Huckabee running to represent the unrepresented

DES MOINES - What a difference eight years makes.

'Eight years ago at this point, I'd come to a Pizza Ranch, we'd buy one large cheese pizza and we'd feed everybody there and have leftovers,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee joked to about 100 people at the Cedar Rapids Pizza Ranch Thursday afternoon.

The crowd isn't the only thing that's different this time around for Huckabee, who again is seeking the GOP presidential nomination.

'We're better organized. We're going to be better funded,” he told reporters. And it hasn't hurt that Huckabee has spent 6.5 years on Fox New television and radio.

'I'm also a candidate that people know,” he said. 'They didn't know me eight years ago. I had to spell my name.”

What hasn't changed is Huckabee's folksy, self-deprecating humor and his vision of representing the 'people who are sweating through their clothes every day, working hard, lifting heavy things for a living.”

That's because the country is governed by 'a whole political ruling class that is totally disconnected.”

'There is power, money and influence that exists between what I sometimes call the Washington-to-Wall Street axis of power, a corridor of power in which the donor class feeds the political class which in turn dances to the tune of the donor class and each are doing the other a favor,” Huckabee said.

That leaves a 'big chunk” of American - 'people who work hard, who feel like Washington and the power and the influence that is congregated there is completely disconnected from them” -- feeling unrepresented, according to Huckabee.

'These are the people who pay the taxes, who feed the country, who fuel the country, who fight for the country and they're the people who are being forgotten,” he said.

His prescription is to elect a president from the heartland of America, someone who will go to Washington and say 'Let's act on behalf of the people of this country rather than simply act on behalf on the donor class,” Huckabee said. 'Let's give people like the ones gathered in this Pizza Ranch today someone who not only speaks to them, but speaks for them.”