In an interview with the Quad-City Times yesterday, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee tried to make excuses for his lack of foreign policy knowledge and his ignorance on the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. He compared the NIE to gossip about Britney Spears, saying he just can’t “keep up with every single thing“:

The point I’m trying to make is that, on the campaign trail, nobody’s going to be able, if they’ve been campaigning as hard as we have been, to keep up with every single thing, from what happened to Britney last night to who won “Dancing with the Stars.”

Presumably, presidential candidates are supposed to keep track of foreign policy developments more closely than celebrity gossip. But when asked about the NIE on Dec. 4 — a day after the report was released — Huckabee said he wasn’t even aware of it. Days later, Huckabee defended his gaffe by misrepresenting the timeline of his mistake, quipping that the “report was released at 10:00 in the morning, the president hadn’t seen it in four years and I’m supposed to see it four hours later.”

In fact, despite his lament that he is too busy to follow with current events, Huckabee seems to have had no trouble following the events of Britney Spears and her family. When asked on Dec. 20 about the pregnancy of Britney’s sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, Huckabee had no trouble in quickly giving a response:

It’s a tragedy when a 16-year-old who is not really prepared for all the responsibilities of adult life is going to be now faced with all the responsibilities of honest-to-goodness adult life. I respect it.

Apparently, she’s going to have the child and I think that is the right decision, a good decision, and I respect that and appreciate it. I hope it is not an encouragement to other 16-year-olds who think that is the best course of action.

Oops, he did it again.

Digg It!

Andrew Sullivan recommends David Brooks’ thoughts on Mitt Romney: “The leaders of the Republican coalition know Romney will lose. But some would rather remain in control of a party that loses than lose control of a party that wins. Others haven’t yet suffered the agony of defeat, and so are not yet emotionally ready for the trauma of transformation. Others still simply don’t know which way to turn.” That seems about right. In the progressive blogosphere, this idea circulates under the heading “iron law of institutions” which posits that institutional leaders care more about their own power within the institution than about the institution’s power in the world.

It strikes me as a largely accurate characterization of the choice.

That said, to give Romney the benefit of the doubt, one thing I can say about him is that there’s some indication he might make an okay president. He ran a successful business. He managed the Olympics well. He took over a state that enjoyed a high standard of living and during his years of governor it continued to enjoy a high standard of living and he never tried to do anything crazy. He’s taken a lot of repugnant stands in the campaign, but that’s clearly because he’s telling people what he thinks they want to hear. When he thoughts his constituents wanted to hear about gay equality and a women’s right to choose he said that stuff, too. He’s a giant phony. But also a technocrat with some record of competence — basically a risk-averse guy who knows what he’s doing and understands how to color between the lines. It’s impossible to imagine him being a great president, but it’s relatively easy to imagine him being an okay president.

The others in the field, not so much. Who knows what wars Rudy Giuliani or John McCain would start? And Mike Huckabee can’t even fake knowing what he’s talking about for fifteen minutes.

Ross Douthat previews the next great conservative crack-up:

It’s true that the current conservative intelligentsia, forged in the crucible of Ronald Reagan’s successes, is heavily invested in keeping the triple alliance intact – hence the Thompson bubble, the anti-Huckabee crusade, and the “rally round Romney” effect. And it’s true, as well, that if the Republican Party recovers its majority in the next election the alliance will be considerably strengthened. But such a recovery is unlikely, and already, in the wake of just a single midterm-election debacle, it’s obvious that the Norquistians and neocons and social conservatives aren’t inevitable allies – that many tax-cutters and foreign-policy hawks, for instance, would happily screw over their Christian-Right allies to nominate Rudy Giuliani; or that many social conservatives don’t give a tinker’s dam what the Club for Growth thinks about Mike Huckabee’s record. (So too with the neocon yearning for a McCain-Lieberman ticket, which would arguably represent a far more radical remaking of the GOP coalition than anything Chuck Hagel has to offer.) The “movement” institutions, from the think tanks to talk radio, have resisted these fissiparous tendencies, and if Mitt Romney wins the nomination they’ll be able to claim a temporary victory. But if the GOP continues to suffer at the polls, in ’08 and beyond, the (right-of) center can’t be expected to hold, and the result will be a struggle for power that’s likely to leave the conservative movement changed, considerably, from the way that Tomasky finds it today.

To which I say: Maybe!

Seriously, I sometimes do think that’ll happen. Alternatively, maybe Romney gets the nomination and Romney gets beaten pretty badly. Then maybe conservatives say he was done in by (a) flip-flopping, (b) anti-Mormon bias, (c) bad political headwinds and decide nothing really needs to be done. Then, the congressional GOP just realizes that the conservative movement is really more comfortable in a quasi-opposition role, sets about using the filibuster and the timidity of the remaining southern Democratic senators to make the country ungovernable, does well in the 2010 midterms, and everything just kind of keeps on keeping on. It could happen. One’s natural desire, as an observer of the political scene, is for something dramatic and interesting to happen. And sometimes something dramatic and interesting does happen. And it really might happen. The signs are there. But then again, it might not.