Huckabee on White House bid: ‘From Hope to higher ground’

With a campaign theme of, “Hope to Higher Ground,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee announced his second campaign for president Tuesday in the hometown he shares with former President Bill Clinton.

Huckabee embarked on his second presidential run before an overflow crowd at Hempstead Hall at the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope. A large media contingent overwhelmed the wi-fi connection set up for the event. State Republican Party leaders and TLC’s Jim Bob Duggar family were in the audience. Huckabee was scheduled to speak at 10:33, and that’s when he walked out onto the stage. The audience chanted, “We like Mike.”

Huckabee recalled his all-American childhood in Hope and talked about how his parents had raised him to believe to do unto others as he would have them do unto him. His first political campaign was for Student Council at Hope Junior High School.

“It seems perfectly fitting that it would be here that I announce that I am a candidate for the United States of America,” he said. “I always believed that a kid could go from hope to higher ground,” he said.

The country’s success he said, “could only be explained by the providence of Almighty God.”

In a wide-ranging, 30-minute speech, Huckabee avoided saying the names “Clinton” or “Obama,” but he did criticize the president, saying, “We were promised hope, but it was just talk, and now we need the kind of change that really could get America from hope to higher ground.”

Huckabee sounded an economic populist tone, saying he would not be the favored candidate of the Washington-to-Wall Street “corridor of power.” He spoke against “power, money and political influence.”

He criticized what he called “unfair trade deals.” He talked about the need for affordable housing and criticized policies that he said have led to stagnant wages for the bottom 90% of wage-earners. He criticized proposals to cut Medicare and Social Security, criticized Obamcare and promised that he would seek cures for diseases. He spoke passionately about ensuring veterans have the resources they need.

He called for a balanced budget amendment and said he would pass “the fair tax” – a national sales tax, which would end “the biggest bully in America, the IRS,” he said. Instead of a minimum wage, he called for empowering people to reach a maximum wage.

He criticized Obama for being too soft on Iran while being too hard on Israel, and he pledged to “conquer” jihadism, saying we would deal with it “the same way we deal with deadly snakes.”

He expressed his opposition to abortion, warned that the country was “criminalizing Christianity,” and expressed opposition to gay marriage.

He said he would fight for term limits for all three branches of government, saying Washington had become like the “roach motel”: elected officials go in, and they never go out. He called for a restrained federal government and for returning power to state and local governments. He said the federal Department of Education has “flunked, and it needs to be expelled.” He called for securing the borders.

Huckabee, who served a decade as governor before winning the 2008 Iowa caucus, enters the race with national name recognition thanks to his previous campaign, his speeches, and his television show on Fox News. His campaign distributed polling results showing him with with high favorable ratings among Republican voters.

Huckabee was preceded in his announcement by his wife, Janet, the former Arkansas first lady. In a video, she talked about how he had stood beside her during her cancer treatments early in their marriage and described the former governor’s response to the influx refugees from Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. In her speech, she talked about their first date – at a 24-hour truck stop after she had played a basketball game, and about hard financial times when she was a young stay-at-home mom.

“You see, we have lived the American dream, and everybody ought to have that opportunity,” she said.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson earlier recalled that Huckabee had told him 23 years earlier, when Hutchinson was chairman of the state Republican Party, that he wanted to run for office. He praised Huckabee for governing in a bipartisan fashion with a majority of Democrats.

“Mike and Janet, we are here to tell you today that Arkansas is on your side,” Hutchinson said.

Singer Tony Orlando opened the festivities singing “Tie a yellow ribbon ‘round the old oak tree” and sang a song he had written five years earlier in Huckabee’s honor, “America is my hometown.” Pastor and longtime friend Rick Caldwell led the crowd in a prayer. Boy Scouts posted the colors.