Ruffini is right. I love Huckabee and like McCain, and would like to point out how Huck's rise led to the McCain revival. Huckabee took away the inevitability of Romney's early state wins by challenging him in Iowa. This brought out Romney's petty attacks and allowed McCain to gain traction against Romney in New Hampshire. It forced Romney to make errors. Then Romney foolishly attacked McCain-a real hero-and just looks like the mean and desperate for power candidate that he is.

Now Huckabee is not as known as McCain so Romney's attacks in Iowa have been more effective than his New Hampshire attacks on McCain. However, it appears that Huckabee will still win, which will further deflate Romney in New Hampshire and allow McCain to win easier. With two losses in the early states that he has spent millions in and led for months, hopefully Huckabee in Iowa and McCain in New Hampshire can nail shut the Romney coffin and give his unprincipled politics a final resting place for this election cycle! Romney never really had a chance-thank God.

David Brooks puts another nail in the coffin of Romney's failed attempts. He has good points: 1) Romney is a manager, not an entrepreneur (see venture "capital" firms for more on this difference). 2) He performs extremely poor with minorities and youths.

Lastly Brooks elequently explains what I poorly attempted to show Julie Ponzi, that is that the Republicans cannot win merely with the Reagan coalition. The Reagan coalition is a thing of nearly 30 years ago, and the country has changed much. The fact is that the conservative Democrats of the 80s are consistent GOPers today, yet we still don't have a majority because of fundamental shifts among the wealthy, the upper middle class, and increasing percentages of minority voters (all of these changes have increased the base of the Democratic vote since 1980). Therefore for a Republican to win he needs to be more than Reagan and appeal to one of these new groups. That is exactly what Bush did with his huge push for increasing minority votes especially among Hispanics. He had to expand on the Reagan Democrat, and still barely won.

Anyway this adds up to Mike Huckabee. Note this awesome story from The Hill. Huckabee has the ability to appeal to the minority votes and the ability to maximize conservative turnout. Any winning ticket for the GOP must include Huckabee, preferably on top. I know some people don't think he can win and don't want him to win because they put faith in money and the establishment. Faith in the people and their conservative passions is what Huckabee understands and is exactly why he can win despite all.

For those unreasonably concerned with Huckabee's Christianity (haven't all our Presidents been Christians?) Rousseau offers this: "I will not perhaps reason so fluently about the issue as a surgeon, but I will certainly be in better faith, and my zeal will deceive me less than his avarice." Huckabee's faith (which he shares with the majority of Americans) will deceive him less than the other candidates' greedy grabs at power.