Huckabee says health care not in his GOP speech (UALR Public Radio) - 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.

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