WASHINGTON - Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told fellow Republicans on Thursday that rival Democrats were trying to win over women voters by promising them free birth control and telling them “they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government.”
Huckabee made the comment as he was making a pitch that the GOP needs to broaden its appeal and end its internal divisiveness.
Huckabee, a Fox News personality and a favorite of Christian conservatives, told the Republican Party’s leaders and activists that purity tests within the party only shrink the ranks. His speech about expanding the appeal of the GOP was delivered at the 168-member Republican National Committee’s meeting in Washington and won a quick rebuke from the White House over contraception.
Asked about Huckabee’s comments, press secretary Jay Carney said at the White House that it “sounds offensive to me and to women.” The Democratic Party of Arkansas agreed.
“These views are troubling but all too common,” said Lizzy Price, the party’s spokesman. “Women should be free to make their own decisions about their health, but too many politicians try to get between a woman and her doctor.”
But state Rep. Jonathan Barnett, R-Siloam Springs, who was at the lunch where Huckabee spoke and sat with the former governor, said the statements were being misconstrued and won’t play a role in future political runs.
“It’s just the liberal media. That wasn’t the focus of his speech at all,” Barnett said. “He just felt like the Democratic Party has really done a lot to degrade women, and he’s trying to lift them up.”
Barnett said he spoke with women who were in the room after the speech.
“The women in the crowd loved him,” Barnett said. “He certainly didn’t offend any women who were there.”
Women voters in 2012 voted for President Barack Obama over Republican nominee Mitt Romney, 55 percent to 44 percent, according to exit polls.
In private meetings and public speeches, Huckabee has been offering a prescription for Republicans to expand their reach after losing back-to-back presidential contests. Chief among his recommendations is for the GOP to end the Republican-on-Republican fighting that has sometimes hurt his own political fortunes.
Huckabee’s take on reproductive rights highlighted one of his many hurdles in expanding his appeal beyond Christian conservatives. As part of Democrats’ national health-care law, insurers have to provide no-cost contraception - something Huckabee said was pandering. Religious groups, in particular, have opposed the measure as running counter to their faith.
Huckabee said Democrats “think that women are nothing more than helpless and hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have the government provide for them birth-control medication.”
Addressing accusations that the Republican Party has declared a “war on women” through its statements and policies, he continued: “Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything anyone else can do. Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women - that’s not a war on them, that’s a war for them.
“If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are hopeless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them with their prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it - let us take that discussion all across America,”Huckabee said, echoing comments he previously has made on his Fox News program.
Huckabee, who ran for president in 2008, is weighing another White House run and has kept in touch with the party activists in Iowa and South Carolina who were with him last time. At the same time, he has been talking with allies who would help him raise money if he decides to run.
Advisers said Huckabee won’t make any decisions until after he sees the results of the 2014 midterm congressional elections and how GOP candidates fare in races for governor. They said Huckabee is widely known among Republicans after the 2008 race and his Fox show, meaning there is no rush to start grabbing headlines as a candidate.
“Now, he’s got money and he’s got name ID. He’s starting from a different tier this time around,” said Hogan Gidley, a South Carolina strategist who ran Huckabee’s political action committee and remains friendly with the former governor.
Some worry that his opportunity has passed or that Huckabee hasn’t learned the lessons from his previous campaign.
“Huckabee faces the challenges of re-creating the momentum of 2008 in an era when new stars like Marco Rubio and Chris Christie have emerged on the stage of Republican politics,” said Joe Brettell, a Republican consultant.
Huckabee’s problems from 2008 remain, and he has further broken from the party’s ideology since.
His support of a proposal that rewards clean-energy companies and charges other companies for their pollution, and support for Common Core academic standards split from GOP orthodoxy. When he was governor, he gave clemency to a man who later killed four police officers, and to a convicted rapist who later was convicted of another rape and a murder.
“Some of the challenges he had in 2008 will still be a challenge,” said Mike Biundo, a Republican strategist who ran Rick Santorum’s presidential race in 2012.
That’s not to say his hurdles are disqualifying. “There’s no perfect candidate out there,” Biundo said.
Some Republican quarters remain unlikely to warm to Huckabee. The anti-tax Club for Growth, for instance, spent $750,000 to dog Huckabee’s 2008 campaign and seems poised to hammer him again.
To members of that group, Huckabee appealed for party unity and urged them to drop the slur “RINO”: “Republican In Name Only.”
“Let’s stop calling each other somehow less-Republican than someone else,” he said.
He warned that the Holocaust began with such attitudes of superiority toward the old, sick and Jewish residents.
“You realize that the only way you can end up there is when you start with the idea that people just aren’t as valuable as you are,” said Huckabee, who plans to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp next week to mark the anniversary of its liberation.
Such close scrutiny for Huckabee stands in stark contrast from the early days of his unsuccessful 2008 run.
This time “the spotlight will be a little brighter,” said Chuck Laudner, a veteran conservative activist in Iowa.
Huckabee’s 2008 campaign left him broke. After failing to derail Sen. John McCain’s nomination, Huckabee hit the speaking circuit and published five books - two on policy and politics, three on Christmas. He snagged a weekly program on Fox News Channel and a now-defunct three hour daily radio program. He built a waterfront home in Florida as he built up his personal wealth.
If he were to run for president again, he presumably would have to give up his lucrative Fox contract.
Information for this article was contributed by Philip Elliott of The Associated Press; by Cathleen Decker of the Los Angeles Times; and by Sarah D. Wire of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
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Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/24/2014