The Huckabee Double Bind

Were it not for the Bhutto assassination, I think this hit piece on Mike Huckabee would have been a pretty big story, and it still might be. The fact that the Huck is still giving paid speeches for up to $25,000 while running for President is at the least unseemly. What's more, his reply that "unlike people who are independently wealthy, if I don’t work, I don’t eat,” when he's getting $25 grand per speech, and after a litany of stories about loads of gifts and perks he took while Governor of Arkansas, is just out of touch.

Huckabee is clearly getting a mess of oppo research thrown his way by those who control the money strings in the Republican Party and who fear his populist rhetoric. He's so short on cash that he had to leave Iowa a week before the caucuses to raise money in Florida. And now Novakula is spreading that the insiders have drifted to John McCain as the "last man standing" to challenge the Huckabee campaign.

And this of course shows what a bind the GOP is in with this nomination. Either the torrent of negative ads and information stops Huckabee, at which point his social conservative base, which is already none too happy with getting nothing but lip service from the party all these years, gets so depressed that they either stay home in November or back a Judge Roy Moore-type third-party candidate; or, Huckabee prevails, and the GOP winds up with a candidate completely at odds with major portions of the rest of its base, particularly the econocons and neocons.

We've been expecting this train wreck for some time, and Huckabee became the match that lit the tinderbox. We even see these "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios within the Huckabee campaign itself.

Hispanic activists who viewed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as a voice of moderation on illegal immigration say they've been taken aback by the hard-line stance he's adopted as a presidential candidate.

While governor, Huckabee gained favor with Hispanic leaders by denouncing a high-profile federal immigration raid and suggesting some anti-illegal immigration measures were driven by racism. He advocated making children of illegal immigrants eligible for college scholarships.

Huckabee's Republican presidential rivals have tried to make an issue of the scholarship plan, portraying him as soft on illegal immigration, an important issue for many GOP voters.

Huckabee responded this month by unveiling a plan to seal the Mexican border, hire more agents to patrol it and make illegal immigrants go home before they could apply to return to this country.

He's also touted the support for his candidacy of the founder of the Minuteman Project, an anti-illegal immigration group whose volunteers watch the Mexican border.

Though he still defends the scholarship provision, Huckabee's new tone bothers Hispanic leaders like Carlos Cervantes, the Arkansas director of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

"He's trying to be tougher on immigration than we've ever seen him before," Cervantes said. "That's kind of worrisome now. He was willing to work with the communities. I don't see that he's willing to work with us now."

The Republican coalition isn't likely to survive this Presidential election. I've seen more "I'll never vote for x" stories on the right than ever before. In a sense, Mike Huckabee might be the greatest gift progressives have received in a generation.