Mike Huckabee: stuck in the past

By Mitchell Blatt
0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, January 13, 2015
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In 1957, the Soviet Union released the satellite Sputnik 1, beating the United States in the first round of the Space Race. Non-reproductive sexual relations were criminalized in the privacy of one's own home. Jim Crow laws and segregation prevailed across the South, and Sen. Strom Thurmond spent 24 hours filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Huckabee announced on Jan. 3 that he was quitting Fox News to consider a 2016 presidential run, but his 1950s solutions don't work in 2016.



It doesn't sound like it was a very good time to be an American, but you wouldn't know it if you heard prospective presidential candidate Mike Huckabee describing it. Huckabee, who announced on Jan. 3 that he was quitting his Fox News talk show to consider a 2016 presidential run, never misses an opportunity to wax nostalgic about the bygone era of "Leave It to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best."

An ordained Southern Baptist minister, Huckabee's politics are steeped in fundamentalist Christianity. Those politics served him well in Arkansas from 1993 to 2007, where he won two Lieutenant Governor elections and two gubernatorial elections, and in the 2008 GOP primary where he won the second highest number of delegates.

But America has changed a lot not just since "Leave It to Beaver" first aired in 1957, but also since Huckabee's tenure as governor ended in 2007, and the positions that got him elected in an extremely conservative state back then would fail him in national campaign in 2016 America. In fact, his brand of hardline anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage politics is just what the Republican Party needs to move away from if it is to win again.

The 2016 GOP presidential primary looks like it might shape up to be a contest between the radical Christian right and a more mainstream brand of conservatism that accepts they lost the culture wars. On one side, Republicans like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, while some of them may take "pro-life" positions, accept the need for compromise. On the other side, Huckabee and his fellow travelers like Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann deny any need to change even as America changes around them. As gay marriage becomes legalized across the country and enjoys over 50 percent support, Huckabee threatened to leave the GOP if the party doesn't continue to fight against it.

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