Fun While It Lasted

Why does all this remind me of high school?

NYT columnist Gail Collins points to Huck's breakthrough endorsement from Chuck Norris:

"The question we want to consider today is why he is virtually the only prominent name backing Huckabee, who is this season's likable presidential candidate. This is the venerable, if not particularly rewarding role once held by Morris Udall and John McCain2000, and it involves having reporters appreciate you much more than the politicians and donors do.

"Like Bill Clinton, Huckabee was born in a town called Hope and became a pretty good governor of a state that doesn't make it all that easy. (Plus, you have to love the fact that he lived for a while in a mobile home on the Arkansas Statehouse grounds.) He's extremely inclusive, defending minorities who are illegal immigrants as well as the ones registered to vote. He can be both funny and convincing on the stump.

"On the downside, I think he'd be a terrible president. He doesn't know beans about foreign affairs, he wants to replace the income tax with a national sales tax, and his positions on social issues are far to the right of the general populace. But why aren't the social conservatives rallying around this guy? Unlike any of the major candidates, he's still on his first wife and first position on abortion. Once we start getting into the inevitable personal stories of redemption, Americans would have a much better time listening to Huckabee tell how he lost 110 pounds than sitting through Rudy's 9/11 story again or looking at pictures of Mitt's 10 grandchildren.

"Yet the leaders of the Values Voters keep waiting for one of the top-tier candidates to change -- a strategy that any woman who's had an unsatisfactory boyfriend could warn them is never going to pan out."

More media attention has its downside, of course, as this Dick Polman posting makes clear:

"In the spirit of broadcast pioneer Art Linkletter, who once authored a book entitled Kids Say the Darndest Things, I offer today's post, Grownups Say the Dumbest Things . . .

"Mike Huckabee, GOP presidential candidate. I mentioned on Monday that he might be poised to ride a boomlet into the Iowa caucuses, in part because he is an effective communicator and an ordained Baptist preacher who is sincerely in sync with the party's religious conservatives. Nevertheless, in a Republican debate on Sunday night, his fervor got in the way of his facts.

"At one point, he said, 'When our founding fathers put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, those 56 brave people, most of whom, by the way, were clergymen, they said that we have certain inalienable rights given to us by our creator, and among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, life being one of them . . . '

"Really? 'Most' of the Declaration signers were clergymen? . . . In the reality-based community, 'most' is defined as a majority. This would mean, if Huckabee is using the reality-based definition, that, at minimum, 29 signers were clergymen. Here's the problem, however: All available evidence indicates that, at maximum, the actual number was . . . four."

Ever wonder what impact the explosion of political blogs is having on the campaign as more and more MSM types get into writing online? Here's a penetrating look at the subject by . . . the author of this blog.