Former Baptist preacher turned presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee has been successful in infusing passion and life back into once apathetic evangelical voters. But the question remains whether he can broaden his appeal to moderate Republicans and, in general, to the American public to win the race to the White House.
A current problem facing the Huckabee campaign is how to attract other Republican constituencies beyond anti-abortion, anti-gay “marriage” social conservatives. Among his problems is the strong opposition from fiscal conservatives – important members of the Republican Party - who charge him with raising taxes as Arkansas governor.
In a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, Huckabee was shown to face an uphill battle in winning the general election. The national survey found that 52 percent of those polled said they would definitely not vote for Huckabee. His favorability rating was just 38 percent, compared to Sen. John McCain’s 54 percent positive rating.
Huckabee may be the favorite candidate of Democrats because they believe they can beat him with anyone of their candidates. They may be able to sway enough votes to do just that.
So far, however, Huckabee is still almost exclusively seen as the evangelical Christian candidate. Most of his support in Iowa and New Hampshire had come from that voting group.
While some follow him as a pseudo Christian pied piper, I prefer to look a bit beyond my nose and I don't consider Huckabee (regardless of his faith) the man for the job.
