At the circus

Since Mitt Romney is so smart, he should have taken the time to read Greg Behrendt's advice-to-chicks best-seller from two years ago, He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys. Romney wonders what's gone wrong, but here's the no excuses truth to understanding why he's losing: People just don't like him. What's so hard to understand?

Since Mike Huckabee is funny, he must be dumb. The secular liberal consensus is that a few evangelicals are like Jonathan Edwards, smart but dour, but most are Gomer Pyle clones, funny in their way but certainly not bright. Evangelical political scientist Charles Dunn contends that Huckabee has both "a razor sharp mind" and "quick wit." Nah, couldn't be.

The GOP establishment is semi-panicked about Huckabee, although not as much as it will be if he wins South Carolina and Florida. But just when you least expect it, here's some sense from New York Times Republican columnist David Brooks: "Middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person's lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has."

Brooks continues, "In that sense, Huckabee's victory is not a step into the past. It opens up the way for a new coalition. A conservatism that recognizes stable families as the foundation of economic growth is not hard to imagine. A conservatism that loves capitalism but distrusts capitalists is not hard to imagine either. Adam Smith felt this way. A conservatism that pays attention to people making less than $50,000 a year..."