Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told Fox News he won't rule out a 2016 presidential bid – and said America is facing a "moral crisis."
"Am I running? I don't honestly know," the Republican and current Fox News Channel host told Chris Wallace of
"Fox News Sunday." The Republican Party has "strong stable of possible candidates."
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Huckabee told Wallace he doesn't want to tell people he wouldn't be open to running because it would be "dishonest." He put the odds he will seek the nation's highest office at 50/50.
Friends have suggested that he poll the voters to see if he is "in the mix," Huckabee said. He said he will make decision after 2014 midterms. The 2008 candidate who opted to sit out the 2012 primaries said he would never make the decision just on circumstances, but on the heart.
Wallace noted that Huckabee is a populist who goes after nontraditional Republican voters and, much like President Barack Obama, is concerned with "income inequality."
In a Dec. 13 Washington Post interview, Huckabee said the real "axis of evil" in America is between Washington and Wall Street."
"There's such a collusion between what happens in the financial world and what happens in the political world," Huckabee told Fox News in a wide-ranging interview. "One hand washes another, and one feeds another. And who takes it in the teeth? It's the most of the working class people of America."
But unlike Obama, Huckabee said he doesn't want government deciding what income inequality looks like and trying to fix it.
America's problem, he said is not a "money crisis," but a "moral crisis" with politicians who have a disconnect with the working class.
Huckabee is also a Baptist minister, and has defended "Duck Dynasty" star Phil Robertson who was attacked after making controversial statements about homosexuality
to GQ magazine.
If someone wants to espouse views consistent with traditional Christianity, Judaism and even Islam, "you're supposed to just shut up and keep that to yourself," Huckabee said. But if someone wants to advocate for same sex marriage, everyone else is supposed to be tolerant.
"I'm tolerant of people who have a position on that issue that is contrary to mine. But I'm not tolerant of the intolerance," Huckabee said, decrying "a new level of bullying" from militant gay rights activists.
Still, Huckabee admitted, Robertson made his statement "in a way that would be a little more probably appropriate for the duck woods than it would be for the pages of a major news magazine. "
Robertson, of Louisiana, also drew fire over his statement in the magazine that he never knew of black people to be unhappy before the civil rights movement.
"I saw the world of the South maybe a little differently than he did, growing up in south Arkansas," Huckabee said.
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