ROD DREHER ON MIKE HUCKABEE:

I don’t want to overdo this. I think it’s perfectly fine to be worried about Huckabee’s vagueness, and his unpreparedness. I’m worried about these things too, which is a big reason why I can’t say I’d vote for him (though honestly, any Republican who finds himself worked up over Huckabee’s lack of knowledge about foreign affairs, say, should ask himself if he felt the same way about Gov. Bush in 1999 and 2000, and if not, why not). Still, it’s hard to shake the belief that the real problem with Mike Huckabee, as far as the establishment is concerned, is that he’s not clubbable.

I’d say just the opposite. I think that Huckabee has gotten a lot of mileage out of being a likable guy. I liked him a lot too when we talked to him. Now that he’s moved up in the polls, people are starting to give him the kind of scrutiny that the Giulianis and McCains have been getting all along, and his positions aren’t holding up well. As for why people didn’t feel that way about Bush in 1999, that’s easy — it was because America was still taking a holiday from history, and foreign affairs and national security didn’t seem that important. Maybe we’ve learned something since then. Had we looked at things in 2000 as we do now, they might have turned out differently.