Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee made a six-city swing through Iowa over the past two days to sign copies of his latest book — telling reporters he’ll run a “smarter” campaign if he launches a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.
“I’m trying to be smarter and not be stupid enough to go out there and try to sustain a campaign for an unnecessarily long period of time,” Huckabee said this afternoon in Cedar Rapids.
Huckabee won Iowa’s Caucuses and seven other states in 2008, but dropped out of the race almost exactly two months after his victory in Iowa. Huckabee now has a television career on the FOX News Channel and he’s the successor to Paul Harvey’s popular nationally-syndicated radio program, jobs he’d have to give up to make another run for the White House. Huckabee has made it clear he won’t make be leaving the airwaves ’til this summer to run for president, if at all.
“If a person is a boxer and you have the choice of a 15 round fight or a 10 round fight, I think most people would say 10 rounds makes more sense because it’s tough to stay on your feet for 15,” Huckabee said in Cedar Rapids.
Huckabee made stops in Davenport, Dubuque, Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and West Des Moines over the past two days. Carolyn Johnson got in line early Monday morning to wait for Huckabee’s noon-time arrival at the bookstore in Cedar Rapids.
“I feel he’s got a good background. He’s got a good values system,” Johnson said. “He’s got the experience from his years of being a governor and he’s for America, for what it stands for.”
Huckabee has published three books since the 2008 Iowa Caucuses. His latest is titled “A Simple Government — Twelve Things We Really Need from Washington (and a Trillion That We Don’t).”