There’s been some play in the blogosphere over this article about Mike Huckabee. In it, John Fund essentially says that Huckabee is not all that conservative:

Nor am I alone. Betsy Hagan, Arkansas director of the conservative Eagle Forum and a key backer of his early runs for office, was once “his No. 1 fan.” She was bitterly disappointed with his record. “He was pro-life and pro-gun, but otherwise a liberal,” she says. “Just like Bill Clinton he will charm you, but don’t be surprised if he takes a completely different turn in office.”

Of course you could probably find just about any politician with disillusioned former backers that now criticize the person they once backed. Unfortunately Fund doesn’t take the time to fully delve into Huckabee’s candidacy, relying more on accusations of inconsistent conservatism by critics. This is fairly typical of media types.

I say that it is unfortunate that Fund doesn’t spend more time analyzing Huckabee’s candidacy because there are legitimate concerns that run deeper than the name calling that the media relishes. Fund lists a few of these:

Many Huckabee supporters have told me their man should be judged by what he’s saying on the campaign trail today. Fair enough. Mr. Huckabee was the only GOP candidate to refuse to endorse President Bush’s veto of the Democrats’ bill to vastly expand the Schip health-care program. Only he and John McCain have endorsed the discredited cap-and-trade system to limit global-warming emissions that has proved a fiasco in Europe.

Certainly all these things should cause conservatives to pause at endorsing Mike Huckabee. The thing that strikes me most is how willing Huckabee is to deviate from principles of conservative economics. He apparently has few qualms about raising taxes and spending. Either one of these is dangerous enough for our economy and our freedoms. Both of them together spell immense trouble for our nation. It’s one of the biggest reasons we oppose Democrats, because of their tax and spend habits. Huckabee seems not to be much of an improvement in that area.

In many ways Huckabee is the bizarro-Giuliani: fiscally moderate to liberal, moderate on foreign policy, and staunchly conservative on social issues. In the same way that Giuliani’s stool fails for lack of a third leg, Huckabee’s stool also falls over for lack of a conservative fiscal leg. But don’t take my word for it, look at the immense amount of studying that the Club for Growth has put out on Huckabee. This, just out yesterday, is the latest article put out by Pat Toomey, President of CoG, on Huckabee:

During Huckabee’s tenure as governor, the average Arkansan’s tax burden increased 47 percent, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. A dyed-in-blue tax hiker, Huckabee supported raising sales taxes, gas taxes, grocery taxes, even nursing home bed taxes. He virulently opposed a congressional moratorium on taxing Internet access, and sat on the sidelines while his Democratic legislature pushed the largest tax hike in Arkansas history into law. What’s more, on his watch, and frequently at his behest, state spending increased by 50 percent, more than double the rate of inflation, and the number of state government workers rose by 20 percent.

All the more reason to support Mitt Romney, the only complete candidate in the field.

This from Andrew Stuttaford over at the Corner:

Mike Huckabee, it seems, has problems with history as well as science. The St. Petersburg Times takes issue with the candidate’s claim that most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were “clergymen.” Uh, no:

Only one of the 56 was an active clergyman, and that was John Witherspoon. Witherspoon was a Presbyterian minister and president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). A few more of the signers were former clergymen, though it’s a little unclear just how many. The conservative Heritage Foundation said two other signers were former clergymen. The religion web site Adherents.com said four signers of the declaration were current or former full-time preachers. But everyone agrees only Witherspoon was an active minister when he signed the Declaration of Independence.

Now, “gotcha” can be a tedious, pedantic game, but this particular error is, I think, quite revealing of the way in which Mike Huckabee sees this country. You can like that vision, or not, but you cannot deny it.

Kudos to Mike Huckabee who gave an excellent speech and was able to win the local straw poll. Congrats to Mitt for winning the overall straw poll with online savvy.

Couple of thoughts here:

1. Here’s a quick genesis of how things happened from the Romney side of things. Over a week ago the Romney camp caught wind that over 1000 people had already voted in the straw poll. I guess Romney can count better than the other candidates (j/k) and quickly realized that this thing was going to be won online. In short: if 2500 people were attending the straw poll and 1000 people had already voted… anyone who didn’t make an online showing would lose. They called up supporters and asked them to email their personal lists about the opportunity. We held the news from our blogs until Thursday night so as not to tip the other candidates (who apparently didn’t put 2 and 2 together – again j/k) and the race was off.
2. 600 attendees actually voted online…. so the 952 votes is misleading. I’m not saying Romney won… but the seeming on-site rout for Huckabee needs a little context.
3. The big losers as Erick and Politico point out are Fred and Rudy. The former came in behind Romney and the later came in second. Second, that is, in the least acceptable candidate group.
4. Talking to numerous people at the convention… the flurry of Romney endorsements didn ‘tnot go unnoticed. Many people came up to me asking numerous questions about Mitt. At one point a prominent radio host asked me to come over and explain where Mitt stands on stem cell research to another fellow news maker.

5. Here’s a better contextual look at why Huckabee is a great guy… but won’t be able to make it happen:

(note: legend got cut off on the graphic. All you need to know is this. Huckabee is the small almost non-existent line at the bottom of the graph.