He will never win a general election. He could take the Republican nomination, especially in a three man race.

I don't think his social conservatism will be as much of a negative, because he does well in debates and his "happy warrior" persona and sense of humor will keep him from frightening people, plus he's middle of the road on a lot of other issues. The Club for Growth even calls him a "fiscal liberal" based on his record as governor, while Huckabee returned the insult by calling them the "Club for Greed".
The real albatross around Huckabee's neck is his support for the Fair Tax. Although a case can be made for switching to a consumption tax, it's justifiably vulnerable to class based rhetoric, and the Fair Tax is based on questionable accounting.

Exactly, but we tend to disagree a bit. But I'm not even remotely sodomy-obsessed, or religious. I guess I'm sometimes "right-leaning" but I disagree with the dogmatics quite a bit on a range of issues, whether or not "god" is a proper noun being the most important (to them).

When I vote, I intend to cast my vote for Stalin and Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Dead dictators and fictitious beings appeal to me more than the present selection of hacks. Perhaps more would get done...

This is true, most "SG conservatives" are moderates or libertarians to some degree or another. They may be more like Goldwater than Reagan-Bush-Bush in terms of conservatism. Hard to see the bible-thumping type frequenting a site featuring nude "alt" girls where marijuana and/or drug use is openly discussed (though some do - shhh.)

I'm not so sure about that, myself. Tax policies are pretty abstruse, and very easy to misrepresent. There are plenty of highly vociferous supporters of a flat income tax because they believe that the rich would pay more under such a system, as well as people who suppose a National Sales Tax because they believe it's less regressive than an income tax.

Social policies tend to be a bit more "meatier" topic than economics, anyway. But I suppose we'll see.

That reminds me of the father of one of my ex-girlfriends when I was younger. He told me he voted Republican only because Tamerlane wasn't running.

That's friggin' hilarious!

Right. Because they can't possibly switch their registration and vote democrat in the primary. With all that I've seen of the Republicans latley...I'm having a hard time giving any one of them my nod. Granted, the same applies to the democrats at this point, but hey...it's nice to keep my options open.

I hope Guiliani is finished. I can't stand the guy.

Well, this insane mountain lunatic isn't voting for any of the people mentioned in this article. Especially Mitt Romney. If I did, my Masshole family would disown me.

That's probably why Mike Gravel, who also supports the Fair Tax, calls it a "progressive sales tax". It does include those automatic monthly "pre-bates" to every American to offset the high rate.
Because most of the revenue currently lost to tax deductions would come from the wealthy, the rich would pay more under a flat tax - if the rate were set high enough. I tend to doubt that's the case with the 17% figure usually thrown around. (And the higher the rate goes, the more you have to worry about the effect on middle- and lower-income taxpayers, even with the large basic exemptions.)
I've thought combining the pre-bates with a flat income tax might be worth looking at, but I've no idea where the rates and pre-bates would be set. What I am sure of is no system will be perfect and people on both the right and the left will always find something to bitch about.

That's something we can agree on wholeheartedly.

Most of the rest of that stuff is over my head, though. I'm afraid my eyes tend to glaze over in economics discussions.

In some states, you affiliate with a party when you register to vote and can't change it at the primary, you actually have to go to the trouble of submitting a form a certain amount of time before the primary. The deadline in my state is passed, so I'm stuck (assuming I wanted to change, which I'm neither confirming nor denying.).
I have to agree that the choices on both sides are uninspiring at best.

Apologies. I tend to view economics as inseparable from dealing with problems like poverty and health care, so it's central to my political thinking, maybe too much so.

Oh, they are inseparable, to a large extent, at least from the technical aspects of policymaking.

I just usually concern myself more with the ethics. It's easier for those of us whose quantitative reasoning faculties are underdeveloped.

All he's got? Obama sounds like Osama! I'm sold!
Now if only he'd called her Hitlery.