MIKE HUCKABEE BLASTS CPAC: “CPAC has becoming increasingly more libertarian and less Republican over the last years, one of the reasons I didn’t go this year.” He says that like it’s a bad thing. It’s certainly true that his brand of big-government conservatism is in bad odor these days.

UPDATE: Flashback: Helen and I ask Mike Huckabee what he’s got against libertarians. It starts about 7 minutes in. When Huckabee talked about looking good in a teddy, I thought he might be trending libertarian, but it was not to be . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

It’s interesting that Huckabee et al. are still seeing the Tea Party folks in a zero-sum power-struggle with the right, rather than as an attempt to make common cause for the small government stuff upon which the social right and the libertarians and the pro-biz folks all agree. Seems as if the penny hasn’t quite dropped that a whole bunch of us are as worried about a nanny state for the soul as we are about a nanny state for the body, but that we’d happily defer a debate on the former for action against the latter.

Yes, I think Huckabee’s missing the big picture here.