Huckabee Slams Obama's DOMA Decision as 'Indefensible

Potential 2012 GOP presidential challenger Mike Huckabee denounced the Obama administration's decision to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) against court challenges Wednesday, calling the move "indefensible."

"I'm deeply disappointed," Huckabee said. "[The Obama administration is] clearly out of sync with the public."

Thirty-three states have passed ballot initiatives declaring that marriage should be a covenant between a man and a woman, he noted. "When the voters are so overwhelmingly [supportive of DOMA] what does the president believe he knows that citizens in all these other states don't?" Huckabee said.

DOMA, which was signed into law in 1996 by then-President Bill Clinton, prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. But Attorney General Eric Holder declared Wednesday that the administration considers DOMA unconstitutional and would no longer support it.

"It doesn't surprise me, but it disappoints me," the former Arkansas governor told Politico. Obama has sent a "pretty consistent message" to social conservatives, he added.

While praising President Obama for being a "role model as both a husband and a father," the Fox News host said he was concerned what kind of negative ramifications abandoning the law may have on American families.

"He's been a good husband and a good father," Huckabee said. "Unfortunately, his policies are not necessarily conducive to helping other people, in their own families, to be good husbands and good fathers."

The former governor also stressed that DOMA is a law with important economic consequences. "Two-thirds of the poverty in this country would be eliminated if the mothers of the children were married to the fathers," he said. "There is a quantified impact of broken families," he added. "[There is a] $300 billion 'dad deficit' in America every year...that's the amount of money that we spend as taxpayers to pick up the pieces because dads are derelict in their duties."

Huckabee was in Washington, D.C. Wednesday promoting his new book, "A Simple Government," which argues that traditional families help promote national economic stability.