So here’s the best evidence yet of the much-discussed possibility that Mike Huckabee could, despite his money problems, emerge as a viable Republican presidential candidate: he’s getting blasted from the Right. The legendary hard-right activist and direct mail wizard Richard Viguerie has issued a fatwah attacking Huckabee as a “wishy-washy Republican”‘ who is unreliable on both economic and cultural issues.
This is interesting in part because Viguerie might have been expected to Like Mike. Viguerie published an article in The Washington Monthly a year ago that advocated a Republican defeat in 2006 as the best possible tonic for the conservative troops that had been ignored in the Bush-DeLay Washington Republican Establishment. As the only presidential candidate (this side of Ron Paul) willing and able to challenge that establishment, Huckabee has some real conservative insurgent street cred. But his sins of omission and commission as Governor of Arkansas–particularly his “compassionate conservative” tendencies–apparently make him unacceptable, to Viguerie at least, as a vehicle for a resurgance of the heartland Right.