A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Perhaps the kind of thing that we saw from a Governor Huckabee:

Against the political advice of his party and his aides, [Huckabee] pardoned or commuted the sentences of hundreds of convicts, including murderers, sometimes over the heated objections of prosecutors and victims' families. He was cited five times by the state ethics commission for financial improprieties, and unapologetically accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of clothes and other gifts while he was governor.

Republicans in Arkansas, a beleaguered minority, gleefully greeted his ascendancy but wound up embittered, in many cases, over a governor who "sided with liberal Democrats," as one put it.

[. . .]

He proclaimed himself a fiscal conservative, but startled legislators with his proposals to raise taxes -- for roads, in 1999, and for schools, prisons and other services three years later. He sought the electoral defeat of Republicans who opposed him, according to some in the party.

I ask again: What party's nomination is Mike Huckabee running for? I don't necessarily want to have a Republican President who coddles Republican legislators, but having a Republican President who has some good relations with fellow Republicans might be important. Huckabee alienated Arkansas Republicans with his style and with the nature of his big-government proposals, not to mention pardons and commutations that will and should come back to haunt him. And this is the man who asks for the opportunity to shoulder the mantle of conservatism? The mind reels.