The "Oh Yeah, He's Crazy" Syndrome

PPP has a post out about how much more unpopular all of the Republican leading candidates for President have gotten during the campaign. Not shocking, really: campaigns don't make anyone look good. But here's an interesting pattern I noticed. Palin's 15-net-point drop was, apparently, made up of 18 or 19 point drops with Democrats, Republicans, and independents, which doesn't add up but does suggest a very uniform movement against her. Gingrich lost support most dramatically from independents, with Republicans in second place, which suggests that Democrats remembered all along how much we hate him. Romney's worst decline was among Republicans, which spells doom for him. But Mike Huckabee lost barely any ground among Republicans (which is why I think he wins the primary if he runs) but 25 net points from Democrats. That's the thing about Huckabee. He looks very genial. He's charming, he's charasmatic, he goes on the Daily Show and has reasonable enough arguments with Jon about something or other. But then you listen to what he's saying. And he's crazy. And not just in a "well yes, he's a hard-right Christian conservative, but he's got the compassion thing going on economics." No. Huckabee's original thing was the flat tax. He's just crazy. He's crazy in sheep's clothing. And it's easy to forget that when he's not running for anything. But now that we Democrats are starting to realize that, hey, not only would he probably win the nomination but he'd also probably be the only Republican who could make it a race against Obama, we're remembering. And so we stop giving him the benefit of the doubt.