Huckabee the Most Reagan-Like Candidate

Every GOP presidential candidate designates himself as the next Ronald Reagan. But although Reagan is often invoked by the other front-runners, it is Mike Huckabee who is the closest match to the Gipper. So says author and political observer Nicholas Wapshott, in an interview with One News Now:

A British author and political observer has written a new book that compares the current Republican presidential candidates to the one they want to be compared to -- Ronald Reagan.

Nicholas Wapshott, founding editor of London's Times, recently published a book called Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage. Wapshott has spent a great deal of time comparing the current top-tier GOP candidates to the Reagan model and says former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani falls far short, while Fred Thompson, John McCain, and even Mitt Romney have some Reagan characteristics. But Wapshott says former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is the closest match -- especially in one important category.

"Like Reagan, he is a true Christian. He has very sure principles. I mean, he's a Baptist minister," says Wapshott. "In the same way ... Reagan learned many of his core values in his family and from his mother's church. [Reagan's] mother was from the Disciples of Christ [denomination] in Dixon, Illinois, where Ronald Reagan learned all his fundamental beliefs."

The author believes Huckabee would be much different than the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.

"Look at the way that he is so different from Hillary Clinton, too. Huckabee is an open-hearted, honest-looking, and honest-sounding regular sort of guy -- so very different from that sort of chilly calculation that you get from Mrs. Clinton," he points out. "So he might turn out to be actually a very good national candidate."

Wapshott believes that like Reagan, Huckabee has great communication skills. He adds that Huckabee, whom he describes as "spectacularly underestimated," has the ability to "come right through" television screens and make the viewers feel as though he is talking directly to them -- another skill he says Reagan had.