The White Stuff?

More on Mike Huckabee's media boomlet, which I detailed yesterday. The Weekly Standard says Huck should enjoy it while it lasts:

"The good news for Mike Huckabee is that he's been discovered by the national media. That's also the bad news. Now that the former Arkansas governor's success at the debates and in the latest round of Iowa caucus polling has established Huckabee as a possible contender, albeit a longshot, he'll have to pay the price of a serious candidate's media examination. Disbelief in Darwinism, support for a semi-baked consumption tax scheme as a replacement for the income tax, and a wobbly fiscal record as governor are a few of the more controversial aspects of Huckabee's thin record that soon will be subjected to strict scrutiny."

At Power Line, Paul Mirengoff stays off the bandwagon:

"Consider me skeptical. Mike Huckabee is an attractive candidate who may make a nice run. But it's extremely difficult to see him as the Republican nominee. To accomplish this, he would have to surge past Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney as the first choice of hard-core Republican conservatives. Thompson and Romney both have their weaknesses, but Thompson is improving on the campaign trail, and Romney is an effective candidate with vast resources and a head-start in the key early states.

"Huckabee, by contrast, has very little money, and possesses limited stature and name recognition. Moreover, many hard-core conservatives doubt his bona fides as a fiscal conservative and/or as a potential leader of the war on terror. The problem isn't just that Huckabee makes statements like 'we broke Iraq' and seems to lack a strong sense of urgency when it comes to Iraq It's more that he simply doesn't come across as the man one would want to lead this country in a global war.

"[John] McCain is a different matter. He oozes leadership ability, and neither his toughness nor his name recognition is in doubt. Indeed, a year or so ago, many folks (albeit mostly ones who didn't understand conservatives very well) viewed him as the front-runner. Although he has lost that status, he remains arguably the candidate with the most potential to defeat Hillary Clinton.

"Yet McCain is still distrusted by many conservatives who believe (perhaps not without reason) that he has thumbed his nose at us too many times."

Is National Review officially lining up behind McCain? First Kate O'Beirne urges a second look, and now Ramesh Ponnuru argues:

"Almost all of the features that hurt him in the primaries -- from his willingness to break with his party to his campaign-finance legislation to his belief that global warming is a real problem -- would help him in the general election. Even at this stage of the campaign, he is doing slightly better than Giuliani in polls testing the Republican candidates against Hillary Clinton . . .

"My own view is that McCain would be the strongest general-election candidate the Republicans could put up next year. He is solid on almost all of the important issues: the war, judges, entitlements, abortion, trade. . . . Even on taxes, he has righted himself. He voted against the Bush tax cuts, but he has never voted to raise income taxes and, this spring, ruled out any such move in an interview with me . . .

"Sometimes people remember that they dislike someone even when they have forgotten what inspired their dislike. I think something like this has happened to McCain: His biggest problem with conservatives isn't that they have had so many disagreements, but that they have a bad impression of him. If he is to win the nomination, he needs to do something to make them take a fresh look.

"I think he should do something dramatic: Renounce ambition for a second term. He should say that he intends not just to win the presidency but to win a mandate for the few big things he really wants to accomplish: fixing entitlements and beating terrorists. A one-term limit would instantly separate McCain from the pack, making the other Republican contenders look self-interested by comparison. Concentrating on issues such as terrorism and entitlements would also play to his strengths with conservatives, and distract attention from his weaknesses."