While America Celebrates... Huckabee plunges.

Mike Huckabee is this cycle's Pat Buchanan. A lot of Republicans wanted to believe that he was the answer to the flawed deck of frontrunners that the political gods have dealt us. I can't honestly say I was ever rooting for Huckabee, but a month ago I expected him to win the nomination. All he had to do was come across as a credible commander-in-chief for the five weeks leading up to Iowa and he would have pulled it off.

But Huckabee went the Buchanan route. Rather than assure the Republican electorate that he was more than a one trick pony who could speak beautifully on social issues and spiritual concerns, he doubled down on his pastor side. Perhaps with good cause. When he ventured opinions about serious policy matters outside his comfort zone, especially regarding global affairs, he showed an ignorance that was quite frankly stunning for someone who had the audacity to seek the presidency at a time of war.

And there's also Huckabee's past. Every politician has a past--issues he flip-flopped on or positions he took that his party dislikes. But Huckabee's past has caused Republicans to remember the Arkansas mores that drove us nuts during the Clinton years. Seemingly every day, another piece of, er, stuff, hits the fan. Over the weekend, it came out that Huckabee received $35,000 in honoraria in 2006 from a company that does stem cell research, the very same company that social conservatives blasted Mitt Romney over because his blind trust had invested in it. Huckabee's take of $35,000 from the stem cell researchers was but a small sliver of the roughly $378,000 in outside fees that Huckabee raked in during his final year as Arkansas' governor. Too bad he didn't have Hillary Clinton's facility with commodities trading--such a skill probably would have made things easier for Huckabee.