DEBATE: Huckabee on the Reagan Coalition

Thu, January 10, 2008 - 9:10 PM

An interesting response from Mike Huckabee to a question about whether the Republican coalition that came together to elect Ronald Reagan (too many Reagan references to count, sorry. We must be close to 10,000).

He doesn’t exactly answer the question, but he does say that a key component of that coalition was working class people. Over the last few years, he says, “The Reagan coalition has certainly not seen those same working class republicans feeling like they’re doing as well as they could.”

There have been a lot of questions about whether Huckabee can attract other voters beyond the evangelicals that form his base. It’s clear here who he’s trying to attract – people who have fallen on economic hard times. In this respect, he sounds more like John Edwards than the rest of the candidates on the stage. He heads to Michigan tomorrow, where the collapse of the auto industry has put the state in economic dire straits, and I'm sure he's hoping voters there are listening.

--Sean Mussenden