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Huckabee says health care not in his GOP speech, CVN

Huckabee says health care not in his GOP speech

By ANDREW DeMILLO

Published September 2, 2008 at 1:44 p.m.
Updated September 2, 2008 at 2:23 p.m.

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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) _ Mike Huckabee said Tuesday he doesn't know when or whether he'll still speak at the storm-abbreviated Republican National Convention. If he does talk, it won't be about one of his favorite pet issues — health care.

The former Arkansas governor, who abandoned his White House bid in March, said his health care remarks were cut for time restrictions. Huckabee was originally slated to speak Tuesday night, but that has been postponed after Hurricane Gustav upended the week's activities.

"The section on that was excised out because I only had 1,252 words in it, so the speech gurus said why don't you take this out and keep this in," Huckabee said at a forum on obesity in downtown St. Paul. "So I started out with a speech that's twice as long as what I'm going to end up giving."

Huckabee said he didn't think health care received enough attention during the coverage of the presidential contest among Republicans, and blamed reporters and debate moderators for not asking enough questions about the topic.

"I wish I could get some attention to this. I tried on the campaign trail. I desperately tried," Huckabee said. "As a candidate, I focused on this and put it in every speech, but you know what? The first nine debates we had with Republican candidates, you know how many health care questions we had? One."

Huckabee joined a fellow former GOP rival for the Republican nomination, former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, to talk about ways to address obesity, particularly among children.

"This is the one issue we can get bipartisan support on," Thompson said during the forum.

Moderated by "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl, the forum was sponsored by the Obesity Society, which also held a similar forum at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Huckabee told reporters after the forum that he wasn't bothered by convention organizers deleting the portion of his talk on health care.

"It's not a problem with the party. It's a problem with the clock," Huckabee told reporters. "When you've got a limited number of minutes and that means a limited number of words, there are only so many things you can get in. It's just a matter of what you can get in and what you can't."

Dubbed by Stahl as "Mr. Slim," Huckabee earned a level of fame by losing more than 100 pounds and becoming an enthusiastic fitness advocate during his final years in office.

Stahl indicated that he may step into another national spotlight, telling the former governor during the forum that she'd like to interview him for a piece on childhood obesity. Huckabee was skeptical of the idea.

"When '60 Minutes' shows up on your doorstep, it's not good," he said.