These past couple of weeks, I’ve been of two minds about Mike Huckabee. Mind number one: We’ve all been too hard on him. As conservatives, we’re meant to display a certain humility before the judgment of the voters, I reasoned, and the good people of Iowa have seen one whole heck of a lot more of Mike Huckabee (and of Mitt Romney) than has any blogger on this happy Corner (with the single exception of Byron York). And if Iowa Republicans like what they see in Huckabee, we ought to make good and sure we understand just what that is before permitting ourselves too terribly many denigrating snickers at his expense.
That, as I say, is mind number one. Mind number two? That Huckabee deserves all the scorn we can possibly heap upon him. His attack on President Bush in Foreign Affairs—he denounced the administration’s “arrogant bunker mentality”—amounts to something like gross political stupidity. Polls indicate that the President retains the support, even today, of something like three-quarters of Republicans. Still more to the point, as Victor Davis Hanson has demonstrated elsewhere on NRO, we now appear to be winning—winning—in Iraq. Attack a President who is a fellow Republican, popular with the base, and, it would increasingly appear, victorious abroad? C’est pire qu’un crime. C’est une faute.
Mind number one, and mind number two. Mind number two is pulling ahead.