Carter’s basic point is that many of the criticisms my colleagues lodge against Huckabee also apply, to some degree, to Mitt Romney. (They apply to other candidates, too, but Carter seems to think that our editorial reflects a hidden pro-Romney agenda. I don’t know if I can prove it to a suspicious outsider’s satisfaction, but I am quite sure this is not the case.) That’s true, but the differences of degree are not trivial.

A lot of free-trading politicians, for example, including Huckabee and Romney, use the rhetoric of “fair trade.” But in Carter’s cited example, Romney is talking about new initiatives to liberalize trade. Huckabee, on the other hand, was complaining that current and past administrations had given away the store in trade negotiations.

It’s disappointing that Romney has come out against cutting farm subsidies–and until I read Carter’s post, I hadn’t known that. And nobody but McCain and, I suppose, Ron Paul is willing to take on ethanol subsidies. But I read Huckabee’s position paper on the subject as favoring an increase in subsidies. (He supports “a fully-funded crop insurance program,” and wants the government to encourage people to enter and stay in farming.)

On immigration, the difference isn’t one of degree but timing. Carter is correct that Romney supported a path to citizenship in the past, and made a foolish argument for it. I’m sure we’d be criticizing him for it if that were still his position, just as we have praised Thompson for taking a realistic approach to shrinking the illegal-immigrant population. I hope Huckabee moves over to the Romney camp, or even better the Thompson camp, on this issue too.

More in a minute.