I'm your HuckleberryFormer GOP governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee announced on last Sunday's Meet the Press that he's entering the race for president, via the ever popular exploratory committee formation. Huckabee will likely try to make a play for the evangelical Christian GOP voter, which will put him in direct play against Mitt Romney & Sam "SexyBack" Brownback. But he also seems to be trying to strike a populist pose:
One of the reasons that I'm running for president is because I think that America needs folks who understand what it is to start at the bottom of the ladder and climb their way to the top.
America loves an underdog. America loves people who had to struggle and for whom every rung of the ladder has been sometimes three rungs up and two back down.
"Huckleberry" has some advantages that the other GOP nominee hopefuls do not: he has chief executive experience, having served as governor, he has no Senate record of rubberstamping Bush's agenda that so many of the other candidates have and he has a personal story of perserverance that many Americans can identify with, that being his dramatic change from fat to fit.
Trim the fat, he may have, but the skinny is that he has ethics problems. So in addition to already being an underdog against candidates with much greater name recognition, the press may be in a mood to ask probing questions. Even Timmeh was asking a few good ones on MTP, though some followup would have been nice.
