CPAC: Huckabee Stands Up for the Social Conservatives

After blasting the bank bailouts for giving taxpayer money to "the geniuses that got us into this mess," Mike Hucakbee took a swipe at all the fiscal conservative who dismissed him during the GOP primary as some sort of populist for daring to suggest that there was a "Wall Street to Washington axis of power that was out of control" and wondering when they will all apologize to him, as his warnings "seem prophetic now."

He then called out those in the conservative movement who are trying to use the GOP's recent string of electoral losses and the economic crisis to throw the social conservatives under the bus, saying that social conservative's values are the key to creating a fiscally conservative government and that the GOP "didn't lose because of social conservatives," but rather because it became the party that forgot what it stood for.

He doesn't say anything particularly radical in this clip, but it is interesting to note that, when he ran for president, Huckabee didn't get much support from the Religious Right power-brokers in Washington DC and got absolutely no support from the limited government/fiscal conservative organizations.  It looks like, as he positions himself for a possible 2012 presidential bid, Huckabee has decided that the group he most needs to win over are the social conservative leaders ... an effort that will undoubtedly be complicated by the fact that, in his last book, he spent several pages calling those leaders a bunch of sell-outs:

Sarah Posner has more on Huckabee's speech.