Outside the Beltway

Huckabee Pushes Social Issues In Iowa Visit

Doug Mataconis · Monday, November 22, 2010 · 2 comments

It’s likely a sign that Mike Huckabee would make so-called “social issues” a centerpiece of a campaign for the Presidency if he decided to run that he took a trip to Iowa and praised the fact that three members of the Iowa Supreme Court were ousted in this month’s elections:

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Sunday that Iowa voters likely launched a national movement when ousting three state Supreme Court justices who agreed with a decision to strike a ban on gay marriage.

Huckabee was in Des Moines courting evangelical conservatives who pushed him to victory in Iowa’s leadoff precinct caucuses in the last election.

“The significance and historic nature of the judicial elections here in Iowa were far bigger than the borders of Iowa,” he said. “It was a very important statement that voters made, a statement that resonated across the country and one that I think will give legs to a larger movement over the next few years.”

Huckabee spoke to more than 1,000 evangelicals gathered at a massive church in Des Moines. The gathering marked the merger of a series of evangelical groups into a single organization known as The Family Leader, to be headed by veteran activist Bob Vander Plaats.

The merged group likely will play a crucial role in Iowa’s Republican politics, as the campaign for the state’s precinct caucuses begins to warm. And the former Baptist minister Huckabee is moving quickly to court the activists.

“This is a group of people with whom I am very comfortable and familiar,” he said.

This emphasis on social issues helped Huckabee pull of a surprise win in Iowa in 2008, but that was then. If the economy is still at the forefront of the issues voters are concerned about two years from now, it seems unlikely to me that a Presidential campaign that talks about abortion and gay marriage is going to go very far.