Why Not To Like Mike Huckabee: Updated

He gives a good speech and knows how to tell a joke and is socially conservative, so why aren't Republicans rallying behind him. Quinn Hilyer over at Amspec outlines his many foibles in Arkansas, that's why. The MSM is fawning over him now so they can savage him later and believe me Madame Hillary will have a docier a mile thick on him to cover up her own malfeasences. Voila and then with the MSM's help she will roll out the meat cart and the howl of corruption will go up, if he were to somehow gain the GOP nomination. That is why we can't get behind him and why he can't get any traction.

Fourteen times, the ethics commission -- a respected body, not a partisan witch-hunt group -- investigated claims against Huckabee. Five of those times, it officially reprimanded him. And, as only MSNBC among the big national media has reported at any real length, there were lots of other mini-scandals and embarrassments along the way.

He used public money for family restaurant meals, boat expenses, and other personal uses. He tried to claim as his own some $70,000 of furniture donated to the governor's mansion. He repeatedly, and obstinately, against the pleadings even from conservative columnists and editorials, refused to divulge the names of donors to a "charitable" organization he set up while lieutenant governor -- an outfit whose main charitable purpose seemed to be to pay Huckabee to make speeches. Then, as a kicker, he misreported the income itself from the suspicious "charity."

Huckabee has been criticized, reasonably so, for misusing the state airplane for personal reasons. And he and his wife, Janet, actually set up a "wedding gift registry" (they had already been married for years) to which people could donate as the Huckabees left the governorship, in order to furnish their new $525,000 home

Update: From two other influential and popular conservatives, John Fund in today's OPJ and Pat Toomey in NRO.