Huckabee Mania

I can't say that I really know anything about Mike Huckabee. It strikes me, though, that he's the kind of person I would expect to see win a Republican nomination -- a white Protestant conservative Republican governor who's never deliberately antagonized conservative leaders and also doesn't seem to be a weirdo. Michael Scherer bothered to learn some facts and write the profile for Salon. He says Huckabee's charming. His political approach:

"If I really know what it means to follow Jesus, it means no kid goes hungry tonight," he said, at one stop in Iowa. "It means no wife gets the daylights beat out of her by some alcoholic abusive husband. It means no kid lives in a neighborhood where he is scared to death of some child predator that is going to pick him up and carry him off. It means not one single elderly person has to make the choice between food or medicine." Unlike former Sen. Rick Santorum or Sen. Sam Brownback, Huckabee does not spend time pounding the pulpit over baby murder and sodomy. He's a self-styled "compassionate conservative," a poll-tested concept that worked once before. But while President Bush discarded the slogan like a prom queen's sash, Huckabee wants to convince America that he is the real deal.

Huckabee is, obviously, a longshot. The odds favor Giuliani and McCain. Nevertheless, over the long haul I think it's clear that the Huckabee approach -- marrying religious traditionalism with some kind of revived effort to cope with domestic social policy problems -- is more promising for Republicans than the tax cuts and war platform of a Giuliani.