Huckabee launches second White House bid

HOPE, Arkansas (AP) — Former Arkansas gov. Mike Huckabee is preparing another bid for the Republican presidential nomination, eight years after his first efforts to expand on the support of evangelical Christians helped him win eight states in the 2008 primaries.

The ordained Baptist minister-turned-politician returns Tuesday to his hometown of Hope, Arkansas — the same small town where former president Bill Clinton was born — to make official what the local newspaper called “the worst kept secret” in the state.

In a strategy aimed at working-class cultural conservatives, Huckabee and his aides say his second run would pitch the candidate as an economic populist and foreign affairs hawk who holds deeply conservative views on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage.

Huckabee, 59, also plans to pitch that he is the best Republican to take on Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination who spent more than a decade as first lady of Arkansas. In a recent campaign video, Huckabee argued that in his more than 10 years as governor, he took on Democrats in “Bill Clinton’s Arkansas” after candidate Bill Clinton won election to the White House in 1992.

“Every day in my life in politics was a fight,” Huckabee says in the video, released as a preview of his Tuesday announcement. “But any drunken redneck can walk into a bar and start a fight. A leader only starts a fight he’s prepared to finish.”