Affable Huckabee tries to seize the presidential microphone

The man who captured Georgia’s Republican presidential primary in 2008 is back for a re-run, with more money and a crispness honed as a Fox News host.

Mike Huckabee’s problem, as a historically large crowd of candidates grasps for the same microphone, lies in whether his affable blend of hard-edged social conservatism and soft-hearted economic populism connects with a hopping mad GOP electorate now flocking to Donald Trump and other outsiders.

The applause was polite but underwhelming as Huckabee took the stage this summer at a Milner megachurch. Fellow presidential aspirant Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had more fans at his rival book signing.

“I’m impressed, but there are so many candidates now,” said Frances White of Locust Grove, who backed Huckabee in 2008. “I just need to settle down on one. I’m not sure it’s Huckabee, though.”

Attention grabber

The former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist minister has tried to stand out, first, by going a step further than many of his foes on social issues.

On Tuesday, Huckabee will travel to a Kentucky jail to lead a rally for Kim Davis, the county clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue a same-sex marriage license.

Instead of a government shutdown, Huckabee would use the far more explosive threat of breaching the debt ceiling to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

He does not want to just nominate Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade and make abortion illegal; he would use his executive authority to “invoke the fifth and 14th amendments” to give due process to unborn children. The other two branches of government would not be necessary.

“So do we consider unborn children to be persons or blobs of unanimated — or maybe animated – protoplasm?” Huckabee said in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month.

“And that’s really the determining factor, because once we determine that they are persons – and as president I believe they are – then we have a constitutional obligation to protect them.”

It's a unique, if far-fetched, plan to appeal to anti-abortion activists who see the judiciary as tyrannical.

“I think that’s a good move from an executive,” said Bob Vander Plaats, head of the influential Iowa social conservative group The Family Leader.

Vander Plaats was Huckabee's Iowa chairman in the 2008 campaign, but this time he is waiting until after a Family Leader candidate forum in November to make an endorsement, as there are many candidates making an effective pitch to evangelicals. Vander Plaats said Huckabee is having a valuable influence on the race.

“Sometimes you need somebody to push that envelope,” he said. “You might not get all the way there but you might get way further than you ever would.”

Huckabee has also sought to paint himself as the most pro-Israel candidate in a field full of Middle East hawks.

This summer he made waves by saying Obama was marching Israelis to "the door of the oven" by striking a nuclear deal with Iran.

It wasn’t a gaffe. Huckabee refused to apologize for invoking the Holocaust, despite condemnation for playing the Hitler card. His daughter and campaign manager Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Huckabee was repeatedly stopped on the street in Israel last month, one of dozens of Holy Land trips he’s taken over the years, by people who praised him for the remark.

“He says what he believes,” Sanders said. “And so he’s not going to come back after getting beat up by the press a couple times and say: ‘Oh, wait, y’all didn’t like that? I’m sorry.’”

Yet on economic matters, he breaks with Republican orthodoxy. Huckabee says he'll fight to maintain Social Security and Medicare, as other candidates look to make cuts because of concerns about the nation's long-term debt.

The ‘accidental governor’

Huckabee, 60, has a colorful biography to draw on in a field where many candidates reach for an up-by-the-bootstraps family tale.

“My mom lived in a house with dirt floors, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, so I know what the American Dream looks like,” he told the AJC last month. “I’m the first male in my family to ever graduate high school, much less go to college.”

The son of a firefighter in Hope, Ark. – the hometown he shares with President Bill Clinton – Huckabee went into the ministry and broadcasting before launching a political career.

A rare Republican officeholder, he was elected lieutenant governor and then became what foes called “the accidental governor” when his Democratic predecessor was convicted of fraud in 1996.

He went on to win two full terms, serving a total of 10 and a half years.

Governing a poverty-stricken state still dominated by Democrats led Huckabee to an economic record that is in many ways out of step with the modern Republican Party. Huckabee raised sales taxes and the minimum wage, and he increased spending with a new health care program for children.

Such policies earned him the enmity of the Club for Growth, the deep-pocketed fiscal conservative group that released an ad hitting Huckabee on the day he entered the race this year.

Rex Nelson, Huckabee’s communications director when he was governor, said such criticism galls him.

“If he had been an ideologue I guess he would have made that small group happy, but he wouldn’t have gotten anything done,” Nelson said.

From candidate to pundit and back

Virtually unknown nationally, Huckabee announced his first White House bid after leaving the governor's mansion in 2007. His surprise win in the Iowa caucuses came after Huckabee emerged as the natural candidate for social conservatives against foes such as John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

Huckabee’s biggest problem then, as now, was fundraising. Though he won eight states, mostly in the South, he never had enough money to compete with McCain.

This time he raised $2 million for his campaign through the end of June, and an allied Super PAC raised $3.6 million – including $3 million from a Little Rock poultry magnate.

The sums far surpass what he had at this point in 2007, but they put Huckabee near the back of the 2016 pack.

This time Huckabee benefits from a national name built on his first campaign and time since then as host of the "Huckabee" television show on Fox News and a syndicated radio show. The lucrative gigs helped Huckabee build a $3 million beachfront home in Florida.

“It did surprise me a bit” that Huckabee would run again, said his former aide Nelson. “Because he was making a lot of money and having a lot of fun. That’s a really tough combination to beat.”

Huckabee passed in 2012, and the family had extensive discussions ahead of this race — after putting the grandkids to bed.

“It felt like all the money in the world and all the great jobs in the world aren’t worth it if our country is in shambles,” Sanders said. “And he felt like there were a lot of major issues that needed to be addressed and needed to be part of the debate.”

His strategy relies on springing an Iowa upset that would give him momentum as the race heads into South Carolina and then the March 1 “SEC Primary” in Georgia and elsewhere. Huckabee has been among the most frequent visitors to Georgia in the field, along with Cruz.

Former Gov. Sonny Perdue is Huckabee’s most prominent Peach State backer, and he says Huckabee’s mantra of “I’m a conservative, but I’m not mad about it” can play well in the state again, despite all the attention heaped on the angrier candidates.

“There are a lot of people who identify with that message,” Perdue said. “They believe the conservative message may be the solution, but they are a little tired of maybe how we communicated that message.”

Huckabee has cracked the top 10 in national polls to get on the main stage in national debates. But he has been largely overshadowed in the buzz department by political newcomers like Trump and Ben Carson.

During a recent visit to Atlanta for the RedState Gathering, Huckabee was irked by the incessant Trump questions.

Not that he faulted reporters for asking. He gets the game by now.

“I guess I swam in those waters long enough to at least understand there are some stories that pop and everybody’s got to ask the questions,” Huckabee said.

“I’m not a pundit now. I’m a presidential candidate. I’ve got to look at things differently.”