Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee danced around the idea that he may run for president in 2016 on Fox News Sunday, saying he's got plenty of time to decide.
Asked by host Chris Wallace whether he was open to the possibility of running, he said, "The honest answer is yes." When asked the odds that he'll take the plunge, he said "Maybe at this point it is 50-50."
Huckabee also used his slot to lobby an alternative for Obamacare, weighed in on the "Duck Dynasty" controversy, and gently took conservatives to task when it comes to economic inequality.
When asked what he thought about A&E suspending Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the Robertson family that forms the "Duck Dynasty program, Huckabee said, "I think it has come to a point in our culture where political correctness has made it so if you want to take a point of view, it is traditional. it holds to steadfast old fashioned biblical principals, that you’re supposed to just shut up and keep that to yourself."
(Wallace did not ask Huckabee's take on a newly surfaced YouTube video with Robertson from 2010 where he says that Gays are "full of murder.")
Referring to Robertson's quote in GQ
Huckabee showed moments of populism during his unsuccessful presidential run in 2007-2008, and he sounded like a different Republican on Sunday when it comes those on the economic margins, saying,"Who takes it in the teeth? It's most of the working class of America. Big banks get bailed out. Big insurance companies get bailed out. Who gets bailed out? Washington bails them out. Why? Because there are campaign contributions that come along with the bailout. "
While House Republicans want to cut up to $40 billion out of the food stamp program known as SNAP. Huckabee seemed to be addressing them when he said, "I hear politicians that will resent the fact that some single mom is getting some assistance to put food on the table for her three children. She's doing the best she can, busting her backside trying to help them. And those same people that somehow resent that single mom, or going ahead and saying it's perfectly okay to bail out to the tune of billions big banks who were run by Ivy League people, who have should known better how to recklessly mismanage."
But he emphasized he didn't want the government to determine what economic equality should look like. But wanted a "calling out" to the fact that a lot of the crisis in America is about people who have a disconnect with working people.
This article appears in Dec 19-25, 2013.