Huckabee: Don’t Marginalize Social Conservatives

Less than a month after the dust settled on the 2008 Presidential election, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has a new book out and lots to say about where the GOP goes from here.For starters, he says Republicans have to remember their social conservative base.”I call them ‘politically homeless,'” Huckabee said Wednesday at a Capitol Hill breakfast. “They’re welcome to the table for primaries and Election Day but not the rest of the time.”And by social conservatives, Huckabee says he doesn’t just mean religious conservatives. He says the title also includes voters without strong religious convictions, and it fits many rural voters too. Either way, he insisted that within that core group, the GOP must find a way to erase the “disconnect between values voters and fiscal conservatives.” Huckabee’s other recipe for Republican success—less top-down management coupled with a harnessing of new media and the Internet.During the primary season, Huckabee’s campaign used new media tools and free media brilliantly at times. Thanks largely to online fund raising and ads starring Chuck Norris, Huckabee went from presidential long shot to winning eight primaries. “Republicans have not understood the power of [this new medium],” Huckabee chided. “We’ve got to be more web driven and play by those new rules.”This, he argued, is the future of the party, and unless Republicans can catch up to the tech-savvy Democrats, the comeback is a long way off.As for national leadership, Huckabee is backing his former campaign manager Chip Saltsman, for RNC chair. But no matter who is at the helm Huckabee says the party needs to fix some structural flaws.”The RNC has had the same thing wrong as the federal government,” he said. “They’ve centralized more power at the expense of the states. We’ve got to organize from the precinct level up, not the RNC level down.”The governor offered little on his own political future. The good news for his party, Huckabee says, is that the GOP has nowhere to go but up. “Thank goodness that [election] is over,” he said. “But things could always be worse.”Abigail Shaha is contributor to Politics magazine. ashaha@politicsmagazine.com