Huckabee shares ‘untold secret’ of support
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) on Sunday brushed off the idea that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) would intrude on his turf among conservative Christian voters.
“My base is really beyond just evangelicals,” Huckabee said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
{mosads}”I think the untold secret is a lot of the support that I have, and that I anticipate I will have, is from the working-class, blue-collar people who grew up a lot like I did — not blue-blood, but blue-collar,” Huckabee said.
He acknowledged that evangelical voters played a major role in his 2008 presidential campaign.
Cruz, the first major Republican presidential candidate, declared his candidacy last week before thousands of students gathered at the evangelical Liberty University.
But Huckabee, who told CBS that he was still mulling a bid and would “make an announcement relatively soon,” maintained that other voters, such as blue-collar workers, could play a big role in 2016.
“There’s a real sense with the Republican Party that there’s no one speaking not only to them but speaking for them,” Huckabee said.
“They’re not feeling this sense of recovery that people in Washington are boasting about,” he added.
When asked about his foreign policy experience, Huckabee noted that his first trip to Middle East came 1973, and he has been the area dozens of times, including three times to Israel “just last year.”
“This is a part of the world in which I am familiar first-hand,” Huckabee said, noting that he, along with other governors, regularly met with leaders of multinational corporations during their terms.
“I know there is going to be a big brouhaha over who’s the most conservative,” Huckabee said, arguing that of all potential Republican presidential candidates “there really isn’t an outright liberal.”
“I think compared to the current administration, all of us are conservative.”
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