Run Huck, run

Although Mike Huckabee’s support has surged among Republican Primary voters, that support does not translate to the public at large. Indeed, liberals can take heart in the fact that the former Arkansas Governor will get destroyed in the General by all three leading Democrats.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- While presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is surging in new polls of GOP candidates, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Tuesday shows he would lose to all three leading Democratic candidates by double digits in hypothetical contests.

In head-to-head matchups -- the first to include Huckabee -- the former Arkansas governor loses to Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York by 10 percentage points (54 percent to 44 percent), to Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois by 15 points (55 percent to 40 percent) and to former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina by 25 points (60 percent to 35 percent).

Not that I need to put too fine a point on it but this really highlights how out of touch the Republican evangelical base is with the rest of the country. Here is the new GOP frontrunner, propelled largely by the consolidation of the wingnut base, and he gets his clock cleaned against the Democratic field. Up against Edwards, another populist (albeit one of a liberal-ish stripe), Huck posts his worst numbers. It would seem that Huckabee garners his support by being more conservative than Giuliani and more authentic than Romney (one the religion thing, Huck is a true blue Bible-banger) rather than having his message resonate with voters. To me, that translates into pretty tepid enthusiasm for Huckabee and a whipping in the General if he wins the nomination.