There is no doubt that Mike Huckabee is a pro-life warrior.  His record on taxes during his governorship is mixed, with many cuts and some hikes, and his biggest hike was the result of a state supreme court mandate.  Huckabee's thus got a solid answer to his harshest critics in the Club for Growth.

Huckabee is clearly out of the Bush mold when it comes to illegal immigration, with a bias towards letting good folks who pose no threat to the national security stay here after the fence gets built --which is my general view as well.

But there is a real question about Huckabee's ideological commitment to the bottom-line for many conservatives:  Are the states an appendage and an afterthought, or do they matter as a crucial bulwark against creeping big government impulses?

Governors, especially long-serving governors like Mike Huckabee, should be the most experienced and most forceful advocates for a robust federalism.  Huckabee's willingness to cede control of the smoking issue to the feds is a very troubling indication of an indifference to a crucial constitutional principle that needs buttressing not diminishing as Campaign 2008 opens.

The governor promised a return visit, one not limited the dozen minutes I was rationed, and I look forward to it.

But for now, those suspicions about Mike Huckabee's conservative credentials seem more solid than they were even two weeks ago.