Mike Huckabee receives Fair Assessment from MSNBC, Breitbart skewers

MSNBC recently gave a fair assessment of Mike Huckabee’s prospects for 2012, but Andrew Breitbart wants you to think otherwise: “Is MSNBC Promoting Huckabee for GOP Nomination?”  Breitbart is implying that liberal MSNBC wants Huckabee to win and is therefore promoting him.

 

What exactly did MSNBC do to push Huckabee? Let's take it line by line.

(M) Huckabee is a likeable guy. 

* Even Jim Geraghty at the Campaign Spot said, "I had a chance to hang around with the former Arkansas governor in a Fox News green room recently, and he reinforced my sense that it’s impossible to not like Huckabee personally." 

(M) He's a Southern Baptist preacher.  * True

(M) His problems are ones of structure.  He does not like raising money, he’s admitted he does not like being measured by process and field operations.

* About raising money, Huckabee recently said when talking on the Alan Colmes radio show, “I love the retail end of politics.  I hate the glad handing for money.  I love talking to people who aren't necessarily the ones who can write the big checks.”

* Huckabee said this about process and field operations when interviewed by Bret Baier for the FoxNews 12 in 2012 series.  Huckabee said, "It's a whole lot more about the money than it is the message.  And so, because it's more process-focused than policy-focused, we end up not necessarily giving attention to the people with the best ideas, but giving attention to the people with the machinery and the money -- even if their message doesn't even sell."  

(M) Polls that matter are going to be Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

* So he is pretty much saying that the CNN poll that Huckabee came out on top of doesn’t really matter.

(M) Ya know the thing about Huckabee, is if people like you, he has a lot of name recognition because he ran before and he has been on cable news. 

* Huckabee said in his interview with Alan Colmes, “The one nice thing whether I should decide to run or not is that more people at least would know me by what I actually believe or say as opposed to what my opponent has defined me to be and that is kinda encouraging.  If I would have had that opportunity four years ago, things might have turned out differently." 

(M) He also has shown himself to be willing to come to the middle on some issues.  He said about the first Lady’s obesity campaign that maybe Sarah Palin misunderstood what Michelle Obama was trying to do.

* Huckabee said in a recent radio interview with New York radio host Curtis Sliwa, "With all due respect to my colleague and friend, Sarah Palin, I think she's misunderstood what Michelle Obama is trying to do.   Michelle Obama isn't trying to tell people what to eat or not trying to force the government's desires on people, but she's stating the obvious: that we do have an obesity crisis in this country

(M) Here's a guy who famously lost about a hundred pounds.  * True

(M) He has shown himself to be sorta this common sense guy who is not going to attack Democrats for the sake of attacking Democrats.  That is something that could appeal to a lot of independents.

* Huckabee has been doing well in all the polling.  The CNN poll showed Huckabee doing best among all groups:

Mike Huckabee

Among Republicans } 69/32 ..+37
Among Independents } 66/30 ...+36
Among Conservatives } 74/25 ...+49
Among Tea Partiers } 72/26 ....+46
Among Moderates } 61/35 ....+26

Click here to see all 2012 polling done in 2010.

(M) There is not as much heated rhetoric that comes from Mike Huckabee on every single issue, it’s not just totally anti-Obama, totally anti-Democrat.

(M) Mike Huckabee is very conservative, very socially conservative in particular. Fiscal conservatives don’t love him.

* Which is why Andrew Breitbart has posted this video clip with the label that MSNBC is pushing Huckabee.

(M) He is the only candidate actually, who had the Club for Growth run ads against him in Iowa.  So he had tons of attacks from fiscal groups on the right. All that money from Mitt Romney and Club for Growth, and he still won the 2008 Iowa primary.  * True

(M) This just shows how wide open this thing is going to be.

* But even Steve Kornacki at Salon indicated that “But it's getting harder to ignore the polls: The same CNN survey that shows Palin's GOP support collapsing also shows -- not for the first time -- that Huckabee is the most popular '12 prospect in the party.

(M) Can you tell the political types are very eager for the political season to get underway here?

* Yes, that is why they are talking about the current polls and the race for 2012.

* What Breitbart fails to recognize when he mocks Huckabee for the fair assessment he received, is that the 2012 Republican nominee needs to appeal to Republicans, Independents and Democrats.  We need to win back those Reagan Democrats who voted for Obama in 2008.  Huckabee has a great chance to not only earn their vote, but make them Huckabee Republicans.