Gentle Tones Speak Loudly.

Quiet tone speaks to many Iowans
GOP's Huckabee uses humor, faith in echo of Bush style

By Rick Pearson and Tim Jones Tribune staff reporters
December 3, 2007
VINTON, Iowa


Mike Huckabee's pitch to be the next president is a curious mix of stand-up comic and down-home preacher.

"Chances are, if you picked 100 issues and found out where I was on 100 of them, you may not agree with me on all of them," Huckabee congenially told his audience at a small community college. "There'd be a few on which you would be wrong."

The lines and laughter flowed freely on this cold and windy night in the northeastern community of 5,100, as more than 150 people came out to see the former Arkansas governor deliver his version of compassionate conservatism.

As the room quickly warmed to Huckabee, so, too, have Iowa Republicans. With one month to go before the state's leadoff presidential caucuses, a new Des Moines Register poll of likely GOP caucus attendees shows he has surged ahead of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who has been the longtime, big-spending front-runner in Iowa.

Quiet tone, quick wit

What people are finding is a strong echo of the speeches and style of George W. Bush's 2000 GOP caucus campaign as Huckabee uses a smile instead of a hammer to portray himself as a non-confrontational conservative.

Most notably, Huckabee adopts a softer line on immigration, saying the children of undocumented immigrants shouldn't be punished for the crimes of their parents.

A Baptist minister, Huckabee says his faith defines him. A TV ad shows him walking down a farm road as the words "CHRISTIAN LEADER" flash on the screen in a large-type appeal to religious conservatives who are a major factor in Iowa's GOP caucuses.

Yet Huckabee also uses a quick wit to defuse issues that may be at odds with his religion-inspired conservatism.

At the recent CNN-YouTube debate, Huckabee said he would accept support from the gay Log Cabin Republicans because "I need the support of anybody and everybody I can get." But, he said, he would not alter his position on gay marriage.

Huckabee is unwavering in his faith-based opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage and contrasts the conservative consistency of his message with Romney's, saying he "didn't just come to those views in time to run for president."

But Huckabee goes beyond such litmus-test conservative points to delve into traditionally liberal concerns such as the environment, education and poverty, which he notes are "not something Republicans often talk about" -- even though he knows there is a growing interest in the environment and poverty among conservatives who drive the Republican nominating process.

Once no more than a "who's he?" long shot, Huckabee is now being taken seriously by his opponents after vaulting ahead of far better-known candidates like Rudolph Giuliani, John McCain and Fred Thompson in some early-voting states.

With success comes scrutiny, though. Critics contend Huckabee's jovial campaign style contrasts sharply with a thin skin for criticism during his days as governor. His opponents say his conservative social ideology belies a decade-plus of liberal-style tax-and-spending as Arkansas' chief executive.

Huckabee's responses have only clouded his fiscal record. While he frequently touts cutting taxes 94 times as governor, the non-partisan political watchdog FactCheck.org notes that 21 tax increases occurred during his tenure, with revenues outstripping taxes he cut.

Fiscal conservatives who chafed as President Bush escalated spending have put a bull's-eye on Huckabee.

The conservative Club for Growth dubbed him the "John Edwards of the Republican Party." Huckabee labeled the group "The Club for Greed" and says people with a vendetta against him are funding its attacks.

Huckabee also has called Republicans, long the political party of business, a "wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the corporations." In a populist-themed attack, he said it was "not acceptable" to have an economy in which CEOs earn 500 times that of their workers, and he has backed a higher minimum wage.

More than just selling a new form of compassionate conservatism, Huckabee represents a complicated conservatism in which poverty and global warming are "spiritual" matters, not political ones.

As governor, Huckabee supported college tuition breaks for children of undocumented immigrants who attended Arkansas schools. He has said there is an element of prejudice in the immigration debate, fueled by anger against immigrants.

But Romney has used immigration to go on the attack, including a mail piece that accused Huckabee and others of supporting "amnesty." Romney also has attacked Huckabee's fiscal record and recently called his rival a "lifelong politician."

In an appearance Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Huckabee laughed off Romney's criticism and offered a slamming comparison of his rival's business background against his own pastoral background of counseling families.

Huckabee said he has been "involved in the human work of touching people's lives from the cradle to the grave, understanding social pathology to a level that nobody running in a sterile business environment has ever faced."

Former White House adviser Dan Bartlett, a longtime Bush confidant, has called Huckabee the "best candidate" in the GOP field and the one who seems closest to selling the Bush brand of conservatism. But Bartlett still questioned whether anyone would take seriously a candidate with the name Huckabee who hails from Hope, Ark.

Personable style

Stylistically, Huckabee benefits from a relaxed give-and-take more common among governors who are more used to face-to-face dealings with constituents.

Noting Iowa's early caucus date, he told the audience in Vinton that on the Jan. 3 caucus night the "Orange Bowl is going to be dull and boring." He also jokingly told those not supporting him that "your caucus has been moved to Feb. 3."

His personable style has allowed him to use camp to promote his campaign. To gain endorsements from the political establishment, Huckabee is milking the backing of action star Chuck Norris, who has a following of evangelical conservatives, with fundraising solicitations and a TV ad.

"Chuck Norris doesn't endorse," Huckabee says in the ad, sitting next to Norris. "He tells America how it's gonna be."

But beyond the everyman shtick, Huckabee also knows how to play an experienced audience.

At a fundraiser for Iowa Republicans, Huckabee spoke just before the event's keynoter -- and presidential rival -- Fred Thompson took the stage.

When Huckabee concluded a strong speech on the need to fight terrorism, he received a standing ovation from the 600 people in attendance. When Thompson, the former Tennessee senator, finished his speech, the only people standing were looking for the exits.

Though Huckabee has moved to expand his support beyond Christian conservatives, he also knows he must try to solidify his base in a fluid contest that finds many Republicans dissatisfied with the field and holding lingering questions about Romney's Mormon background.

In the early-voting state of South Carolina, where he won the Palmetto Family Council's straw poll in September, Huckabee has been "very aggressive" in pursuit of Christian conservatives, said Oran Smith, the council's president.

"Every other person he sees here is a Southern Baptist pastor," Smith said, noting that the state is heavily influenced by results in other early states.

On the stump, Huckabee readily references the Bible to discuss his humble upbringing and borrows from the Bush campaign refrain of promoting the Golden Rule. And at the Values Voter debate in Florida in September, where he won the event's straw poll, Huckabee warned the religious-minded crowd of his rivals' pedigrees.

"Many of them will come to you," Huckabee said. "I come from you."

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