america's current political and cultural landscape with cnn's s.e. cupp. mr. huckabee offers his thoughts on a range of topics from the obama administration in the state of the republican party to popular music and television. this is about an hour. >> host: governor huckabee i think it's worth pointing out the irony that you are sitting in new york where he is to i am here in washington where maybe you will live in just over a year?

>> guest: we will see about that. i did say in my book that there's really only one interest in washington that i've had any interest in moving to and i think you probably know which one that might be. let's go we will talk about 2016 and a bit but let's start with your book, it's "god, guns, grits and gravy." explain the title i of all. >> guest: first of all it is not a recipe for southern cuisine so i want to put everybody to ease that if you are saying jay i don't even know what a great is relax. here's the point of the book. there are three major cultural bubbles in america, new york washington, we are two of those in the other one is hollywood. from those three cultural bubbles emanate fashion finance government politics music entertainment movies television pretty much all the things that sets the american culture table

but my point in the book is that there's a big disconnect between the people the values, the attitudes, the lifestyles of people living in those three bubbles and the people who live in what we often call the flyover country all of that red area between the east and west coast that if you look at an electoral map of part from a few urban centers is nationally red and in that great divide that flyover country excess what i call the land of god guns, grits and gravy and it's just a descriptive term of a flyover country. the book does two things. is this all the folks out there in the land of god guns grits and gravy were not alone and you are okay. you are not not tenet says to the people who are living in the bubbles hey here's who we are. you don't really know us. you don't know what drives us and what makes us think it was important to us or why it's important to us to read the maybe you'll find out.

these good old good old boy sense of the macro. >> host: you describe the divide between the urban centers you describe and the bubba bill and those flyover states but truly you don't think that everyone in the bubble is bad and not every bubba is good right? so what point are you trying to make in describing the country in this way? >> guest: clearly it's a generalization. you can go to midtown manhattan and you will find people who really are above us in the way they think and feel and you will go to places like birmingham alabama and you're going to find some liberals believe it or not. so it's not that you can define any geographic area but i think it's generally true that the culture and lifestyles you will see in the bubbles are very different than out here. over the past six and half years when i was traveling to new york to do my show for fox i came to

realize when i get off that plane and i'm in new york for two or three days a week i'm in a different world than the world they live in when i get back. people always say have you moved to new york and here's what i would always say i'm not moving to new york in less they allow you to duck hunt in central park. they can imagine somebody out there with a 12-gauge semiautomatic blowing ducks away and jackie onassis pond in central park. that would get me in the headlines for sure but my point is to describe his completely different worldview and so often when i would come to new york i would say i think i didn't just go to new york i have landed on a different planet and it's just because there is a vast disconnect and that's the word that comes to me to explain why it is that these voting patterns

and lifestyle patterns and cultural patterns if you will are so desperate between the two areas. >> host: believe me if they allowed duck hunting in central park i would leave the state of virginia be right back there with you. but talk about why the cultural divide is such a problem? is it just that two sides don't understand each other or is there a threat coming from this cultural divide in this disconnect is you explain it? >> guest: i wouldn't say it's a threat to the existence of this great republic because it's a cultural difference but i do think the polarization is not necessarily healthy concerning the strong kind of america where we are a melting pot. we are increasingly less of a melting pot and more several simmering pots on the same stove but each maintaining its own unique recipe. i think it's healthy to have

differences of culture. for example the southern culture the one i'm most familiar with the most comfortable with, i don't always that. i don't want us to become so marginalized that we morph into something that's unrecognizable but there needs to be a respect, mutual respect and understanding understanding, not a a melting but an understanding and that's what i feel we don't have. i have found that many people looked towards those of us in bubbaville with a sense of bewilderment in wonderment wonderment. what do you mean you believe in god? what you mean you think you have to go to church and paying a dime out of every dollar of your income and a tithed to the church makes sense. that's crazy. why would anybody want that? i have discussions with conservative people in new new york who would you tell them you own firearms they are just aghast. it's almost like you want to jump under the table because they feel you're going to whip

out a pistol and start shooting in start shooting any minute we just want to say you don't really know us. most of the people live in bubbaville understand the people in the bubble and here's why. because everything that we see on television and the movies is all about the bubbles. television sitcoms movies mostly depicted whether crime shows doctor shows or films most of them are about people who live in the bubbles new york, washington and california lifestyle. we kind of know what the people live like because we see it all the time. how many times can you think of a television sitcom that treats religious people respectfully, that treats us as if they really are pretty normal and balanced and engaging people. we are usually presented as

charlatans who are out to hustle people out of their money or people who are mouth jurate -- mouth breathing knuckle dragging neanderthals that are so backward that we have and modernizing their highly uneducated incredibly anti-intellectual and not up to the same level as the elite. that's what i am saying. >> host: this is what i love about our long friendship. i'm a nonbeliever and you are a baptist minister and yet we both have a really deep respect for the judeo-christian valleys -- values and for the american faithful. you call people who put faith in family first the new american outcast. i think that is what you are getting out that hollywood in particular takes people of faith who put family first as backwards but you would have to admit i don't have to tell you that "fox news" does really

well, they have a lot of viewers over at "fox news." conservative radio conservative on line media does really well and whether hollywood wants to admit it or not conservative movies do well. aren't conservative values pretty well represented? >> they are certainly represented within the niche of the media targeted toward them and this is what i think baffles some of the folk in the elite. they look down upon "fox news" and "fox news" viewers. how could that network be doing so well? is scratching where they itch is and sometimes weather is robert downey and mark burnett in the drama of the bible they got more viewers than anything that has ever been on the table or whether it's the extraordinary response to shows that are -- duck dynasty and the doubters

who i know well from arkansas that the head-scratcher to let people live in the bubble. they can imagine who are the people to watch this stuff but it's also true of films. i remember when the movie the blindside came out. it was a film that those of us who live out there in bubbaville we watch that and we said we relate to it. we understand the language. we get it all. there were a lot of people in hollywood couldn't figure out how that movie was such a huge success. it was a sleeper for them. it was an obvious choice for us. look at films recently like heaven is for real or god is not dead. those are sounds that play to a niche. we understand in bubba bill. >> i remember when the chronicles of narnia were coming out and hollywood predicted that

no one would go and see it and meanwhile it was somewhere in the top grossing film. the conservatives like to go see movies but you touched on this earlier. talk about environmentalist hypocrisy in what you call environmental extremism. >> guest: i give an example in "god, guns, grits and gravy" of the skies for having greenpeace and your. he's about going to reduce co2 emissions but it turns out he is flying from his home over two home over to a think its luxembourg a couple of times a month and the output of co2 that he is expanding because of his jet travel is like 100 times that of the average person. so when confronted here was his answer pity said well the train trip would take 12 hours and that would be time away from my

family and a whole lot of time that we would be working. in other words because it's not very efficient. and i'm thinking is not why most of us flied? here's the point. if you are going to be an environmentalist and a say it's horrible to emit co2 than live like it and i use the example when reynolds is a great blogger that makes a statement statement. he says i will believe it's a serious problem in the people who say it's a serious problem act like it's a serious problem. now kudos to people like ed begley junior and darrel hannah because they are environmentalist to practice it and live it. ed begley is very smart in life. he is a small footprint of energy output and he doesn't fly much at all.

but i respect that. whether i agree with it or not to me if you have a conviction than just live it out. if it's authentic we will see the new and if it's not don't tell me how to live. don't be al gore and say the oceans are about to overtake the coast and build a 20,000-foot home right there in the coase. i think you're oceanfront property is about to become washington to see why the heck would you build a? >> host: the republicans have a problem with science or is that the perception and if so how will you change that perception? >> guest: it's no problem with science at all. science it is a magnificent gift. i would say science occasionally needs to catch up with god. i wouldn't expect you to say it that way but let me give an example.

for a long time people bowled over the issue of life. as you know i am an unapologetic pro-life strong advocate that every person has intrinsic worth and value. it's not about -- i believe there is no such thing as an expendable human being. i don't think any person is disposable. i value each person whether it's a child with down syndrome or the captain of a football team having said that we say -- biologically we know now a lot more about it than we did 30 or 40 years ago. because of our genome and effectively realize rdna come together to create a unique dna schedule that's never existed before. that pattern will never exist again. unique to that individual and it happens at the moment of conception. at that particular moment everything in that person's dna

schedule has formed. now it will change obviously size shape and dimensions because that's what happens is the dna schedule forms. we know when it happens and it is life at that moment. human life. that dna will never be broccoli. it can be a puppy or pony. sign me going to be human being so my point is that now we look at science and we say science has given us a real affirmation of when life begins. look at a sonogram. people who a few years ago didn't think it was a real baby until maybe the baby was four months in the womb. now at 12 weeks you see a sonogram and you say oh my -- i see a baby. i see a human form there. it's not just in animated blob. so i think science is a great

thing and whether its space exploration or medical innovation which i strongly strongly support in the strongly support an effective thing we should be doing more but it's an incredible misperception to thank those of us who are conservative but particularly those of us to her faith oriented are somehow against science. not at all. >> host: at the six recall that home so i can attest to seeing that sonogram is indeed life-changing. you talk about guns another hot-button issue. it's right there in the title of your book and you write quote clearly city slickers who are more afraid of guns than the criminals who might use them have a serious mental condition rendering them incapable of thinking. you know i'm a gun rights advocate and in all seriousness i think we have the facts and the statistics on our side and on the other side fears fear and

emotion which is equally powerful. when do you think our two sides are going to finally come together and have a real conversation about say lowering gun crimes? all we ever seem to do is to shout at each other from our -- >> guest: i think that happens in large measure because we are going to have a serious conversation we have to put it around facts and not feelings. you can't build a culture on i think i feel i believe. those are wonderful subjective motivations but at some point you need to say what objectively is true and let's go from objective truth rather than subjective i feel, think i believe. let's talk about the issue of gun violence. it's a horrible problem in our country. i'm not suggesting everybody in america to ought to run out and buy a gun and be armed to the

teeth and walker and waving it. i think some people should probably never own a gun but it's not because the government tells them they can't order the mayor for city decides they can protect themselves. maybe they just don't want to go through the training and be competent and proficient with it. my point is for many of us who grew up and again i use this land "god, guns, grits and gravy" guns were a part of our lifestyle. i bought my first bb gun when i was seven years old. i got a single shot springfield 22 shot at age nine and graduated to a 20-gauge shotgun. in each of those things here is what i've learned as a kid. worst of all i have such respect for firearms because it was drilled into me that you never ever consider a gun unloaded.

if you can look down the barrel and see daylight is still treated like it's loaded. you'd do learn to behave that way you won't point at someone even unintentionally. he will be so mindful. secondly never pointed at something you are not going to shoot and never shoot at something you don't plan to kill in africa only thing that is not planned to eat and don't kill anything unless it's going to kill you. it's never occurred to me and in all my life that i had firearms that i would use it in my place of work or in my school and murder bunch of people. in fact as a kid growing up i knew where the guns were in our house. we didn't have the wherewithal to mark fortunate or wealthy enough to own a gun safe so that guns were accessible but the reason i never touch those without my father's permission and supervision was simple. i knew what a gun could do but i

was certain what my dad would do to me if he ever caught me. the gun might hurt me and my dad might kill me and that is as simple as it was. >> would the c. is the biggest threat to our 2nd amendment rights right now? >> guest: i think the biggest threat is the lack of understanding of the second amendment which was never intended to protect people who go hunting. i am a hunter i.d. or hunt hunt duck hunting turkey hunt and have been known to pheasant hunt and antelope hunt but the purpose of the second amendment was not for recreation and sport. i know in the year 2015 this is going to sound almost bizarre that the founding fathers wrote the second amendment to show you what i see able to protect the first amendment and arrived at her basic fundamental aspects of liberty and the one thing that would always provide to the

people with the dignity of their liberty inability to keep it. they can fend off an attack so they go back in history and the second amendment and the purpose for which it was their use of the people would be able to protect their families, their property, themselves and their liberty from anyone who would try to take it. that is why we have it and we should respect it and treat it with great sense of reverence. >> host: in "god, guns, grits and gravy" you go through some rules for reformers and i want to walk through a couple of those for our viewers. he suggests that we -- why is that important you? >> guest: when people get into public office if they think they can make a career out of this that every decision they make is based on how will this affect my next election how will this affect my dear? if they knew when they went in

there was a terminal departure point for their tenure in office they will make different decisions. let me say to you i would support term limits before i was elected to office. iran believing in turn limits proposing and most people they say that before they get elected as soon as they get elected after they have been in office for a few years they say we don't need term limits. they would lose all this great experience. i'm one of those guys that 25 years after thinking term limits was a great idea and having served in office a long time as governor for years as lieutenant governor and being involved in politics at both ends of the tenure believe in it more now than i ever have. i think we have had term limits which we are to do in the executive branch. think we have to have them in the legislative branch and one of the things i suggest in the book we had to have them for the judicial branch. people going off the judicial

bench should not believe this is going to be this lifetime appointment that forever release him from having to worry about the decisions they make that i'm not suggesting we elect judges. appointment is fine but appointing them for life is absurd. people not -- should not feel anything they do in the service of their country is a career for something they can live for the rest of their lives. let's go next as financing. you say prohibit nothing disclose everything. >> guest: everything we have done to improve finances made it worse. here's the thing once you start trying to restrict and tell people what they can't do they will find other ways to do it within the context of a law from another mechanism. look at the presidential process now. it's out of control. if your candidate you raise money at $2700 a pop.

that's the most you can take from somebody $2700. that sounds like a lot of money to some people but when you're talking about a campaign that has to raise upwards of a billion dollars that's a lot of phonecalls and a lot of events. enter the world of the super pac. new super pac the super pac can take unlimited amount of money from a corporation or individual which by the way the federal candidate can only take from an individual. if somebody wants to give the super pac 15, 30 $50 million they can do it, one person. that super pac is totally disconnected from the candidate which means the message that the super pac puts out may be hurtful to the candidate is trying to help but the candidate can't go say stop running that ad and run this one instead because then both of them go to jail. that's insane. what we should say is if you

want to give $50 million per person running for president write the check but we will now but we will now bought it within 10 minutes of your gift because it will be posted on the internet for the world to see. you are not prohibited that we will disclose everything. we know exactly where the money came from because one of the things killing politics today are the people and in the super pac there is disclosure but there are a lot of other forms and some of the mechanisms like c. fours and other organizations that don't have to disclose donors. i could run millions of ads attacking somebody and the donors who gave all that money will never know who they are. i think -- here's what i say in the book. they are cowards. they don't have the guts to run for office but they were ready check and attack somebody through some dark operation. we need to end it all and just say we are going to disclose everything.

ideally give it to a person is willing to be candidate who will stick his name on the ballot and stand by that message. >> host: the next issue you talk about is poverty and you say property is a quote career or those who administer the programs and who would be put out of business if they were actually successful at eradicating poverty. president obama and republicans looking at a 2016 are finally talking about poverty. what would you do to end poverty or reduce poverty in this country? sydney one of the things that would shock most americans is if you took the amount of money that person poverty could be accumulated as a result of many different programs everything from food stamps to rent assistance to educational assistance medicaid and on and on it is not completely out of

the realm of reason that a mother of two or three children would have the equivalent of 50 or $60,000 a year in combined benefits. it would be much simpler to write her a check for that amount of money. rather than how of all these programs that have all these pure spreading throughout these different processes. but for some of viewers go apoplectic and not suggesting we write everybody and party a check for $60,000 but a lot of this is cut out the middleman. what do the things that will really help people. i don't mind helping people who are poor. i saw first-hand that some of these programs are vital but here's how they ought to operate. instead of putting people on them and punishing them for going off meaning there's earning threshold and once you cross the threshold you lose all the benefits it out to be administered so you get the benefits as a temporary stopgap to help you make the next rung

of the ladder. it should make it rather than penalize you and take you completely off medicaid leaving your children exposed with no coverage or leaving you with no capacity to pay your rent we will make it so that it lets you move ahead rather than behind. don't cut off all the benefits. make sure whatever you are weaned off of gives you a little bit of progress as you move forward. and you have an incentive to do better and you have an incentive to achieve more to be better educated to learn new job skills. we should never punish people for their productivity never. we have to reward them for their productivity and instead we punish them. >> host: all of these reforms are starting to sound a little like a campaign platform so let's talk about 2016. where are you on your decision for running for president? >> guest: obviously i'm very serious about it.

i have read some pundits who write that i left "fox news" just like it so my new book and i'm thinking really? are they that stupid to think i would leave an incredibly good job that paid me generously that i'd love just like to push a few books because honestly i could've done that and stayed at fox and would have been much more comfortable atmosphere. i walk away from a wonderful position and a terrific place to be with great people because i am seriously looking at running for president and so i couldn't continue doing the television show and have the kind of genuine authentic conversations i have to have with people and say if i run what you help me? do you support me? that's why the severance and over the next couple of months i won't make the final decision but obviously the decision i party made were not made

anticipating that i would forego a presidential race in 2016. how's that for being evasive? i have always said my timeframe is sometime in the spring later than earlier. it won't be until april i'm pretty positive of that. beyond then when it is i don't know but that has always been my timeframe and it never changed that. let's go let's walk through some of the issues you will confront as a candidate and later as president. one of the biggest issues that all the candidates will face this year and next year will be the threat of islamic extremism which we are seeing unfold in europe and unfortunately we have seen here in the united states. what would you do about al qaeda and the isis and the growing threat of islamic extremism around the world? >> the first thing you have to

do is identify what the problem is. we have an administration that reduces islamic terrorism. when you call they fort hood shooting workplace violence and when you say what happened in little whack at the army recruiting station to in the long who was killed by a jihad is trained in yemen when you say that's a state crime and murder that has nothing to do with terrorism is hard to defeat the enemy if you don't even know who it is. the first thing to recognize his radical islamic jihad is an islam of fascism whatever you want to call it this religious fanaticism that has resulted in people who truly believe their purpose on gods earth is to kill someone who doesn't agree with them that you cannot negotiate with that. this is unlike any war we have ever fought before because in a traditional where you are fighting a geopolitical force that has boundaries that may want to extend those boundaries of the war if it's over real

estate you may come to a conclusion. you may have to defeat the enemy and you may have to tell him he can't have anything beyond the borders but the point is you know what it is. when you have a force in their endgame is the annihilation of everyone they consider to be a religious infidel there is no negotiation. there's nothing to negotiate. their view is you die so our view has to be no you die. i know that sounds pretty blunt. >> host: would you suggest those on the ground in places like syria and yemen parts of the mob grabbed? what is your solution from a foreign policy standpoint? >> guest: boots on the ground in some places may be necessarily if we have a target we are going to attack but just saying we are going to put boots on the ground over the world he

can't do that. we don't have the stamina or the will for that. what we have to say to many of the people across the world where are tired of our boots being the only one making a footprint. frankly we are not going to keep spilling american blood for the lives of saudi's and the people of qatar and uae. if you want to keep your kingdom you are going to have to fight for it. you will have to call them what they are and if you are not willing to do that then when the dark clouds come upon you good luck you are on your own. we need to find the people in the middle east who are true allies. we have one in israel. we treated them dismally. i'm ashamed and embarrassed in a manner which we treated the one true ally we have but we have an ally and president al-sisi of egypt but we have consulted him

and pushed him into the arms of vladimir putin. i think that's a relationship that could be restored with a president who understood the value of a person like president sec. the king of jordan is another natural ally. they don't want deradicalization so we have the opportunity to build something different but you can't do it when you are showing disrespect to your friends like israel and egypt and bringing hugs and kisses to the iranians which we can never trust. >> host: let's talk about some social issues. you have said before that if republicans want to lose a guy like you they can advocate the issue of marriage. i can make a conservative case for marriage that marriage is a stabilizing institution but i can also make a political case for marriage not conservatives that support marriage but maybe

will loosen their opposition and our mall and i else, 80 million potential voters, the biggest generation in history and they are largely in support of. it's a problem for you in terms of running for president and in terms of holding firm on to this issue that i know you are passionate about? >> guest: i think there's a big difference between and marriage marriage. rights would say that no person can be penalized because they are from a job from being able to visit where they want live where they want. i have no problem with making the accommodations that used to be the centerpiece of the discussion and making sure there are visitation rights and all sorts of aspects that used to be the focus around civil unions. look marriage either means something or it doesn't.

historically a man and woman former relationship in which they are going to be committed to each other as partners for life in a monogamous relationship not having any partners that one and from that partnership they would biologically produce the next generation and train a generation be their replacement. that's the simplest explanation. of course we have adoption and all kinds of ways in which the next generation can be trained but marriage has always meant that. my position on marriage by the way is the exact position that barack obama had in 2008 and when he was talking to rick warren at saddleback church in august of 2008 and rick warren asked him here's what barack obama said. he said i believed marriage is between a man and a woman and i don't believe there should be other things and then he used

this term because as a christian i believe god is in the mix. barack obama believed that -- that into those made as to hillary clinton as did joe biden as did every i think democratic presidential candidate that i know of so here's my point. if barack obama headset i believe marriage is between a man and a woman because that is all we are capable as a society i would have granted him the license to change his mind but that is not what he said. he said it was because you as a christian. here is my conclusion. one of three things had to have happened. barack obama was lying in 2008 he was lying to us when he said he's all for same-sex marriage for the bible got rewritten and he was the only one who got the new version. tell me what other option is there? i don't feel like my view is all that crazy. it's the same view that the

president himself has help. >> host: a lot has changed since 2008. you can no longer be a democrat who does not support gay marriage. they quote unquote have evolved on that issue and even republicans have come out in support of gay marriage. do you think you can become president of the united states without agreeing on that issue considering how how large of voting for the millennial generation will be? >> i think people are going to vote for the next president as is he going to bring jobs and new optimism about america, will they make this country safer and fully understand the threats we face internationally and globally and do a better job of protecting us? will they understand what it is to be in the struggling class and to try to build an economy that works for people like that?

i'm sorry i just don't believe the deal killer is going to be a position on marriage. i will give you an example. let me go back to 1980. ronald reagan ran as a pro-life candidate when it was very unpopular to be pro-life but if people said he would never be elected if he holds that view. that is what he was. people didn't elect him because they are against that. i believe hopefully what voters want is authenticity but voters are going to know that i'm a person who believes in the biblical definition of marriage. i believe with mother teresa believed, billy graham, the pope and barack obama circa 2008. i'm not really way out there and thinking marriage ought to be people and their animals. i don't have some crazy keypad of a view pretty well-established in history and has a long just religious

tradition but social and even political tradition. so i don't think that's a dealbreaker. i think people will say i don't agree with mike huckabee but mike huckabee believes the mac. >> host: was someone who has recently discussed it is mitt romney. can he run for president a third time? disco well if he wants to. it's a free country. i wouldn't say hey met you have had your shot in that's it. if he thinks he can make another go of it and be successful this time after two other times when he wasn't then he has every right to give it his best shot. i will be focused upon whether i should run and not bother will run. >> host: if jeb bush runs do you think america is ready for another bush in the white house?

>> guest: i guess the voters will make that decision and jeb is a good friend of mine. i like him and we have served together a good bit of the time. i came in two and half years before he came into office that we served at least eight years is governor. he's a very good governor and the good guys. in a way it's like saying it's unfair that he has this great platform but that he might argue that it's unfair that he's being penalized because of his last name and his background because he can't help he was biologically born into the bush family. >> host: you also have a number of folks in the house and the senate rand paul marco rubio and maybe ted cruz who are discussed as possible candidates. he thinks someone coming out of this congress which is much

maligned and so dysfunctional as you know do you think someone coming out of this congress can get elected president right now? >> guest: if someone is seriously contemplating running my answer would be i sure hope you could so that would eliminate a lot of the competition. because good evening the governor has a better chance? >> guest: i think we would be at better president and here's why. if you have been governor yet managed to microcosm of the federal government and you have been responsible for it. you have served in the executive position and every agency that exists at the federal level we have a corresponding at the state level. unlike what some people think governors have great understanding of domestic policy but they don't know much around the world. i would challenge that because of the governor one travels all over the world and trade deals

and partnerships. we have the global economy and guess what? governors who have multinational companies within multinational companies with in their state do business all over the world. you can find a governor that hasn't traveled around the globe and man to man or man to woman dealing with ceos and heads of state. not being part of the study group but actually making deals and negotiating. i think that's a great level of experience to take to the president. >> host: i think the fact that there are so many potential contenders here speaks volumes about the idea of running against someone like hillary clinton. doesn't seem like anyone is all that intimidated by her. you find her intimidating as a potential opponent if you run? >> guest: i think everyone would be an intimidating opponent. the only way to run is if you

are unopposed are scared. those are the two options you have for the candidate. i don't expect any of us as republicans will run unopposed and if i were to be fortunate enough to get the nomination i would have great respect for the formidable nature of hillary clinton. i don't think she has the connected quality that her husband has. she has more the policy wonk the ideologue and an incredible collector that bill clinton is. i don't think there's anybody on the republican side who might run for president who would have a better understanding than i wouldn't understand the background and so on. even having said that hillary clinton is a rock star within the democratic party. it's interesting that while the

democrats expected or wanted most of them say they will support her i'm not convinced. first of all i'm not convinced that she will pull the trigger when she has to end run. probably will but maybe not and if she does i don't think it's a foregone conclusion that she's the nominee were certainly not that she is elected president. i don't think she will be elected president and let me say why when people say it's inevitable. it was inevitable for hillary clinton to be the nominee in 2008 in this relatively unknown upstart junior senator who sponsored zero legislation in the senate is named barack obama beat her. so let's let recent history be the guide of what the future may hold. >> host: who might that be this time? are you thinking elizabeth warren or who are you thinking on the left would suppress

hillary and the democratic primary? >> guest: i don't think elizabeth warren. she may get in it. she has an interesting voice for the left. it's not a voice that i would agree with but she does touch a nerve of a lot of people on the less. maybe the far left but i think it would be someone we haven't thought about. personal -- person is an effective governor or somebody who is managed and governed and led and is a good communicator. i am hard-pressed to tell you who that is but i'm not trying to build somebody's career and puff them up in the next thing they know i'm going to announce because mike huckabee said i would be a great president. wow. i will forego that temptation. >> host: let's hope jerry brown and andrew cuomo aren't listening right now. let's say you win the republican nomination in let's say hillary

clinton run -- wins the democratic nomination for the sake of argument. what campaign would he run against hillary clinton? you say you know her well. we'll kind of weaknesses would you exploit if you were the republican nominee? guest:i can't tell you all of what i do and then i would be giving it all away. let me say i think hillary i think hillary clinton's challenges she is going to be tied in this next election to the policies of barack obama then she will to the policies of her husband bill clinton. she was first lady. she didn't have an official policy role in the white house. giving up on the white house she ran the state department. she was secretary of state. she set the table for our relationships with other countries and i would ask my close democratic friends and i actually have a few i would ask him this question. i would say name a country on this planet would we have a better relationship now than we

did when the obama administration took office in 2009? guess what? nobody can give me the name of one country. none. i think that's going to be a problem for her. even though the left when you mention things like benghazi i still think that's heartburn for hillary clinton. >> host: what to expect democrats to do with a one women especially if hillary clinton is the nominee? how would you handle that inevitability from the last? >> guest: i hope that's the best weapon because of it is than we might as well go ahead and start measuring drapes traipsing getting via microball plans. that has proven to fall so short. it's a great example of how this message just ring so hollow. intelligent thoughtful strong

women know they are not helpless creatures of their gender. lord knows my wife knows that. my daughter knows that. my daughter in law knows that. all the women i have surrounded myself with in my life my chief of staff who was a female and many of my cabinet officers would be livid if i said to them while you know we are going to give you these jobs. you are not really able to do them but you are woman and help us to your gender and if you don't have some help from the government you will never be able to make it. i would have my face slapped for saying something like that. women are capable of doing anything that they wish to do and women know that intuitively and instinctively and strong women are offended and insulted if someone tells them they can't make it without the government coming around to bail them out and lift them up.

>> host: we talked about milenials and women. what about minorities? what can the republican nominee whether it's you or someone else do to bring more minorities in for 2016? we lost a good amount in the past two elections. >> guest: probably i'm the only republican on a remote list of people who can say he had 40% of the african-american vote in the state which iran for re-election as governor. hispanics were in the high 40s as well. somebody for whom this is not an abstract but this is something i've actually done and i want to tell you something i'm very frustrated because i have tried to say to republicans of the last 15 or 20 years we shouldn't be giving up on minority votes. these are folks that ought to be with us and they would be if we worked at it and we work at about by pandering.

we work it by building relationships and by showing our policies lift up all the people whatever their color, whatever their gender whatever their ethnicity. the reason i got the vote photos governors because i build relationships with people in the minority community. i give them positions they have never felt before. this would surprise people. minorities got more major executive level appointments in my administration a republican administration than the bill clinton administration and by the way more women held high-level executive positions in my administration than bill clinton's. maybe the republicans ought to pick somebody who has a real history of getting women and minorities to vote for them. who could that be? >> host: do you think republicans have in many cases given up the minority vote? >> guest: of course they have and it's absurd. why would they do that? minorities want the same thing

that anyone wants. people say how do he get the most for people who are black? let's talk about giving them power to choose the schools for their kids and their kids in the foot by making sure they have access to a decent education for their kids and a safe place for the kids to play and to give them an opportunity to one day live in a neighborhood they want to rather than some housing project that the government exiled them to. let's talk about the fact that what people in the minority committee wandered back to what i want, the ability to beam upwardly mobile and be fairly and to make sure the criminal justice system does not unfairly punish them with the symptoms that are distinctly different than if they were upper middle white class. those are some things we can talk about. >> host: in "god, guns, grits and gravy" you write quote i would rather eat barbecue with a

fishing friend than a wall street banker. i would rather sit with nancy to make up artist that an opera with european royalty. i'm more comfortable at walmart than at tiffany's. what do you want people to know about you? why are you laying it out this way? >> guest: i think sometimes people believe if you are in politics who are living in a world so unlike bears that your life your values are so different than theirs that you can't possibly understand them. over the past five or six years i've been blessed to make a better income than i ever have but even to this day i'm still the person that i was as a kid growing up in a red house on second street and hope arkansas whose parents between the two of them worked three jobs and barely made the rounds on that house. i'm still a kid who had to make

my choice because we couldn't afford a really cool stuff and i had to use my imagination. i've often said i've learned how to sit at the head table but i always have more in common with the people who are working in the kitchen than the ones sitting at the head table. i think people want someone to lead them understands them who respects them and to understand how hard they work and sometimes for how little they have to show for it. people don't want people at the top to necessarily be torn down. they just want the people at the top to know how hard the struggle is and to make a pathway so they can get to the next rung of the ladder. i'm convinced that's missing in a lot of the messaging. it's missing from the messaging of democrats as well. >> host: do you think 2016 is going to be one of those presidential years about personality or to think it's

going to be that pendulum swing away from what we have with barack obama and maybe more toward sort of the caretaker figure? describe that for me in 2016. guess i think it ultimately comes down to the sense of vision and leadership. it's not all ideological. it's personal. if they feel like they can connect to the person they don't necessarily agree with the person on every issue but they want to know does this person know people like me? does this person care about people like me? do i like this person? would i vote for them and invite them into my home? when you say it's personality it always is. a person may be brilliant and have all the right pedigrees but if you some likeable he's not going to be elected in america. he just won't.

i'm just convinced that it's a combination but ultimately part of the theme that i want to convey even as they rode in the book is to say to people if you are that person out there living in the heartland of america and you think nobody is pushing the cultural center, nobody was running entertainment or whatever it is they don't know me understanding of just want to say not only do we know who you are by the way you are not alone. there are millions of you and you matter and your views and your values aren't crazy. and you are not. if you read this book you will discover those good old boys are not so after all. >> host: republicans aveno have taken the senate and they control the house and they have

had eight years of president obama. will will this seal the deal in 2016 is there something wrong with the party? >> guest: there may be something wrong with the people who carried a message for us if that's the case. 60 not to be a great year for republicans. as is often the case when the democrats won in 2008 i remember the obituary for the republican party and in 2010 the republicans came soaring back into congress in 2012 everybody talked about what a big sweep it was for the democrats. it was only a sweep in the white house. congressionally republicans did fairly decently in 2012 and 2014 it was republican blowout. if we look at it it's not so much democrat republican republican. there should be a politics that i've held for a long time that mirrors and reflects the values that i share the book and that is this.

for the practitioners of politics and everything is horizontal. left, right, liberal conservative democrat republican it's all horizontal but for the people who decide the election and the people who don't live every day on politics elections are vertical. the way they vote is not left or right. they vote up or down and i ask is this person going to take us up or will this person take us down? will be make things better or make them worse? >> guest: i hope 2015 is a great year for republicans and i hope it's a great year for you and i hope in a couple months you will let me know what you decide. >> guest: i will do so. >> host: thanks so much governor huckabee. it was great talking to you.

walter isaacson will be booktv's guest on february 1 answer your questions live for three hours. next watch mr. isakson author of "the innovators" how a group of hackers, geniuses and geeks created the digital revolution discusses his book recently at the miami book fair. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. they gave me a script and they just gave me permission to deviate from it. so that's what i'm going to do. i first met walter isaacson a month ago in washington d.c. and he gave me a copy of his new book and i was really excited because i love coming home from trips for something for my wife. i got home and i was like honey i've got a copy of walter's new book because i knew she was a big fan. she says now we