Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, the winner of the Iowa Republican Party’s Caucuses in 2008, is not yet ready to say he’ll run for president again in 2016.
“But I certainly would start in a very different place if I were to run than I did when I came here in 2007 and first launched the campaign and nobody knew who I was,” Huckabee said today, “and even fewer people cared.”
Huckabee’s now the host of a weekly show on the FOX News Channel. He ended his daily radio talk show in December, but his radio commentaries run every weekday on 600 stations around the country. Huckabee said because of that broadcasting career, he’s in a “delicate place” because if he returns as a candidate, those jobs will end. He’ll make a final decision about the next presidential race in early 2015.
“This is not some real remote likelihood,” Huckabee, who is 59, says. “I mean, this is something I’m very seriously considering.”
According to Huckabee, his wife really wanted him to run in 2012, but Huckabee said he has “no regrets” about deciding not to run in what Huckabee describes as a “machinery election” that propelled Obama to another four-year term.
Huckabee told a group of reporters earlier today that Barack Obama has committed impeachable offenses as president, but Huckabee says Obama “shouldn’t be” impeached and “isn’t going to be” impeached because the Democratically-led Senate would never vote to convict Obama.
“I think impeachment ought to be used in the rarest and most unusual of circumstances and because a person has perhaps exceeded his authority, and in this case I believe the president has in a number of areas, doesn’t mean that that’s advisable,” Huckabee said.
Huckabee accused Democrats of overstating the threat of impeachment as a means of rousing Democratic voters.
Huckabee and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal both spoke to a private gathering of pastors in Cedar Rapids early this morning. Huckabee and Jindal are among the handful of potential presidential candidates of 2016 who will speak at Saturday’s Family Leadership Summit in Ames. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum are also appearing at the day-long event which is sponsored by The Family Leader.