DES MOINES — Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee went for an early morning jog around an ice-covered Des Moines lake on Monday morning and couldn’t resist making some obvious campaign analogies.
“I’m not a fast runner but I can go distances,” he quipped to a shivering press corps that had gathered to cover his run in the frigid dawn. Huckabee has vaulted to the front of the pack in the Iowa caucuses that kicks off the 2008 presidential nominating contest on Thursday.
Warming to the theme, he said:
“It’s about endurance … it’s about really determination and not letting yourself get spooked by what’s going on around you and it’s just following on the trail ahead,” he said.
The affable former Arkansas governor famously shed 100 pounds and embraced the cause of exercise with all the ferver of a convert. He now runs marathons.
After his fairly brief morning run with a few supporters, Huckabee was asked how he thought he would fare in a foot race with rival Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor with whom he is in a neck-and-neck race with in Iowa.
“Of course he’ll be running both ways the whole time,” Huckabee said in a dig at Romney’s changing views on big issues such as abortion rights.
– Photo credit: Reuters/Andy Clark
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People forget that voters who are bought don’t turn out to vote and voters who believe do. This is why polls sometimes tell false tales.
Everytime a caucus of voters has had an option of voting online or in person, Mike Huckabee has won because his supporters show up–and pay their own way to get there.
I support Mike Huckabee, and I’ll be there to cast my vote and make a difference.
http://www.abuckforhuck.com
- Posted by ILikeMikeLet’s talk about honesty. Mike Huckabee has attacked Mitt Romney’s religion relentlessly in this campaign, but when cornered on the subject he responds by saying that “I really don’t know much about Mormonism”. That’s a laughably dishonest response to those of us who witnessed Mike Huckabee in Utah in 1998 as a Baptist minister. It’s funny, but I don’t recall preacher Huckabee using that tactic in his “fire and brimstone” speeches against Mormonism then. Instead Huckabee assured members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that HE KNEW ALL ABOUT THEIR RELIGION, and that unless they joined his church they were all going to burn in hell.
Ah but this was a different Mike Huckabee. He shot straight from his heart then, because this was actually what he believed. This wasn’t the political Mike Huckabee of today who uses whispering campaigns against his rival’s religion but tries to appear to be above such behavior. This wasn’t the same Huckabee of today that inflates his own resume as Governor, but uses known inaccuracies when demeaning his competitor’s accomplishments.
How disingenuous for Mike to play politics in this way, but then get nasty and personal when others point out some of the many failings in his own record as Governor. Well Mike, I hate to use a guy’s own words against him, but “If you aren’t being honest in obtaining a job, can we trust you to be honest if you get the job?”
I have to say that I preferred pastor Huckabee of yesterday to publican Huckabee of today.
- Posted by Dennis Isaacson