Why I am not with Mike Huckabee: his campaign tactics

I think Huckabee realized that he didn't have to directly mention Romney's Mormon faith, he simply had to emphasize his own.

I think that Huckabee wanted to peel off evangelical voters and couldn't keep the genie in the bottle. Huckabee calculated that he could play the evangelical card, and the voters would follow. But he's not running for president of an evangelical convention but president of the United States. He thinks the Christian identity tactic is containable.

But the media is playing him -- acting as amplifier for every religious reference that comes up. Having mentioned religion, he can't escape it now in each interview. Even his denials are raw meat for the 24-hour news grinder cycle.

The media love characterizing this as religious war within the Republican party or the conservative movement. Everyone is talking about it.

So callers to talk radio have a new template:

Y'know the religious right is mucking up this campaign again -- making their number one issue who the better Christian is. We need to keep religion out of politics.

Intended or not, I blame Huckabee for giving callers like this plausibility and creating a big distraction, our political opposition is happy to exploit.