There is an interesting and, at times, unintentionally hilarious, piece in today's Washington Times about the internecine conservative conflict over Mike Huckabee. The interesting part is that conservatives are genuinely divided about Huckabee, the one true social conservative in the race. The unintentionally hilarious part is that the conservatives who oppose him have serious delusions of grandeur. See, for example this:
Critics want to block consideration of Mr. Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, as a running mate for Rudolph W. Giuliani, the pro-choice former New York mayor, or for Mitt Romney, a Mormon and former Massachusetts governor.
So let me get this straight: Conservatives, having failed to block the pro-choice, gay-friendly former mayor of New York, or the recently pro-choice, gay-friendly, immigrant-friendly Mormon former governor of Massachusetts, from winning the GOP nomination, are all of a sudden going to block the anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage former governor of Arkansas from taking the second spot on the ticket? Granted, conservatives will have some leverage at that point, since Giuliani or Romney will be trying to reach out to them and unify the party if/when one of them wins the nomination. I could see them torpedoing, say, a pro-choice veep nominee. But this scenario seems utterly absurd to me.
At the very least, it completely confuses the complants against Giuliani/Romney and Huckabee. Most rank-and-file social conservatives love Huckabee. It's the supply-siders who are suspicious of him. But Giuliani/Romney have already more or less won over supply-siders. They won't be reaching out to supply-siders at that point; they'll be reaching out to social conservatives.
--Noam Scheiber