MIKE HUCKABEE, NOT WHAT WE NEED IN 2016…

As much as he may like us all to believe that he sees it as, somehow, being his mission to save Christian America, Mike Huckabee's second run for the Republican presidential nomination may, in the end, reveal nothing more than just how much embarrassment can emanate from one small town in Arkansas.  I’ve always had this nagging suspicion that he was telling us all what is essentially not much more than a story.  There has always been something about him, some nagging voice in the back of my head, that has caused me to more than just a bit leery when it came to actually trusting him. Over the course of the last eight years Mike, the former state executive and failed presidential candidate, has become better known as “Huckabee,” the brand — television host, author, pundit and 2008 Iowa caucuses winner.   

Let’s not forget it was Hope, Ark., that gave us ‘Slick Willie’ Clinton and the cloud of the Clintonian family seediness that still hovers over much of our public life.  Huckabee, another former Arkansas governor, chose Hope, his hometown, to launch a candidacy that begins with a book, "God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy," and a post-announcement "factories, farms and freedom" tour.  If the presidency goes to the most alliterative candidate, well then, I suppose Huckabee wins.  Huckabee, who won Iowa's 2008 caucuses, aims to become the second person to win two contested Iowa caucuses. Bob Dole, who won in 1988 and 1996, spent the intervening eight years at the center of politics. Huckabee has spent much of the last eight years at Fox News, which is dandy but hardly the Senate.

In 1998, Huckabee vowed to "take back this nation for Christ." And to repel what he then called the Satanic threats to Iowa's ‘subsidized’ ethanol industry, which he says is vital because "we need the broadest possible energy portfolio."  That despite the fact of the rather bountiful energy sources available to us today.  And with his announcement this past Tuesday that he will launch his second presidential campaign, Huckabee, an ordained minister who won Iowa by galvanizing the state’s Christian right, ‘could’ be viewed as just one of many conservatives jumping into the 2016 field and seeking to secure a grassroots base.  But there remains one thing that stands out and separates him from the field of ‘anti-establishment’ conservative candidates with whom he will be directly competing.

And would that one thing be, you ask?  Well, that one thing is nothing other than Huckabee’s record while governor of Arkansas.  A record that is, which may come as a surprise to many, not nearly as hardline as many voters would imagine from getting to know him on television over the past few years.  And also one that, for the most part, he would likely prefer to keep somewhat under wraps.  For example, it was in 1997 that Huckabee ushered through an expansion of government health care to low-income children called ARKids First, which became a model for other states. Throughout his career, he challenged the GOP’s orthodoxy on tax cuts at the top — he even backed raising gas taxes to pay for infrastructure spending, as well as increases to education spending.

Huckabee also advocated for a 2005 measure to extend in-state tuition levels at Arkansas colleges to undocumented children.  Huckabee promoted all of these policy initiatives, sometimes to the chagrin of Arkansas Republicans at the time, under the banner of his background in the church.  For this current political moment, however, the most interesting line on the Huckabee gubernatorial résumé was his outspokenness on criminal justice reform issues in order to promote racial equality within his state. Criminal justice reform has become a cause célèbre for politicians in both parties as they try to find the right talking points — and more important, policy solutions — to address ongoing protests that have played out in cities across America over the past year.

From New York City to Ferguson to Baltimore, there is far more scrutiny today on the disproportionate incarceration of blacks in America than at any time in decades, if not ever, and certainly more than there was when Huckabee last ran for president, in 2008.  While governor, Huckabee granted more than 1,000 pardons and commutations in Arkansas. This both demonstrated his supposed commitment to the Christian ideal of mercy and became a serious flashpoint during his 2008 presidential bid, when Mitt Romney aggressively went after Huckabee on this front.  One case in particular, sort of his Willie Horton moment, was used against Huckabee to challenge the fitness of his judgment: that of Wayne Dumond, who was released by Huckabee and then went on to rape and murder again.

And in 2007, then-candidate Huckabee was asked about how his faith played a role in his view of commutations and pardons.  He said, “I truly tried to look at every case, without regard to the respective person. If there were injustices, I tried to do everything I could to correct them, and for example, there were issues where I felt like African-American males were given harsher sentences, especially for drug crimes, than were upper-middle-class white kids who were arrested for the same thing.”  He went on to say, “My faith affected me there because I don’t think you should have two standards of justice — one where upper-middle-class white kids whose fathers can get them an attorney get to go to rehab with no criminal record, and [another where] a poor black kid from a single-parent home gets eight to 10 in the Arkansas Department of Corrections. Now, did my faith affect that? I sure hope so. I’d like to think a person without faith would like to see justice equally meted out.”

But Huckabee’s views on equality don’t necessarily extend to all groups. While the governor in 1997 decried the church’s role in segregation and said that people of all faiths should “say never, never, never, never again will we be silent when people’s rights are at stake,“ in March 2015 he aggressively supported a since-modified, and wrongly so I would argue, religious-freedom law in Indiana that was changed because of its infringement on the rights of gays and lesbians in the state. And one of those rare occasions where I actually found myself in agreement Huckabee was when he called the efforts to overturn the law a “manufactured crisis by the left” resulting from a “militant gay community” that would not stop until “there are no more churches” in America.

In his essay, Huckabee focused on the financial costs of the ever-growing, multibillion-dollar American prison system. But he also focused on social points that sound almost exactly like the ones he made a political lifetime ago. He wrote, “We are wasting human lives. I am deeply concerned about the rate at which young African-American males enter the prison system. As many African-American males have served in prison as have all whites both male and female, despite the significant population disparities between whites and blacks. While disproportionate crime rates are a factor, it is inescapable that we have a system where white kids from upper middle class families get probation and counseling, while young black kids get 108 years behind bars. Our system must have true justice and equality for all.”

And he would go on to say, “As a person of faith, I recognize the fragility of the human spirit. And I recognize that our justice system needs both punishment and redemption. From my time both as a governor and the job as pastor I held in my mid-20s to early 30s, I know about life-and-death, hope and pain, and crime and punishment. However, redemption is critical from both a moral and a pragmatic standpoint.”  It might not have been Huckabee’s intention, but with the timing of his White House bid, it seems that the most progressive piece of his political platform, and the one that sunk his campaign in 2008, could also be up for redemption in 2016.  But I would argue the fact that more blacks find themselves in prison today has less to do with a faulty justice system and more to do with those who insist upon breaking the law.

Huckabee, who has been slammed for raising taxes, commuting the sentence of a prisoner who ended up committing murder, is also, as you can imagine, none too fond of the term, “RINO.”  It was last year in a Facebook post that he whined about conservatives who attack Republicans for not being “pure” enough.  He said, “One term that I’d like to see outlawed from the vernacular of the party is ‘RINO,'” Huckabee wrote on his Facebook page on Monday. “It stands for Republicans in Name Only, and it’s a pejorative term that questions the authenticity and orthodoxy of someone’s party purity. I’ve been called that myself, even though I fought in the trenches of Republican politics for over two decades. Even so, I would never pretend that I’m Lord over determining who the real Republicans are.”