Mike Huckabee was interviewed about his new book and his outlook on the culture wars but in the process dropped a strong hint about his plans for the 2016 presidential race.
There's a good bet he won't be watching from the sidelines.
Huckabee, in a 6-minute interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network's chief political correspondent David Brody, talked about the Christian worldview with regard to issues like same-sex marriage. In doing so, he showed why many consider him a formidable candidate with front-runner potential while at the same time displaying why others in the GOP see him as a liability.
Huckabee announced Jan. 5 he will be leaving Fox News so he can take time to seriously contemplate a run for the presidency.
TRENDING: Jihad against Christians is due to … climate change?
In Thursday's interview he drew heavily on the themes of his book, "God, Guns, Grits and Gravy," in marking the distinction between those with a progressive, secular mindset and those who see the world through the lens of Judeo-Christian values.
The former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister told Brody he still lives in the South, on the Gulf Coast, and prefers to keep it that way, even though he became a media star for Fox News over the past six-and-half years.
People assume he lives in New York, he said.
"I say, 'No I'm not going to live in New York unless the mayor will let me duck hunt in Central Park," Huckabee said, displaying the down-home folksiness that seems to come natural. "That's not going to happen, so I say I live in the world of God, guns, grits and gravy. In other words, I live in the middle of America, in fly-over country, and the book kind of is a picture of the fact that there is a big disconnect between people who live in the middle of the country and people who live in what I call the three bubbles of cultural influence – New York, Washington and Hollywood."
Watch Mike Huckabee's entire interview with CBN's David Brody below:
Of course, it's advantageous for any politician to present himself as a man of the people, an "outsider" who is not comfortable with the ways of Washington. Ronald Reagan was a master of this and earned the title "The Great Communicator."
Huckabee ran in the presidential primary in 2008 but struggled to attract financial backers.
But he says those who control large sums of cash are looking at him differently this time around.
He told Brody that the "bundlers" of financial donations who can make or break a presidential candidate are starting to look at him as someone capable of delivering some bang for their bucks – someone who can win.
“I’m convinced this is a very different atmosphere. Yes there are going to be a lot of candidates but unlike eight years ago when I just had a tough time getting people to support me financially, I’m seeing a very different climate out there, people who are bundlers for previous presidential candidates, McCain, Bush, even Romney and others are now coming to me and saying ‘we think you can win, we think you can communicate to voters that we have not been winning and we think that’s more important than us agreeing with you on every single issue' and so I am encouraged."
Huckabee still faces serious hurdles, however, with the Republican base. Take the issue of Common Core State Standards, for instance. At first he urged states to adopt the federalized education standards, as reported by the Washington Times in June 2013.
Six months later, as the grassroots opposition to Common Core gained steam, Huckabee walked back from his earlier support, as reported by the Washington Post in December 2013.
Huckabee also struggles to win over certain tea-party conservatives who want lower taxes, smaller government and economic growth above all else.
"As Mike Huckabee weighs the pros and cons of a second presidential candidacy, he should know that the Club for Growth PAC will make sure that Republican primary voters thoroughly examine his exceptionally poor record of raising taxes and spending as governor," David McIntosh, president of the Club for Growth, told the Washington Post earlier this month.
The group Liberty Conservatives, an online community that supports Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, is even less kind to Huckabee, referring to him in a Jan. 10 article as "Tax Hike Mike" and "A liberal in sheep's clothing."
The Club for Growth assailed Huckabee when he ran in 2008, painting him as a tax-happy liberal in love with big government. The Post postulates that the feud goes back to 2006, when Huckabee as governor signed a minimum-wage increase into law.
But nobody doubts his ability to connect with evangelical voters. This is his comfort zone.
Huckabee showed his ability to articulate the Judeo-Christian worldview in the interview with Brody when the issue of same-sex marriage came up.
In contrast to the stiff Mitt Romney, who looked uncomfortable speaking about religious or social issues, Huckabee looked like he was behind the wheel of his favorite pickup truck on his Arkansas farm.
He spoke of a "disconnect" between two competing worldviews: One prevalent in middle America and the other that originates from the "three bubbles" of Washington, New York and Hollywood and dominates the media messages being pumped daily into American households.
Call him the anti-Obama on social issues. Whereas the current president seems to go out of his way to deride social conservatives, openly chiding them for "clinging to their guns and Bibles," and boasting that America is "no longer a Christian nation," Huckabee affirms the traditional values of these voters.
"In those three bubbles, really, you see everything from fashion to finance, to government, politics, music, movies, television, it's pretty much determined in those bubbles what the rest of America is going to see, and yet there is a dramatic disconnect between what I call Bubbleville and the people of what I call Bubbaville, out there in the land of God, guns, grits and gravy," Huckabee said. "It's a difference between the God-centered view versus the man-centered view."
When it comes to social issues like same-sex marriage, Huckabee said he often gets asked by the left, "How come you just can't get on the right side of history?"
"Frankly, I hate that term because history is so much more about traditional, natural marriage than it ever has been about same-sex marriage, which is a relatively new phenomenon in terms of the government approving it," Huckabee told Brody. "But when people act like there is something really crazy about those of us who believe in traditional marriage what I point out is, for many of us, who have a biblical worldview, who are God-centered in our approach to life, this is the only option we have. And, if you have a God-centered worldview, you say, 'What did God say about marriage?' not, 'What do I feel, what do I think, what do I believe?'
"If you have a man-centered approach to life, then your first inclination to anything, not just same-sex marriage, is just, what do I think, what do I feel, what do I believe?"
So the question for all Americans becomes, as Huckabee pointed out, what should be the governing authority of your life?
"Is it your feelings? Your thoughts? Your own personal beliefs? Or is it something more objective? Something bigger than you?" he asks. "And that's where I come to in the book, that particular chapter. I think it's an important read. I wish that a lot of the people that are very critical and even hateful toward those of us who maintain that traditional view of marriage, I wish they'd read that chapter. Now, I don't think they're going to change their view, but maybe, just maybe they'll understand a little more, of why we believe as we do.
"And maybe it could be a revelation as to where their own beliefs come from," Huckabee continued. "Because, one of the things I try to challenge is: If you can make a change on the definition of marriage, then whose authority is it under which you make that change?
"And if you can make that change, what other changes can you make? Where do the changes end? Those are questions, not just rhetorical, that ought to be asked of some of the people who advocate for a change in the definition of marriage."