There's a lot of great commentary on the blog today about Mike Huckabee. There are two things, though, that I think we have to deal with which we haven't fully addressed. First, Huckabee could easily be the nominee (at least one poll has now shown him leading in Iowa and another shows him within striking distance in South Carolina). He stands to inherit pretty much all of Thompson's support and possibly a good deal of Romney's. Some people have suggested he doesn't have enough of an organization to go beyond the January votes, but he's gotten this far with almost no money and he'll presumably raise a decent amount if he starts winning primaries. It could be that, as Kevin Drum says, hating unions is more important than hating gays, but, while that may be true in general, I think the specific dynamics of this race make Huckabee very viable. Second, he's potentially the strongest Republican candidate because he's just so gosh darn nice. The public now tends to see Republicans as dishonest, angry, and violent and I think that, as the more they get to know Giuliani(the other potentially strong Republican candidate) the more he'll fit into that image. Huckabee is the anti-Giuliani in almost every respect. His foreign policy views seem pretty moderate--he's still peddling a we-broke-it-so-we-have-to-fix-it argument on Iraq, but he doesn't seem keen to invade anyone else--and the club for growth hates him. Also he hasn't, to my knowledge, used any government agencies to finance any affairs. Moreover, Huckabee is just nice. I mean I like the guy even though he stands for all the things I'm against and so I can only imagine what most Americans would think. Of course I'd much rather have Huckabee as president than Giuliani, but we should still be afraid of him because of the revitalizing effect he could have on the Republican party. --Sam Boyd
