Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told
Newsmax TV on Friday that rival Ted Cruz "has been one of the most inconsistent people but he presents himself as the most consistent conservative" throughout this campaign.
"Everybody looks at his real record and says: 'You know, Ted's taken a lot of different positions, but he's a freshman senator who hasn't one piece of legislation under his belt of any consequence,'" the former Arkansas governor told "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth.
"We've had a freshman senator, Barack Obama, who came, who didn't have any significant legislation.
"If a person can't get legislation through the Senate, how do we expect them to be elevated to the office of president and be able to be successful in bringing both Democrats and Republicans together to get significant things done?" Huckabee asked.
Watch Newsmax TV on
DirecTV Ch. 349, DISH Ch. 223 and
Verizon FiOS Ch. 115. Get Newsmax TV on your cable system —
Click Here Now
He added that the Texas senator, who is No. 2 in the polls in Iowa, "has often said that he supports the importance of marriage, but then he then goes to Manhattan and said it's a states issue — that he's not going to get in the middle of it.
"That's a very different message that he intimates the people of Iowa," Huckabee said. "He's made major policy switches on issues, whether it's ethanol, H1-B visas, Syrian refugees, the trade agreements.
"He never seems to come up and say, 'Yup, I changed my mind on immigration or H1-B visas.' That's part of the problem."
Huckabee, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, told Hayworth that he had the same message for voters this time around, but that voters are "just not hearing it because it's almost as if every interview, every newscast is all about Donald Trump.
"I congratulate him. I don't criticize him for that. I congratulate him for manipulating the media in a way that none of the rest of us had the skills to do."