Mike Huckabee is warming up to Donald Trump as polls suggest that the Iowa caucuses will be a two-way race between the real-estate magnate and Ted Cruz.
Minutes after he announced that he’d be joining Trump’s pro-veteran event, the former Arkansas governor spoke on CNN’s “Wolf” of his relationship with the Republican front-runner.
{mosads}”I respect him, I like him. We’ve had a great relationship, and we are competitors in this race, but we are still colleagues towards some issues.”
Trump’s event is scheduled at the same time as Thursday’s Fox News main stage debate, so other candidates have argued that Trump is ducking the stage because he’s afraid to debate the issues.
But instead, Huckabee lauded Trump for his commitment to veterans and said he wouldn’t take sides on the issue between Trump and the network as a former Fox employee.
“I’m not sure I would be willing to do this with every one of the Republican presidential candidates, to go to one of their events, but I’lll do it with Donald Trump,” said Huckabee, who will be in the undercard debate that ends before Trump’s rally. Rick Santorum will also attend Trump’s event.
When asked if he’s more comfortable with Trump than with Cruz, Huckabee lampooned Cruz for being backed by the “hedge-fund billionaire circle” and accused him of tailoring his message differently on the stump than he does in Manhattan with donors.
Tensions between Trump and Cruz have erupted over the past month as polling of Iowa shows the pair in a league of their own ahead of Monday’s caucuses. The two have traded barbs on the stump, with Cruz and his allies mounting a significant campaign meant to discredit Trump.
Huckabee, the former 2008 Iowa caucuses winner, has been relegated to also-ran status over the past few months ever since dropping off of the main debate stage in November. He’s polling at just 2 percent in polls nationally and in Iowa and averaging below 1 percent in New Hampshire, according to averages by RealClearPolitics.
He admitted in the CNN interview that he’d have to poll within striking distance of the top-tier to remain relevant after Iowa. So with his days in the race likely numbered unless he stunningly outperforms his poll numbers, Huckabee’s choice to stand alongside Trump could be seen as a signal to his supporters of where to turn if he drops out.
“It makes perfect sense for Huckabee to do this. First of all, he actually likes Trump and gets along well with him. Plus, he’s not enamored with Cruz at all,” David Brody, Christian Broadcasting Network’s chief political correspondent,
wrote in a blog post.
While Huckabee has seen his support among evangelicals in the state slip largely to Trump and Cruz, he’s still looked upon favorably among the community. So his support could be a lifeline as Trump looks to push back against attacks on his faith.
Brody said that Huckabee could fit the bill as Trump’s vice president, noting that he has the executive experience that Trump lacks.
When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Huckabee that exact question, Huckabee refused to answer but asked the host to reframe the question to ask him whether he’d pick Trump to be his vice president. Then, Huckabee admitted that Trump would be on his own short list.
He also took Trump’s side on the real-estate magnate’s issue du jour — Cruz’s birth in Canada.
“The honest answer is I don’t know,” Huckabee said when asked if Cruz is eligible to serve as president.
“I think that there are legitimate questions that have been raised, not by people like me because I am not a constitutional scholar, [but by] people who are legitimate constitutional scholars have raised this as a legit issue. For his sake, it needs to be settled.”
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