Tossing his hat into the 2016 GOP sweepstakes, 59-year-old former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee decided to launch his second presidential bid after his first go-around in 2008.  A favorite among religious conservatives, Huckabee has little chance against the more well-heeled candidates and Republican favorites like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Sen. Ten Cruz (R-Texas), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.).  Having spent six years earning over $500,000 a year with Fox News, Huckabee refined his media persona, making him, regardless of his donor base, one of the most appealing candidates.  Plain-speaking, folksy and Reagan-like, Huckabee wants to become the GOP’s next icon, having a poor-boy upbringing, relating to blue-collar workers frustrated with Obama’s economy that has them working more for less money.

             Speaking in his hometown of Hope, Arkansas, the same humble beginnings as former Democratic President Bill Clinton, Huckbabee told a local crowd at Hempsted Hall he still believes in the American Dream.  “I was raised to believe that were as person started doesn’t mean that’s where he has to stop,” said Huckabee.  “I always believed that a kind could go from Hope to higher ground,” alluding to his journey that recently took him to Gulf-view, six-bedroom, seven-and-a-half bathroom mini-estate in Florida’s Panhandle.  While raising about $16 million in 2008, Huckabee isn’t expected to latch onto a billionaire anytime soon, leaving him a long-shot to win the GOP nomination.  “I learned the difference between right and wrong.  An I learned that God loves me as much as he loves anyone, but that he doesn’t love some more than others,” Huckabee told supporters, appealing to the little guy.

             Whatever Huckabee lacks in fund-raising, he more than makes up in his prodigious communication skills, far more refined than GOP front-runners like Jeb Bush and Rand Paul.  Expressing a populist message resonates with religious conservative but may not translate much beyond primaries with evangelicals in Iowa and South Carolina.  Huckabee rips Obama for not delivering on his message of hope, failing to change the growing wealth-gap, leaving American workers behind the eight-ball when it comes to making economic progress.  Appealing to disgruntled workers, Huckabe has a tough row-to-hoe with his own party, whose mood since Reagan has been to scale back the federal establishment.  Relying heavily on private sector jobs, American workers haven’t found wages not keeping pace with the cost-of-living, leaving them unable to spend into the consumer economy.

             Huckabee criticizes the rapid growth of American debt over the last eight years.  “Eight years later our debt has more than doubled, American’s leadership in the world has completely evaporated and the country is more polarized than ever in my lifetime,” Huckabe told the Hempsted Hall crowd.  Getting his wires crossed, Huckabee wants to blame the nation’s debt problems on Obama but the federal bailouts started with former President George W. Bush.  Obama’s been in office a little over six years, inheriting what former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan called the Great Recession—a once in a hundred years event.  Appealing to military families, Huckabee’s wife Janet questioned whether or not the country lived up to its founders’ ideals.  “Is there anything that we would die for that our men and women fight today for, ever day when they go fight?  Do we still have that passion?”

             Both Mike and Janet lived through the Afghan and Iraq Wars, watching American soldiers die in a cause, according to Bush, to stop terrorism and democratize the Middle East.  Surely Mike and Janet know that the Iraq War opened up the floodgates of terrorism in the Middle East, paving the way for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria to seize sovereign lands in the region.  “I’m running for president because I know there is a difference making a speech and making government accountable to the people who have to pay for it,” said Huckabee, saying nothing about how he’d help cash-strapped workers achieve the American dream or, for that matter, serve honorably in the U.S. military.  What Huckabee would do differently to improve the U.S. economy or protect U.S. soldiers from unnecessary and costly foreign wars is unclear, other than claiming he’s a man of the people.

             Huckabee’s emergence on the GOP campaign trail doesn’t change the big-money front-runners, only offers an amusing new voice on the campaign trail.  Huckabee was right about Washington’s bitter partisan divide, making little progress on helping Republicans and Democrats get on the same page. With Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (R-Vt.), joining Democrats’ one-sided ticket anointing of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 2016 debate will shift to the proper role of government in solving America’s economic and cultural woes.  Huckabee wants to be a man of the people but he doesn’t want to buck the GOP’s entrenched interests that blame government for the nation’s economic problems.  If he toes the Republican line, Huckabee will be forced, like other conservatives, to denounce the government and rely only oi the private sector.   

`John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.