Janet Huckabee speaks out
Posted: Thursday, November 15, 2007 10:11 AM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC's Lauren Appelbaum
Janet Huckabee, wife of presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, stumped for her husband in South Carolina yesterday. She described to a group of supporters how she plays a support role for her husband and said policy questions were "off-limits."
"If it's a policy question or something you want to know that Mike stands on, you're probably going to have to ask him," she said at a First Ladies Tea in the South Carolina Governors' Mansion. "Because that's just not where I am. That's not what I'm doing. I'm asking to be your First Lady of the country."
In an interview after the event, Huckabee further explained her position on being First Lady. "I leave the policy up to my husband,” she said. “Not that I'm afraid of it, but I wasn't elected to do that. I think he is very capable of leading this country and I think he would be the one that would be the policy maker in our family."
Running for President is a family affair for the Huckabees. Janet Huckabee has taken a leave of absence from her job and her four children (including an in-law) are all working on the campaign. Their eldest son spearheads the blogging for the campaign while their middle child runs the TeamHuckabee Web site. Their daughter-in-law, who is a lawyer, is on the legal team while their daughter is living in Iowa through the caucus.
"I cannot imagine taking something this huge and a task this large without your family's support," she said, possibly offering a dig toward Giuliani. "I just can't imagine coming home to non-supportive family members."
When Janet Huckabee opened the floor for questions, the first questioner asked about new polling that shows Huckabee narrowly trailing Romney in Iowa for second place.
"In Iowa?!?" Huckabee said to laughter. "Thank you for asking. They're going to think that question was planted. We don't do any planted questions."
She offered more during the interview, telling the reporter her husband doesn't have to win the state. "Just placing in at least one of the top three positions is very good," she said. "My gut feeling is we're going to do better than that. And I would not be surprised at all if we won Iowa. The people there are committed; they'll walk through snow to vote. That's the ones you want, not the ones that are fair-weather friends but the ones who are truly, truly committed to do whatever it takes to get people to the polls to vote."
Janet Huckabee also admitted she is "very disappointed" in the National Right to Life's decision to endorse Thompson over her husband. "Mike has been a true Right to Life person,” she said. “He's marched in the Right to Life parades for 13 years. He's just been a big supporter pro-life legislation, and it was disappointing to him."
"God's a big God," Huckabee continued. "If he wants us to continue to go and to fight the giants, we'll do that. You remember Jesus feeding the 5,000 with two fishes and five loaves. So, we're multiplying our money. Every dollar spends like a thousand and every prayer we get is like a million bucks."
She said she would devote part of her time as First Lady to working on better personal preparedness for natural emergencies and for more affordable housing. She let her supporters know a little more about her -- letting them know about her interest in the military. As First Lady of Arkansas, she fired a grenade launcher (hitting the target two out of three times) and jumped out of an airplane.
"It helps to understand a little bit about what they do if I can experience that," she said. "And I appreciate it far more."
Mike Huckabee is often asked if he would accept the job of vice president, and his wife faced the same question. "We're not looking there," she said. "That's a long way down the road. ... I like to think we have a stealth operation. We're out there. We're underground. We're grassroots and the people are coming out and supporting our message.
