island, lots of cab space & brkfst rm. MBR is spacious. MBA completely updated w/walkin shower, 2 vanities, coffeebar, 2 walkin closets & builtins. Down has den, BR &...

Photo tour here.

I don't know if the sale indicates a total end to Arkansas ties for the Huckabees — he has kids and grandkids here — or whether another pied a terre might be in the cards. I've sent a note to the family, but our communications are kind of spotty at best.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Feel like praying? Send Huck some bucks

Max Brantley — Thu, 02 May 2013 09:25:00 -0500

I joked yesterday about how Mike Huckabee ties a commercial pitch to just about every breaking news event, often soliciting Huck PAC contributions tailored to the latest Fox slant on President Obama. Earlier this week, he begged for contributions to his PAC to counter the evil of Nancy Pelosi. Another e-mail reached out to the "pro-marriage" and pro-gun crowd. I jokingly speculated the Huckster might soon have something in the fund-raising line tied to his celebrity eulogist role at country singer George Jones' funeral.

Nothing on the George Jones front yet, but ....

Today is the National Day of Prayer, and naturally, the Bro. Gov. has an idea for you to show him some money. His lead-in:

Why America Needs God More Than Ever

Please accept this special gift on this National Day of Prayer—a Free DVD for the children in your life called One Nation Under God.

Yes, a video from the Huckster's cartoon history series for kiddies, absolutely FREE.*

* There is a low, low charge of $4.95 for shipping and handling. And if you squint down at the fine print, you'll also learn that "about once a month, we will send you an email letting you know when the next DVID in the series is scheduled to ship. If you want it, there's nothing for you to do. [In other words, you must explicitly opt out or you get it.] You'll receive a new Learn Our History DVD for the same low price of $11.95 plus $4.95 S&H billed conveniently to your credit card.

Imagine the marketing Huck could do with a Pennsylvania Avenue return address.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Mike Huckabee said something stupid again

Lindsey Millar — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:54:48 -0600

On his radio show today on this George Washington's birthday, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich spent some time comparing President Obama and our first president. Said Huckabee:

"This is a very different president than our first one. George Washington was so adamant that we would not have a king and I thought, 'Well, gosh, we've done pretty well until 2008 and now I thnk we may have ended up with one.' Am I too far off in saying that there's probably never been a greater contrast than George Washington than Barack Obama?"

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The hypocrisy beat: Huckabee edition

Max Brantley — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 06:53:55 -0600

Media Matters nails Mike Huckabee for a familiar happenstance — noting a speck in an opponent's eye while ignoring the log in his own. (Matthew 7:5.)

Fox News host Mike Huckabee is irked at President Obama for converting his campaign apparatus into a tax-exempt non-profit advocacy group. Appearing on Fox & Friends Saturday, the former Arkansas governor admonished the president by saying: "Fine, go ahead and have your organization. Pay taxes on it like the rest of us have to when we get out and speak in our businesses and personal lives."

This is nonsense. Huckabee has his own tax-exempt political action committee, Huck PAC, that he has hyped up on Fox News and uses to "promote conservative principles and help elect conservative candidates at every level of government." Indeed, Huckabee has made ample use of tax-exempt groups throughout his political career and actually has a sketchy history with non-profits.

Back when he was lieutenant governor of Arkansas, Huckabee and his allies formed a non-profit group that had just two functions: to pay for Mike Huckabee to travel across the country bashing health care reform, and to pay Mike Huckabee.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Mike Huckabee targets birth control in school shootings

Max Brantley — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 05:54:15 -0600

Mike Huckabee knows a winner when he sees one. He sold a previous book, after all, on the backs of dead kids in Jonesboro. The outcry over his outrageous comments linking the Connecticut school disaster to an absence of God in the schools has only encouraged him.

Now it's "abortion pills," not to mention other immorality — meaning homosexuality — that leads to these slaughters. Really, he said that.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Just in time for Christmas, another Mike Huckabee collection

Max Brantley — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 09:42:05 -0600

Mike Huckabee, the Florida resident who once passed through Arkansas, has a new volume of musings out. It's in the form of letters to his grandchildren. Title: "Dear Chandler, Dear Scarlett: A grandfather's thoughts on faith, family and the things that matter." Not having been supplied a review copy, I can't say if it includes any warnings about knives and forks. It doesn't seem to be attempting to capitalize off tragedy, as an earlier Huckabee effort did.

Huckabee has cover blurbs from James Robison, Josh Turner, Joan Lunden, Bob Barker, Neil Sedaka, and Robert Duvall.

Current book tour stops don't include Arkansas. Book lists at $24.95, but Amazon has it for $13.66.

The publication includes more stories from Huckabee's Lava soap-rough childhood in Hope, Ark. From Amazon:

'Dear Chandler, Dear Scarlett' touches on the timeless topics of faith, love, family, overcoming adversity, and staying true to your values in the face of failure and temptation. For instance, Huckabee tells how being forced to pick up pecans from the trees in his yard taught him the value of hard work. (“We were told that if we wanted to eat that night and sleep in a bed instead of in the yard, we’d pick up the pecans.”)

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Mike Huckabee chews the fat and politics

Max Brantley — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 13:29:20 -0600

An interviewer at the Raleigh Telegram in North Carolina asked former Arkansan Mike Huckabee about his efforts at weight loss and the possibility of a future return to politics.

On weight:

In regards to his very public battle to lose weight, Huckabee said he has had mixed success. He initially lost a lot of weight, but has put some back on since then.

“It’s been a battle all my life, I’ve put 30 pounds back on,” said Governor Huckabee. “I messed up my knee running the New York Marathon and I’ve never quite gotten over that.”

He said that it’s hard to keep the weight off especially in today’s society that encourages you to eat.

“It’s a battle…but ultimately, it’s my responsibility,” he said.

A return to politics?

“Good question…I don’t rule anything out,” he said. “If someone asked me four years ago I’d be doing television and radio, I would have said ‘gee no, I’d rather be in the White House.”

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Mike Huckabee: Vote Republican or go to hell

Max Brantley — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 09:08:45 -0500

It's about that simple, I think, even if direct mentions of candidate names are avoided. Huck joins hands with Catholic bishops and Republican candidates on the complementary messaging.

A Slate blog had a pretty good comment on the Huckster yesterday.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Imagine a Mike Huckabee presidency

Max Brantley — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 04:56:21 -0500

Something tells me that Mike Huckabee's encounters with suspect Japanese figures aren't the only ones that could be dug up in chronicling the Huckster's pursuit of lucre anywhere in the world he can find it. (Remember his bizarre junket in the company of an Indian evangelist?)

Interesting, nonetheless, even if you don't want to assume too much simply because Huckabee had his picture taken with someone characterized as a "Japanese gangster" or that he was once in talks to be a cruise ship lecturer with another dubious figure, according to The Cable blog at foreignpolicy.com.

This encounter is not Huckabee's only bizarre connection with Japanese politics. In 2009, The Cable reported that Huckabee was to be the featured lecturer for a cruise with a controversial Japanese general who is known for defending Japan's World War II atrocities.

Huckabee was in discussions to interview the organizer of that cruise, Toshio Tamogami, the former Japanese Air Force chief of staff who was fired in 2009 after creating an international incident by writing in an essay that Japan was "not an aggressor nation" in WWII. Huckabee's participation in the event was scuttled after The Cable's report came out.

"There seems to be an unholy alliance between Japan's ultra-right and the American right," said Mindy Kotler, the founder of Asia Policy Point, a non-profit organization that does research on Japan. "They agree on an aggressive anti-China defense policy, but little else. If the two compared values they would frighten each other."

Closer to home was the article's mention of Sylvester Smith as Huckabee's communications spokesman. Is that the same former Huckabee administration minority affairs staffer and lobbyist? If so, I saw him just the other day and I thought he said he was still state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, another Republican corporate front group. But wait...Google turns up Smith's name as a contact on The Huckster's enterprise to sell animated cartoon history lessons (appropriately slanted, of course) for kids. If Repubs take over the legislature, no heavy lifting will be required for Smith as a lobbyist. NFIB votes will be automatic, unless the Kochs or ALEC disapprove for some reason. So time for a little moonlighting, I guess.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Janet Huckabee to the rescue of Todd Akin

Max Brantley — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 05:56:47 -0500

Janet Huckabee, wife of Florida tax fugitive Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, has been enlisted to lead the charge of a series of "Women Standing with Todd Akin" events to overcome the Republican senatorial candidate's deservedly low state for ignorant remarks about rape.

Janet Huckabee is a lot like Akin, often wrong but rarely in doubt.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

What's a Florida resident's endorsement worth?

Max Brantley — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 08:35:56 -0500

Much acreage in the morning paper to a round of "endorsements" for Arkansas Republicans by Mike Huckabee. A Republican, last on the Arkansas ballot in 2002 and now a Florida resident, endorses some other Republicans? (Excepting U.S. Rep. Steve Womack.) Dog bites.

Since Huck lends only his name and rarely money in endorsements, it's not exactly a game changer.

But let's look at Huckabee's endorsement of U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin. Despite protests during his election campaign that he'd be more moderate, befitting the urban area he wanted to represent, Griffin started running hard right from day one and has never let up. His campaign shills' unending push of anti-Obama, anti-gay and anti-Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid positions are but a few relevant examples. His purported happiness at a Huck endorsement is also worthy of note.

Why? All of Griffin's belief and support runs counter to mainstream voters in Pulaski County, which constitutes a major portion of the 2nd Congressional District vote.

In Huckabee's last race in 2002, Jimmie Lou Fisher carried Pulaski with 55 percent of the vote. Barack Obama carried Pulaski in 2008 with 55 percent of the vote. Also in 2008, voters defeated the anti-gay adoption initiative 55-45. Mike Beebe (evil proponent of Obamacare) got 70 percent of the vote. Joyce Elliott, despite being a black woman depicted as a crazy radical akin to Angela Davis, eked out a narrow victory over Griffin in Pulaski during the 2010 vote-against-the-black-White House tsunami.

Griffin relies on the dog whistle voters of the suburban 2nd District to respond to his messages, from coddling the rich to fearing minorities. There, Huckabee can provide some knowhow.

IN OTHER HUCKSTERING: I notice the Huckster now sells sponsorships on his newsletter. Today the spot was bought by Senior Annuity Alert.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Huck at the RNC: Obama supports murder

David Koon — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 16:49:00 -0500

Mike Huckabee's foot seems to have a summer place in his left cheek these days. First, he was siding with Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin by saying — and we are in no way making this up — that rape is bad and all, but a lot of really flippin' awesome people are the product of rape.

Now, Huckabee has managed to lay out a fibulance so big it might wind up being the King Whopper of all lies spun for the faithful at the Republican National Convention in Tampa: that Barack Obama is kinda okay with murder.

From Huckabee's speech:

Let me clear the air about whether guys like me would support an evangelical. Of the four people on the two tickets, the only self-professed evangelical is Barack Obama, and he supports changing the definition of marriage, believes that human life is disposable and expendable at any time in the womb or even beyond the womb, and tells people of faith that they must bow their knees to the god of government and violate their faith and conscience in order to comply with what he calls health care...

Somebody hunt up grandma's hat and shawl. It's time for her appointment at The Death Panel.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Huckabee: rape has created extraordinary people

Lindsey Millar — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 10:34:28 -0500

Following his comment in a TV interview that Missouri victims of "forcible rape" rarely become pregnant, Rep. Todd Akin's apology tour yesterday detoured around a scheduled appearance on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight." Better to stick with friendly media. Like Mike Huckabee, who's never afraid to double-down on a political gaffe.

In a radio interview with Akin yesterday, the L.A. Times reports that Huckabee tried to help out the disgraced U.S. Senate candidate by pointing to several cases where rapes, "though horrible tragedies," had produced great human beings.

“Ethel Waters, for example, was the result of a forcible rape,” Huckabee said of the late American gospel singer. One-time presidential candidate Huckabee added: “I used to work for James Robison back in the 1970s, he leads a large Christian organization. He, himself, was the result of a forcible rape. And so I know it happens, and yet even from those horrible, horrible tragedies of rape, which are inexcusable and indefensible, life has come and sometimes, you know, those people are able to do extraordinary things.”

Akin, wisely, didn't respond directly to Huckabee's premise, according to the L.A. Times.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Former dieter Huckabee: Eat mor chikin

Max Brantley — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 06:12:45 -0500

Former Ark. Gov. Mike Huckabee has reaped a tidal wave of Internet citations for urging America to join him at Chick-fil-A on Aug. 1 to show their support for discrimination against gay people. The president of Chick-fil-A drew Huckabee's approval for strident opposition to same-sex marriage and his support of a variety of causes that work to abridge the rights of gay citizens.

Huckabee's support for a fried food purveyor, naturally, was too much for some commentators to resist. Such as Dana Milbank of Washington Post.

When he ran for president in 2008, Mike Huckabee spoke about the good eating habits that led to his 105-pound weight loss, and he often touted his book “Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork.”

Now Huckabee has found some of those pounds he lost, and he has a new message: He wants Americans to eat more fast food.

Milbank's point is more sweeping than Huckabee's found weight. He thinks Huckabee has done the chain no favors in making it a standard bearer for discrimination against gay people. Even the company has tried since its president's radio and published remarks to distance itself from any antipathy toward gay people in hiring and, particularly, to whom it sells fried food. Gay people's dollars are green, too.

I asked T.J. Parker, the owner of the Chick-fil-A franchise in Silver Spring, what he thought about Huckabee. He looked stricken, as he should: He operates in a blue part of a blue state, across the street from Ben & Jerry’s and down the block from Whole Foods. “For any comments involving anything, you have to contact public relations,” he pleaded.

If only Cathy, and Huckabee, had shown such restraint. They didn’t, and now Chick-fil-A seems destined to climb to the top of the left’s boycott list, already crowded by, among others, Wal-Mart, Target, Bayer, Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries, Peabody Energy and United Parcel Service. Conservatives “buy-cott” such enterprises to counteract the boycotts, while observing their own long boycott list, including: AOL, Planet Hollywood, Nike, Southwest Airlines, General Mills, JCPenney, Starwood and Whole Foods.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Mike Huckabee: Tales of the Titanic and Krispy Kreme

Max Brantley — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 06:24:37 -0500

Florida media mogul Mike Huckabee gets some typically unflattering attention in the American Spectator, a Club for Growth-oriented conservative publication that has long ripped the former Arkansas governor. An extensive article remarks on the disappearing buzz about Huckabee's assault on the conservative talk radio primacy of Rush Limbaugh. It spins Huckabee as the "Titanic of talk radio," with hype matching that given the great ocean liner before its fateful sailing. Mixing metaphors, the writer also compares Limbaugh to a James Bond villain, still supreme despite Huckabee efforts to topple him.

Well, Governor Huckabee has now been on the air for three months. It would seem fair to ask the obvious questions:

Where has all the Huckabee-challenging-Rush buzz gone?

The writer chooses not to count as buzz last Sunday's New York Times magazine interview with Huckabee. As he notes, it was mostly about Huckabee's support for Mitt Romney, his bitter rival in 2008, and had only a glancing reference to the Limbaugh competition. But it did have this winning passage between Andrew Goldman and Huckabee:

Could it possibly be true that you have never, ever tried alcohol in your life?

That’s true, other than communion wine in Europe. But I’ve never, ever tasted beer.

You’ve never cracked open the hotel minibar and thought to yourself, Well, I’m out of town, what the heck?

No. It’s really not a religious reason. When I was younger, someone said, “Here, try this,” and handed me beer, and I smelled it, and I thought, Gee, that smells horrible. And they said, “Well, you have to develop a taste for it.” When they said that, I said, “All of my senses tell me to reject it, but you’re telling me that I have to keep doing it over and over till I get to the point that I’m convincing myself that I enjoy it?” Now, have I ever been tempted to break into a Krispy Kreme doughnut store in the middle of the night? Oh, yeah. God help us if I had a minibar stocked with cheesecake and chicken-fried steak. Dangerous.

Which reminds me of Brian Chilson's spread of photos on Facebook of the new Dunkin' Donuts on Cantrell Road. I'm still a Shipley's man. This may be another issue on which the guv and I can't find common ground, but I think we could discuss the topic amiably with some mutual enthusiasm. I guess we can't do it over a pitcher of PBR draft, however.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Mike Huckabee radio show off to slow start

Max Brantley — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 17:10:00 -0500

A conservative-sounding blogger sounds positively delighted that early results on the Mike Huckabee radio show indicate he's not harming Rush Limbaugh's audience share.

The Radio Equalizer blog is pretty rough:

With mainstream media expectations so high, Mike Huckabee's new radio talk show was probably bound to disappoint. But newly-available hard data reveals a gaping donut hole where the audience should be.

...But the strategy behind Huckabee's new positioning has been flawed from the start: though "civil", his delivery is generally regarded as stiff and dry. Weak performance has opened him up to ridicule from both left and right, including libtalker Randi Rhodes ...

The blog samples audience ratings around the country and finds them anemic, overall and particularly against Limbaugh.

Moreover, in most of these metro regions, the trend is actually moving further against Huckabee.

We could only find one place where the former GOP presidential candidate fared relatively well: in Nashville, from noon-1pm at WWTN-FM, resulting in 12th place and a respectable 4.1 overall share. Perhaps he could become a local host there.

The bottom line: we know why the establishment media loves Huck, but we can't figure out why Cumulus would willingly undermine itself with this truly doomed effort, unless they're looking for a giant tax write-off.

Radio execs cannot force listeners to tune into a bad program, no matter how hard they try. It's a lesson they NEVER, ever seem to learn.

Well, Rome — and that big house on Florida beach — weren't built in a day.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The bad Huck feeds the faithful

Max Brantley — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 10:21:39 -0500

Grossly dishonest misstatement of Obama contraception policy. Wild hyperbolic metaphor. That's our Huckster, dishing up red meat to the Family Research Council crowd.

To quote the Bible, or was it Kenny Hatfield?: Jesus wept.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Mike Huckabee backs Obama on support for immigrants

Max Brantley — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 10:06:33 -0500

Mike Huckabee has always been good on the immigration issue and I don't mind saying it.

Again today he said laudable things in cheering the aim of President Obama's decision to end deportation of young undocumented immigrants. He takes exception to the executive action as a legal matter, but softly by his standards.

Mike Huckabee told the crew at Fox & Friends this morning that he understood his stance on immigration was not particularly popular among Republicans, and he didn’t support and executive order for it, but the policy President Obama tried to implement for young undocumented people was something he had also attempted to pass in Arkansas. “You don’t punish a kid for what his or her parents did,” he argued, saying the policy was not a “job-killer.”

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Mike Huckabee — Spot the Difference

Max Brantley — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 10:03:30 -0500

The photo above is a screen grab of Mike Huckabee on TV last weekend. The photo below is an older shot from Wikipedia. Notice anything different?

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

And speaking of Mike Huckabee

Max Brantley — Sun, 06 May 2012 08:00:13 -0500

A former speech writer for George W. Bush writes today in an op-ed that Mike Huckabee is the perfect running mate for Mitt Romney because he'd energize the conservative base. Writes Robert Patterson:

Huckabee’s greatest asset would be his “killing-with-kindness” knack for negotiating the enduring social questions that bosses of both parties wish would go away but that resonate with heartland voters and played a central role in Rick Santorum’s remarkable second-place finish in the GOP contest. The gifted Southerner with working-class roots would be able to highlight the nexus between declining family demographics and a sputtering economy with a Ronald Reagan likability that neither Obama nor Romney possesses.

In particular, Huckabee could help the presumptive GOP nominee turn the tables on the “war on women” canard, the latest ploy of “adversarial feminism” that, as Bell brilliantly chronicles, has created a new fault line in American politics and society. That more fundamental polarization has little to do with differences between the sexes, races, or even the two parties. But it has everything to do with American elites in law, business, media, and academia who have waged war on the American way of life since the late 1960s.

In cahoots with the global left, their agenda of legalized abortion, no-fault divorce, and federal birth-control schemes — not to mention gender-based affirmative action that favors privileged career women against married mothers struggling to spend more time at home, and their latest project, same-sex “marriage” — has depressed family formation while supersizing unwed birthrates.

Would Huckabee leave a successful media career to run for the No. 2 slot when he decided not to try for No. 1 this year? He himself has indicated it's an offer no one can refuse.

For whatever the coincidence is worth, I mentioned last week the Huckabee-ordered destruction of state computer hard drives as he departed the governor's office in 2006. Though but an accurate and passing reference in the middle of an item about the general practice of secrecy by all Arkansas governors, abetted by the FOI law, it drew comment from two people with close ties to Huckabee — in one case extended criticism of media reporting about everything from Huckabee hard drive destruction to Governor's Mansion expense account spending.

Does this degree of sensitivity about a minor, but fresh, reference to potential campaign fodder — instantly available to anyone with a Google tickler for Huckabee news — provide a clue about the Florida beachcomber's openness to a Romney invitation? I can't help but wonder.

If he does join the ticket, we can then discuss — or, better yet, watch in action — the genial, "killing with kindness" Huckabee.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Mike Huckabee's push for Beth Anne Rankin

Max Brantley — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 09:00:39 -0500

If political endorsements by former governors count, Beth Anne Rankin will be the Republican nominee for Congress from the 4th Congressional District.

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee's video endorsement of his former aide is going out to his extensive mailing list. It is more than an endorsement of Rankin. I'd urge the national commentators who are emoting over "nice guy" Huckabee as a successor to Rush Limbaugh to give a listen. The Huckster can stick in the knife and twist and he's done so here against Rankin's better-financed opponent, Tom Cotton.

The Rankin endorsement doesn't mention Cotton by name. He's the Dardanelle native who went off to Harvard, military service and work in the well-heeled consulting circles in Washington and who's much loved — and bankrolled — by D.C. and eastern Republican establishment types. He moved back to Arkansas a year or so ago to run for Congress.

Rankin, notes Huckabee, "lived her whole life here." She was educated in Arkansas, he notes (not at that snooty Ivy League school, in other words.) Rankin, said Huckabee, is "not somebody who just parachuted into the district because she was looking for a way to get to Washington."

Ouch. Huckabee, of course, was not talking about John Cowart, the third Republican candidate, a Texarkana cop who also has military service on resume.

I've always had some doubts about the value of endorsements. Bill Clinton's swings for some Democratic candidates haven't always been followed by victories. Huckabee hasn't been an Arkansas resident for years, speaking of residency. But if endorsements do count, this was an unqualified and pointed one, designed to discourage Cotton picking.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Huckabee: No call to be vice president yet

Max Brantley — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 09:13:53 -0500

Mike Huckabee said on Fox News he hadn't heard from Mitt Romney about being a running mate and doubts he will.

I just go merrily on about doing my business.

And what a lucrative business it is proving to be.

They say you never turn down the offer, should it come. But it would seem the offer would be the same thing facing Huckabee when he made a decision about running for president. He was beginning what has proved to be a well-compensated media career and he assessed then that Barack Obama would be hard to defeat. I don't think that calculus has changed much. I do think Huckabee could have won the Republican nomination. And, to the extent anyone lifts a ticket, he might excite the Republican base that remains thoroughly unexcited about Romney.

UPDATE: Huck says he likes Marco Rubio.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Good reviews greet Huckabee talk show

Max Brantley — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 06:07:42 -0500

This positive review by ABC is typical of the outpouring of reviews I've been seeing about Mike Huckabee's first day as a radio talk show host to compete with Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh's troubles, of course, couldn't have been more propitious for The Huckster.

One quibble. ABC refers to Huckabee's line about being a talk show where you'll get "both sides?" Political guests yesterday were Ed Rollins, Mitt Romney and the reptilian Dick Morris. Both sides of what?

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Huckabee's debut hard to hear in Arkansas

Max Brantley — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 08:34:22 -0500

Talk Business notes that Mike Huckabee's debut with a three-hour radio show today aimed at carving out some lucrative dollars from Rush Limbaugh's market won't be heard in ~~Arkansas~~ Little Rock. Huckabee has a good opening "get" — Mitt Romney. Their 2008 mutual detestation won't be on display today.

Maybe you can hear it in tax fugitive haven Florida, where the former Arkansas governor now resides.

UPDATE: Huckabe opens by attacking Obama.

CORRECTION: A Huckabee spokesman says the program indeed made it to some Arkansas stations, specifically KFAY, KXAR, KBHS and KELD. Those within reach of certain stations in Memphis, Southeast Missouri, Shreveport and Mississippi also had a crack at it.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Limbaugh's loss could be Mike Huckabee's gain

Max Brantley — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 09:56:17 -0500

David Frum writes in depth for the Daily Beast about how Mike Huckabee's coming national radio talk show could enjoy a boost from Rush Limbaugh's declining market share and more recent exodus of advertisers.

Limbaugh’s calculation that his core advertisers must return always rested on the assumption that there was nowhere else to go. Suddenly, in the worst month of Limbaugh’s career, somewhere else has appeared: a lower-priced alternative, with big audience reach and a host an advertiser can trust never, ever to abuse a student as a “slut” and “prostitute.”

The new Huckabee show’s slogan is “more conversation; less confrontation.” “I don’t want it to be a show that every day, every hour, pushes everyone’s buttons to raise their blood pressure,” Huckabee says. “I figure the cost of high blood pressure is enough already.”

Frum, as many commentators do, praises Huckabee's "genial temperament." Longer exposure to Huckabee yields the understanding that he can be a slashing politician with a knack for turning a quick and mean phrase against opponents. Plus, he has a demonstrated yen for destroying hard drives. But he's generally resisted that mean streak in using the national media platform he's built since leaving office and the dividends are evident. Frum thinks some of Huckabee's success will depend on reaching middle-aged women. Limbaugh dominates with angry old white men. Huckabee has calibrated his Fox show with that in mind (Meryl Streep was a recent guest.) Women trend a bit more liberal on social issues, however. Huckabee's anti-abortion, anti-gay positions are unyielding. Also guns, stem cell research and more. He does have a soft spot on immigrants.

MORE: From Huckabee's network.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]