« The Broken Band Of Brothers | Main | Russ Feingold For President »
February 28, 2006BELTWAY BLOGROLL
Mike Huckabee For President
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee came to Washington last week and took some time from his schedule to meet with a few bloggers. All of them left the meeting talking about his rather transparent presidential ambitions at least in passing.
Most of the bloggers mentioned those ambitions in a flattering way. "Sitting in a small room with him along with a handful of other bloggers, it was easy to forget that you were talking to a governor and possible presidential candidate," Pat Cleary of ShopFloor, the blog of the National Association of Manufacturers, wrote in an entry that focused on Huckabee's healthcare views. (Cleary also recapped the governor's comments on partisanship, the budget and competitiveness.)
Tim Chapman, who blogs for Townhall.com, headlined his entry "Could This Man Be Your Next President?" "I would have liked to hear him say that Republicans should not have passed the 2003 Medicare bill," Chapman wrote. "I also would have liked to hear him talk a little tougher on congressional spending under Republican control. But I recognize that at this point in the ball game, you need more friends than enemies when you are trying to build momentum for a 2008 presidential run. There is plenty of time for his positions on those issues to be worked out."
At RedState, however, the anonymous blogger Augustine sees Huckabee's presidential aspirations as the sign of a "weak bench."
Even as he praised Huckabee, the chairman of the National Governors Association, as "one of the best Republican governors in the country," he dubbed him a "marginal candidate" for president and complained about the "sorry lot of GOP governors we've got" who could even seek the presidency. "[T]he current crop of governors has produced little in the way of policy advancement -- and a lot more in the way of tax increases and federal government payouts," Augustine wrote.
Andy Roth, who did not attend the bloggers' session with Huckabee, was even more critical at The Club For Growth, and he took his shots directly at Huckabee. Roth pegged the Arkansan as one of those governors who likes tax hikes and chastised his fellow bloggers for not calling him on it. "I'm sorry, but he is not one of the best Republican governors in the country, and he's not presidential material. Period."
Posted by | 12:12 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://amcblog.nationaljournal.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/519
