Huckabee rocketing up the primary polls is a disaster for the Republican party. His rise reveals deep flaws in their Big Tent and their 2008 presidential field.
With the recent stories about the Dumond case and now his past views on quarantining AIDS victims and that gays are publich health risks, it should be apparant why Huckabee would go down hard in the general, no matter how much reporters like him. This guy isn't ready for national attention. He's got a bunch of crazy and kooky stuff that you can get away with being a governor of a small state but you could never get away with running for president.
Look, the GOP insiders already knew all of this, which is why they've ignored him for so long. The DC and NYC GOP establishment just never thought their 2008 field would be so weak and flawed that their base has rejected everyone. 18 months ago it was going to be Frist, Allen, McCain, Giuliani, Brownback, and Romney, with Jeb Bush waiting in the wings. Frist got in trouble. Allen got macaca'd. The GOP realized that W has poisoned the name of Bush. McCain is good to round out a presidential field, but he burned too many bridges to be acceptable to the base now. Giuliani has more skeletons in his closet than anyone, and he's a NYC 'liberal' to boot. They tried adding Thompson as the conservative savior to replace Allen. The old man smell isn't working on anyone but Chris Matthews and he is tanking. Romney is still Mormon and still a flip flopping Massachusetts governor. Brownback generated negative excitement. So the evangelical base had nowhere to turn but Huckabee.
Now the GOP is in a real bind, because their evangelical base, who Peggy Noonan referred to as "the idiots", have locked into Huckabee and they aren't easy to shake off onto another guy once they hear from their pastor who God's representative is. (Look at how long they have stuck with Bush). But Huckster's craziness will turn off the same independents that threw out the GOP congress for sticking with Bush so long. Huckster is far less intelligent than Bush, and has no pedigree.
The problem for the GOP is they can't really take down Huckster because most of the things that are so crazy about him actually help him with the evangelical base. Even the rape-murderer he pushed let go can be spun that he thought the guy changed from being 'born again'. Huck's views on AIDS victims being quarantined, and being homosexual means you are a public health risk are of course apalling to us and the majority of Americans, but to the evangelical base, this won't hurt him at all. So now the GOP is left with their establishment candidates, flawed as they are, (Giuliani, Romney, McCain, and Thompson) battling and splitting up the non-evangelical base as Huck takes the lionshare of the evangelical base. It's a recipe for disaster for the GOP. Now with the frontrunner's bullseye on him, story after story will come out in the media of his crazy and kooky views, but those stories won't turn off the evangelical GOP base, just everybody else. The GOP establishment is reeling right now for having to carry water for Bush the last 7 years, do you think they have any stomach for getting behind Mike Huckabee? Bush was a perfect GOP candidate because he appealed to their evangelical nutty base, but he was about as establishment GOP as you could get. Huckabee is actually just the nutty base. The GOP big dogs would never entrust the US economy to him. But they don't have a good way of taking him down with the base, because they've spent so much time trying to sell Rudy McRomney Thompson. If the GOP establishment goes into high gear to take down Huckabee, they run the risk of pissing off the entire evangelical wing of their party, and wrecking their 2008 GOTV. But if Huckabee rides an Iowa big victory all the way to the nomination, it will be an embarrassment for the whole GOP establishment, and cause independents to continue their flight away from the Republican party.