Huckabee Addresses The Matter Of The 600-Pound Gorilla

From the AP:

Mitt Romney accused Republican presidential rival Mike Huckabee of "running from the wrong party" for criticizing President Bush's foreign policy as an "arrogant bunker mentality."

Romney defended Bush against Huckabee's charge, which the former Arkansas governor leveled in the January-February issue of the respected journal Foreign Affairs.

"I can't believe he'd say that. I'm afraid he's running from the wrong party," Romney said to a gathering of about 100 supporters in a restaurant here. "I had to look again — did this come from Barack Obama or from Hillary Clinton? Did it come from John Edwards? No, it was Governor Huckabee."

In Littleton, N.H., on Saturday, Huckabee responded: "Of all the people who have called me ... a Democrat, that really doesn't bug me a whole bunch because I know my record. I know how consistent I've been as a Republican, as a conservative."

Huckabee said people are misinterpreting his foreign policy comments.

"It was not intended, as some have characterized it, as a slam," he said. "It was an evaluation of how we can improve I think everybody believes that every president should improve on the administration that's before it, regardless of party."

What a great move by Huckabee. As JB stated in a comment to a recent post, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that "current GOP candidates for president might be asked to comment on the most recent two-term president and his performance (or lack thereof)." As Froomkin recently noted, however, GOP presidential candidates have pretty much gotten a pass on the issue of Bush's performance as president.

Huckabee, however, has raised the stakes a bit in the GOP presidential race by directly addressing the issue of Bush's incompetence, and I think it was a great move, because there are a lot of Republicans out there who simply don't like what Bush has been doing during his presidency. And Romney took the bait by coming to the defense of our Idiot President and attacking Huckabee for merely stating the obvious with regard to the failure of BushCo's foreign policy, which is kind of funny because even Romney has at times been critical of Bush on that score.

It'll be interesting to see how all this shakes out. Romney obviously thinks that he's playing to the GOP base by coming to the defense of Bush, but I'm just not sure that the GOP base really has all that much love for our current president.

UPDATE: John Aravosis isn't so sure it's a good strategy on Huckabee's part to go after Bush:

Huckabee has clearly calculated that dissing Bush is a winning strategy. And in the general election, that's likely true. In the primary, it's harder to tell. Self-described Republicans, a shrinking breed, still like Bush. And it's likely that many of them are primary voters, as people who have left the party for independent-land may not be as interested in voting in a partisan primary. But Huckabee knows that, yet he's still going after Bush. Very interesting. And fun too.