I certainly never set out to be this site's resident Huckabee apologist, as I radically disagree with a whole heap-load of his policies. Nonetheless, the more I hear about him, the more he seems the only GOP presidential who is neither (i) taken with insane views about national security and foreign policy (McCain; Giuliani); nor (ii) an empty suit (Romney; Thompson); nor (iii) politically irrelevant (Paul). I'm sincerely curious why the presidentially-dissatisfied conservatives around here aren't more interested in the guy.

phil,
I happen to like Huckabee a lot right now, given the alternatives. I think most Republicans' objections to him are (1) he's not an obvious "name" (something I've written about on this blog before) and (2) he doesn't bow down at the altar of the Club for Growth. He raised taxes in Arkansas (with voter approval for necessary infrastructure repairs) and occasionally sounds like a right-wing populist. Unless Douthat and Salaam are right about "Sam's Club Republicans" being the wave of the future, Huckabee's heresies from tax cut and "growth" orthodoxy will probably do him in, at least this time around.

These are all excellent points, Zach. Although Reagan was first an actor and then a politician, and Thompson had it the other way around, Reagan nevertheless carried more policy cred at this stage of his campaign. Take for instance Reagan's frequent intellectual discourse with the writers of National Review, or his eloquent defense of Goldwater's ideology on TV in numerous rallies. Thompson has likewise tried to engage segments of the conservative ideological brain trust (which, as you rightly note, is hard to define anyway), but Thompson's efforts pale in comparison to other certain candidates who came before him.

Ultimately, and sadly, the election of 2008 may once again come down to choosing the lesser of two evils. But it seems hard to imagine that a FDT choice would be worse than options in '00 and '04.

Read Fred Thompson's essays at TownHall. I'm very impressed with them (and him).

I like Huckabee, too. A Thompson-Huckabee or Huckabee-Thompson nomination would suit me just fine.

Snarky little comments like "Jowly Giant" won't endear me to your candidate either.

Could you perhaps provide links to a couple of the Thompson columns that you think show him off to best effect?

Btw, did anyone catch the GOP debate tonight? I heard there was an interesting Paul/Huckabee exchange, but I don't know anything about it.

On one of the major issues, Reagan didn't follow Goldwater ideology at all. Goldwater always pushed for drastic cuts in government spending. Reagan talked about it but emphasized growing the economy above shrinking government. While domestic spending as a percentage of GDP fell 2% under Reagan, that hardly matched his campaign rhetoric. I think Reagan's path set the way for the two Bush presidencies that followed. While Goldwater declared that deficit spending would "destroy the nation", Reagan claimed we could have both spending/deficits and tax cuts. By saying we could have both, he may have indirectly encouraged Democrats to push ahead
on domestic spending.
Whose ideology was Goldwater's anyway? His sister Carolyn said that she never recalled her brother reading a book and there are claims that Goldwater either never read any of "Conscience of a Conservative" ghost-written for him or that he only read the first 200 pages. That is not to say that Goldwater wasn't conservative, even libertarian, only that the expressed ideology came from supporters and advisers according to many, including the head of the Draft Goldwater Committee.

Although perhaps beside the point, I've always found it interesting that Reagan admired Goldwater but not vice versa.