Small wonder that political observers held their breath when, just after Labor Day, Fred Thompson, a border-state former senator with a generally conservative record and an affable personality, threw his hat into the ring. Would conservatives see in him the champion they had been looking for, and so signally failed to find, in Romney, Giuliani and McCain?
Surprisingly (at least to this observer), they didn't. Thompson has gone through all the right motions, avowing conservative positions on all the key issues, but likely voters in the Republican primaries have remained largely unimpressed. One major reason may be that his personal style is simply too laid-back. Many people suspect that he just doesn't have enough "fire in his belly" to be a strong presidential candidate. And even a good many conservatives wonder whether his ideological purity is more than skin-deep.
Suddenly a good many people began noticing the hitherto obscure former governor of Arkansas. With one or two odd exceptions in his political history (which, you can be sure, are now getting ferocious attention), his views and conduct have been impeccably conservative. He has, as already noted, a pleasant personality. And, perhaps more to the point, given the power of religious conservatives in the GOP, he is an ordained Baptist minister.
So why not Huckabee? Perhaps this "minor" candidate is, inherently, just a little too minor for comfort. It may be that one of the "major" candidates (my own wild guess would be Romney) can come across in the primaries as sufficiently conservative, yet also from a broader and more impressive background than Huckabee. But in a year when the Republicans are bordering on desperation, don't count the little guy out.