Mike Huckabee: The Realist as Goofball

Everyone's bored with the GOP field and starting to give former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee a look, but he's got one big weakness: No foreign policy cred. He sounds rock-solid when he talks about unions or taxes or faith (rock-solid and sometimes full of it), but drippy when he talks about Iran. So a fan pointed Rich Lowry to this Huckabee foreign policy address. Spot the seriousness!

[T]o say that American foreign policy needs a change in tone or attitude, or an opening up and reaching out, is obviously saying that O.J. Simpson might've had a bad month.

On finding a long-term energy solution:

Now, I know there are those who will say, that'll take 20 years. Well, I compare the lackadaisical pace of work similar to when you bring your car in for service, with the urgent, concentrated effort made when a NASCAR driver pulls up for a pit stop. We've got to view becoming energy independent like a pit stop, where every second counts. Not like dropping off the family station wagon for Gomer and Goober to work on when they can get around to it.

As the man might say (with a different emphasis): Jesus Christ. Gomer and Goober? Are those Dickie Flatt's embarrassing cousins, the guys who show up four hours late to the barbeque stinking like apple wine?

I was all ready to dismiss Huckabee's speech but underneath some jokes and creaky stuff about how Islamists can't understand Americans because we respect life, there's this about Iran.

The administration has quite properly said that it will not take the military option for Iran off the table. Neither would I. But if we don't put some other options on the table, eventually the military option becomes the only viable one. Right now, we're proceeding down only one track with Iran: armed confrontation. Nothing would make Osama bin Laden happier. He would welcome war between the United States and Iran, his two biggest enemies. I'd try to do anything that would avoid brightening bin Laden's day… The difference in America's mission is that al Qaeda must be
destroyed as a movement, while Iran just has to be contained as a nation.

Is that the most sensible thing a top-tier GOP candidate has said about this all year? Yeah, probably. If Huckabee rises and becomes a possible giant-killer in Iowa (as the political press prays he will), I'd like to hear the other frontrunning campaigns respond to this. Knowing them, they might just call him naive and go back to promising never to divide Jerusalem.