NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told a teleconference of supporters April 10 he plans on “vigorously” supporting John McCain for president, but also said he wonders if his campaign would have won the nomination had conservative leaders backed him sooner.
He also didn’t rule out a run for the presidency in 2012.
Huckabee appeared on a teleconference sponsored by Charisma Magazine that drew far more participants than the phone system would allow. Although approximately 6,000 people registered for it, many of those did not get to hear the former Arkansas governor talk. Charisma publisher Steve Strang hosted the call.
Huckabee said one big reason his campaign wasn’t more successful is because it didn’t have enough “early money” -– that is, money early in the campaign that would have allowed him to run commercials and get his message out much sooner, perhaps allowing him to become a frontrunner instead of a darkhorse. Another reason his campaign didn’t go further, he said, is because conservative leaders were slow to jump on board.
“I would long for the day when people of strong conservative conviction … didn’t wait to see which way the trend was going and decide who to support based on the trends or the electability or what the polls looked like,” he said, “but [instead] they found a candidate that they thought could carry their message and [they] gave that early money…. I look back and I realize that if … many of the leaders of the conservative movement, if they had stood with me early, I think the outcome would have been different.”
He recounted how some leaders told him they hoped he would win yet expressed doubts he could do so. He said they then told him, “If you get out there and get some traction, come back and see me and I’ll help you.” Huckabee said he responded to one such man by saying, “Don’t you understand? You are my traction.”
Huckabee expressed disappointment that some conservative leaders placed electability before principle.
“It wasn’t so much the rank-and-file people who were the doubters,” he said. “It was the so-called leaders -– the ones who stand in pulpits and who go to rallies and who write books and talk about faith and miracles and standing for what you believe…. But then when it gets to their own political realm, they think more secularly than even the secular people [do]. That was very troubling and it was a revelation, I think, for many of us, during this election cycle, that some people really worship at the altar of electability.”
The question of his electability, Huckabee said, disappeared some in the final weeks, when his campaign experienced some success and saw an influx of cash.
“As the campaign neared the last few weeks, even some of the political establishment started saying, ‘You know, this guy could win.’ And we started seeing more funds come in that last month than we had almost in the previous three or four months,” he said.
But Huckabee left no doubt that he is backing McCain. He even said he has offered to campaign for him and is awaiting “instructions from the McCain camp.”
“I plan to vigorously support senator McCain. I think in terms of being closer to what my convictions are and where he would lead the country he would far be superior to either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, both of whom I think take are country a very different direction.”
Asked if he would be interested in a vice presidential spot, Huckabee said, like he has before, that he’s “not expecting it” and that it’s solely McCain’s decision to make. He said he does not know if he’s on any short list of possibilities for the position.
He also left open another run for president, in 2012.
“I certainly am not ruling that out…. If Sen. McCain is elected [this year] and he seeks re-election, I’m sure I would support the incumbent of my party,” Huckabee said. “But if he doesn’t run [in 2012] or someone else wins [in 2008], then who knows? … I looked around on the stage [at a GOP debate] and I realized I was the youngest guy in the Republican field. So I don’t have to say, ‘Gee, I’m too old for this.'”
Huckabee said his website will launch Tuesday with a new look with information about a “new direction” for him. He did not give details.
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Michael Foust is an assistant editor of Baptist Press.
