Huckabbee as the Republican nominee? No one is laughing any more.

Here's what Jonathan Zasloff wrote January 18, 2007:

The Republicans aren't stupid, and they are still a tightly organized ship. They will look for someone who is right-wing but doesn't really seem like it. That's Huckabee, and given everyone else's flaws, they will, I believe, turn to him. The key is whether he can get funding.

If it happens, you heard it here first. The 2008 Republican nominee will be Mike Huckabee, and he will be a formidable challenger.

With Giuliani crashing, that leaves only Romney and Huckabee, and I really don't think the evangelical Right will vote for a Mormon. The amount of their displeasure with the non-Christian Mormon is indicated by the growing support for Huckabee.

Mark Kleiman posts that he thinks the Republicans are going towards Huckabbee, and provides this reasoning:

Huckabee's problem with the theocons has been that no one thought he could ever break out of the pack. Theocon leaders tried to bet on likely winners, and theocon voters were left without a candidate of their own. But now that Huckabee is moving up in the polls, why should the evangelical base of the party accept a Romney or a Thompson as their guy if there's a serious candidate who's actually one of them?

Huckabee's other problem has been with the money-cons. Grover Norquist and Steve Forbes hate him because he isn't a complete anti-tax fanatic, and actually went along with a tax increase when he was governor. They'd love to show that they can punish Huckabee for his heresy, thus increasing their capacity to mau-mau other Republican officeholders.

But people who define their politics in terms of being against taxation are generally (Ron Paul supporters excepted) somewhat more subject to reasoned argument than people who define their politics in terms of hating gays. The serious money people — both individual greedheads and the NAM/Chamber of Commerce businessfolks — aren't nearly as interested in theological purity on the tax question as they are in making sure that their taxes don't go up. For their purposes, any Republican is better than any Democrat, and if Huckabee can get more votes in a general election than Romney, they're not going to stick with Romney.

So it seems likely to me that Huckabee's rise will be self-reinforcing. Money is going to flood in to his campaign, and dispirited Republican voters will flock toward someone who doesn't look like an obvious loser.

I hadn't thought Huckabee was even capable of getting the nomination, but as Bill Clinton (the previous national politician from Hope, Ark.) said months ago, Huckabee comes from the story-telling tradition of Arkansas and is an excellent politician. He sure seems to have won the Florida debate last Wednesday.

However, the article written by Joe Klein shows that his very strength - that he does not come off as a right-wing crazy like Tom Tancredo - is a severe weakness in his effort to win the Republican nomination. So I'm not ready to cede Huckabee the Republican nomination. Still, I no longer write him off for the nomination as I had previously. Huckabee's greatest strength is the weakness of the entire Republican field of nominees, which together with his own strengths as a politician just might give him the nomination.

For the general election, he will run into people like me who would never, under any circumstances vote for or accept a priest, preacher, or other religious leader as President. I don't think that is just me, or some group of secular or religiously liberal Democrats that believe that. In his report from the Republican reactions to Wednesday's debate, he noted: Joe Klein noted:

They tended to like Huckabee a lot (60s to 80s anytime he opened his mouth), but afterwards most said he was too extreme, religiously, to be President. Really, they did.

I have to wonder if the weakness of the Republican candidates for the Presidential nomination is a symptom of the fragmentation of the previously highly unified and organized Republican Party. We'll know when the results of the primaries and caucuses begin to come in.

I wonder if a brokered Republican convention might actually be possible? Nah! That's too far out to seriously consider. Yet.

But so was a Giuliani flame-out and a Huckabee nomination a few weeks ago.