From my hotel lobby in Altoona, Iowa, I just watched From my hotel lobby in Altoona, Iowa, I just watched Mike Huckabee appear on the Jay Leno Show, for which he crossed a Writer's Guild picket line. Huckabee was light and funny and charming. And nutty. He talked up his crazy consumption tax plan -- calling it "progressive" -- and insisted that it would actually eliminate the black market, not expand it. Someone's gotta explain that one to me. Even "pimps" and "drug dealers" would have to pay a 24 percent tax on everything they buy, Huckabee said ecstatically. Leno replied, "Well, there must be some honest work in America." Huckabee closed by comparing himself to Barack Obama, saying they both hoped to take American beyond the left-right spectrum and toward a "vertical" politics, moving the country "up." Is Huckabee for real? If he wants to be the Republican nominee, he ought to stop sucking up to his potential general election rival. What's his strategy here? --Dana Goldstein
