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Opinion: The Huckabee Channel: All Huckabee all the time

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Prepare yourselves. It’s going to be very hard to avoid Mike Huckabee for a few days.

The former Arkansas governor, who may or may not be as conservative as he’d like you to think, according to some critics responding to his growing media profile, is going to be all over television for a while. One reason is it’s a fresh media story. An underdog come from behind possibility, which the media loves after covering what’s-her-name out front all this time.

Another reason is it’s a necessity for Huckabee to get on TV because it’s free exposure and he has very little money. In the third-quarter he raised barely $1 million, one-fifth as much as little-known libertarian Ron Paul. Another is Huckabee has as his chief communications hand Kirsten Fedewa, a longtime Republican Washington public relations specialist who deftly booked countless governors onto TV shows there for years for the Republican Governors Assn.

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Huckabee starts Tuesday morning shortly after 7 on ‘Good Morning America.’ Later, he’ll be on MSNBC with Nora O’Donnell and then CNN with that wispy-bearded guy and then a whole hour on C-SPAN radio and XM Satellite Radio’s POTUS all-politics channel 130 and the same event will pop up on C-SPAN TV next Sunday.

On Wednesday, Huckabee might as well become an employee of Fox. He’ll start off on the new Fox Business Channel, head later to ‘Your World with Neal Cavuto’, back to the Fox Business Channel in the evening, do a guest stint on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ and wrap it up with...

a joint appearance with wife Janet on ‘Hannity & Colmes.’

Thursday morning Huckabee’s up early for ‘Fox & Friends’ and ends the day with a nice hour-long attempt at conversation with PBS’s Charlie Rose, who’s so good at interrupting guests. Not to mention the attention he received over the weekend in The Times’ Louise Roug’s story and even in this humble blog for his musical acumen.

All of this exposure should help the Arkansan’s fundraising, which badly trails Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. But it does carry a price, in this case increased scrutiny by critics who question not the former Baptist minister’s conservative social stands but his fiscal credentials. He was savaged last week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece. Among his alleged sins, raising some taxes and, if you can believe this, appearing willing to compromise with Democrats on a children’s healthcare program.

Huckabee acknowledges he did raise taxes to rebuild Arkansas roads, but notes that during his decade as governor he also lowered taxes some 90 times.

As a hunter, Huckabee, who’s made a name for himself in GOP debates with some down-home lines, puts it this way: ‘You never put the cross hairs on a dead carcass. . . . So the fact that we’re kind of being aimed at is a sign of life for us.’

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--Andrew Malcolm

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