He shouldn't be too confident. He couldn't beat McCain.
Huckabee Says He Could Win White HouseTuesday, 07 Dec 2010
By Jim Meyers and Kathleen Walter
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tells Newsmax he is seriously considering a run for president in 2012 and believes he could win “all the way to the White House.”
But the 2008 Republican presidential candidate expressed concern that GOP candidates might “eat each other alive” in the primary season and leave the door open to President Obama’s re-election.
And regarding the handing over of sensitive information to WikiLeaks, Huckabee facetiously says if the U.S. government is “that incompetent” to allow the leakage, then the job of monitoring the flow of classified material might be turned over to Apple or Google.
Story continues below.
Huckabee is an ordained Baptist minister, host of a TV talk show on Fox News Channel, and best-selling author. His new book is “Can’t Wait Till Christmas.”
Editor's Note: To get Mike Huckabee's new book, "Can't Wait Till Christmas," at a great price — Click Here Now.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, was asked whether he plans to run for president again in 2012.
“It’s still an open question,” he says.
“I’m not being coy, it’s just that I haven’t decided, and I’m seriously looking at it. I’d be less than honest if I said, oh no, I never think about it. Of course I do, especially when poll after poll shows me in a position to win all the way to the White House.
“I think the biggest thing I have to work through is, can I get the nomination, can I raise the money, and can I deal with what really is the biggest challenge — that’s getting through what probably will be a very crowded Republican field.
“What I hope doesn’t happen is that the Republicans eat each other alive in the primary, because all that does is whoever emerges, whether it’s me or somebody else, they’re going to be very weakened.
“Obama’s going to start with a billion dollars in his account. He will have virtually no opponent in the Democratic primary. And that’s going to be a big mountain to climb.
“So the Republicans need to run against Obama, not against each other. If that happens I think we’ve got a chance to make Obama a one-term president.”
Huckabee has gone on record as supporting a continuation of the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy regarding gays in the military. He cited recently disclosed survey results showing that a majority of those in the military today don’t care if gays serve openly.
“But if you look deeper into that poll, what you find out is that an overwhelming number of the combat troops are opposed to it, along with like 58 percent of the Marine combat troops,” he says.
“You also find that 14 percent of the American soldiers say they would not re-up if it was in place, and another 10 percent said they would consider not re-upping when their enlistment time came up.
“If you lose 25 percent of the current force, which is already understaffed, and you have the combat troops that are highly opposed to it, you wonder where are we going to get our fighting men and women. Do you think they’re going to come from Harvard?
“I think the military should not be a social experiment. It’s a fighting force. And we need to do whatever it is that makes it the best fighting force.
“The fact that this is even an issue is to me a little bit confusing. Why would we make this an issue right now?”
Huckabee observed that a member of the American military is suspected of leaking the sensitive material released to the press by WikiLeaks, and said the “bigger issue” is “why did this guy have access to that kind of information?
“Is there not some mechanism in place? You see a soldier who’s somehow using his computer to download hundreds of thousands of documents and there’s no system in place to monitor that he’s done it?
“I mean if our government is that incompetent, then let’s get Apple to run the top-secret documents section, because at least they have a mechanism to track how many things you’re downloading. Heck, Google can follow me better than that.
“Why can’t the United States government know who’s looking at their documents and when they’re downloading them? That’s absurd.”
Regarding moves in Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year, Huckabee tells Newsmax: “I think it’s really important that they get this done.
“The reason the unemployment rate keeps holding up there near 10 percent is that with uncertainty hanging over business owners, they can’t hire anybody. They don’t know what the cost of doing business is going to be, not just what it’s going to cost per hour to employ someone but what will the regulatory costs be. We know that the cost of Obamacare is going to be staggering. You add all this together and people are afraid to make a move.
“That means businesses that could hire and would hire instead are hunkered down, and they’re afraid of their government. That’s a terrible position for us to be in America.”
Huckabee says his “Can’t Wait Till Christmas” is a “fun book” for children at Christmas time, with no political message. It recounts how as a boy Huckabee and his sister would secretly open their Christmas gifts days ahead of time, then carefully rewrap them to fool their parents — a tale he says offers a lesson in patience and virtue.
“Can’t Wait Till Christmas” is not Huckabee’s first Christmas book. His earlier work “A Simple Christmas: Twelve Stories That Celebrate the True Holiday Spirit” — a New York Times best-seller — encourages readers to put Christ back in Christmas.
Huckabee says it is “dishonest” to maintain that Christmas is strictly a secular holiday “that has nothing to do with faith, because it does.
“The Judeo-Christian bedrock foundation of this country is simply irrefutable.”
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/huckabee-obama-white-house/2010/12/07/id/379273
