Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee autographs a book after speaking at a meeting of the Political Animals Club in Little Rock, Ark., Friday, Oct. 25, 2013.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's new book "God, Guns, Grits and Gravy" is slated for a Jan. 20 release.  Danny Johnston/AP

Mike Huckabee's new book "God, Guns, Grits and Gravy" is packed with plentiful references to each of those four cultural staples.

But the former Arkansas governor and Fox News talk show host also has a good deal to say about every other corner of American life, from Beyonce and Jay-Z, to the indignity of being frisked at the airport to his ongoing fisticuffs with a combative Washington political organization.

Huckabee's tome is set for release later this month, when he will embark on an eight-state tour to promote it at the same time he mulls a 2016 presidential campaign.

U.S. News obtained an early copy of the book. Here are the five best vignettes from it:

[READ: What Does Mike Huckabee Really Believe?]

1. "Jay-Z, The Pimp"

Huckabee hardly leaves a celebrity spared in his riffs on the corrosive effects of Hollywood culture, but he saves special scorn for hip-hop's most famous couple, Jay-Z and Beyonce. Huckabee compared the duo's 2013 Grammy Award performance to watching "foreplay."

"My reaction: Why? Beyonce is incredibly talented – gifted, in fact. She has an exceptional set of pipes and can actually sing. She is a terrific dancer – without the explicit moves best left for the privacy of her bedroom. Jay-Z is a very shrewd businessman, but I wonder: Does it occur to him that he is arguably crossing the line from husband to pimp by exploiting his wife as a sex object?"


2. "The claim that same-sex marriage is destroying society is actually greatly overstated."

Yes, that is a statement from Huckabee, the longtime foe of gay marriage who has threatened to leave the Republican Party if it abandons its opposition to it. He devotes an entire chapter to same-sex nuptials, laying out his Biblical-based rationale for his position as well as raising several hypothetical scenarios about the future of the institution of marriage. But he appears to pour cold water on the oft-cited conservative argument that allowing gay marriage would damage heterosexual unions.

"Marriage as an institution is not so much threatened by same-sex couples as it is by heterosexuals' increasing indifference to it."


But don't expect Huckabee to hop on the gay marriage train. He laments a court system that is forcing businesses to cater to gay weddings, even if violates their own religious beliefs. Given the current trend in judicial and public opinion, he floats the possibility of a future that expands marriage to more than two people.

"Shouldn't a bisexual be able to have both a male and female spouse? Wouldn't restricting that person access to both genders be denying the bisexual his or her marriage 'equality?'"


Huckabee still fears the slide toward marriage equality is devaluing the entire tradition, but he also concedes that the true impact of gay marriage is unknown.  

"When advocates of same-sex marriage say, 'What's the harm?' the honest reply is that at this point, we simply don't have enough reliable accumulated data to be able to say." 


[ALSO: Huckabee 2016 Could Be 2008 Redux]

3. The Club for Growth are "suicide bombers."
Huckabee quit his Fox News

The Club was a primary antagonist in Huckabee's 2008 foray, spending a million dollars against him in the early nominating states of Iowa and South Carolina. But Huckabee reveals that after that election, he sat down with the Club's leaders in Washington to find common ground.

"It didn't go well. The club staff couldn't give credible reasons for attacking the fact that revenue in Arkansas had to be raised in order to build roads; an initiative that had been approved by 80 percent of the voters, when both Mitt Romney in Massachusetts and Ronald Reagan in California had done the same as governors."

If Huckabee runs, the Club will be at the fore of his opposition again. And the relationship isn't likely to thaw given the way he describes them in his book. He refers to conservative groups like the Club that take aim at fellow Republicans as "suicide bombers." He even draws an analogy to Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army officer who opened fire on his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, killing 14 people.

"I really don't think Nidal Hasan is the role model the GOP wants to emulate. We should leave the kind of Sunni/Shiite fights for the real jihadists. The goal of conservatives should be to build up America – not blow up the Republican Party."    


4. John Edwards was right.

But he actually applauds Edwards, who admitted fathering a child of his mistress, for his description of the "Two Americas," one of prosperity and the other of poverty.

"Edwards and I would certainly disagree as to the remedies for this problem, but he did describe it well, despite the scorn he got from some of the finer tables at Republican gatherings, where they couldn't imagine anyone actually living in poverty in the United States. They certainly didn't know anyone like that, not personally. Their seeming indifference to the struggling class had far more to do with why Republicans lost elections than did awkward, inopportune or even indefensible comments from candidates."



5. Chapter 10: "Bend Over and Take It Like a Prisoner!"
"After years of his indignity, much of the flying public thinks little of it, and they usually don't complain. They just dutifully stand there, bend over, and take it like a prisoner."


While many on Twitter reacted with laughter or disbelief, some found it offensive.

Tags: 2016 presidential election, Mike Huckabee

David Catanese Senior Politics Writer

David Catanese is senior politics writer for U.S. News & World Report and founder of the blog The Run 2016. You can follow him on Twitter and send him feedback at dcatanese@usnews.com.

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