I suppose a case can be made for Romney as the least of the four evils, and I know some of the people who read this blog take that view (or they may even regard Romney as a positive choice), but counterintuitively Romney has greater electability problems than Huckabee, and I’m not referring mainly to anti-Mormon sentiment (though that doesn’t help). In a year when the GOP is already dispirited and divided, Romney generates neither great enthusiasm nor great confidence outside of his home state, and he seems completely unsuited to the political climate of 2008. His reputation for competence isn’t in question, but the “atmospherics” of his campaign, as some might call it, are all wrong for this year.

On the other hand, Romney has the activists, institutional support and money, pretty much all of which Huckabee lacks. Maybe if you brought the two of them together on the same ticket (which would probably not realistically happen) with Huckabee on the top of the ticket, they might complement one another and cover the other’s weaknesses, and between the two of them they could theoretically unite virtually all of the factions of the party. The problem with this is that they have been such fierce rivals that all their old attack ads and criticisms against one another could be used in the general. Then again, if these two came together on the same ticket it would be a powerful symbol of party unity and reconciliation between different factions. Still, the problem with this scenario is that Romney is on the verge of being eliminated and polls weakly in most Feb. 5 states–such is his “viability”-and might not represent the anti-Huckabee forces by the time it becomes a two-man race.

In the end, I think the voters are going to prefer Huckabee to Romney, and the party and movement establishments will have to decide whether they distrust McCain more than they loathe Huckabee. Where McCain alienates some social conservatives, partly because of campaign finance, partly because of his dismissive attitude towards them, and partly because the Santorums are on the warpath against him, Huckabee shores up the GOP’s social conservative voters. Plus, as a former governor, he brings executive experience against a Democratic candidate from the Senate. So I think Huckabee is probably the least bad of four pretty bad alternatives, and he could well be the most competitive candidate the GOP can put up this year.

You’ve criticized all the leading Republican candidates eloquently, and all of them seem in one way or the other to be unfit for the office they are seeking. However, given that one of them (at this point I assume that would be McCain, Romney, Huckabee or Giuliani) has to win the nomination, which one would you prefer as the least bad?

The post paraphrasing Rove said:

Republicans must show that “they understand that the surge is working; that all those defeatist and naysayers and negative people who said it won’t work were wrong.” The Republican nominee must present a striking contrast on the Iraq issue with whomever the Democrats nominate. The 2008 election won’t be about whether or not it was a mistake to invade.

That last part is actually right. That was what the 2006 election was about. The 2008 election will be partly over the failure of U.S. policy in the last year and what we do now.