The old "take my millions of constituents and go home" trick

As John Potter pointed out in the comments, my previous post had a confusing title. No, I can't imagine Huckabee would bolt from the GOP to run on a third-party ticket. I can't even imagine Dobson et al. following through on their threat at all--that's obviously not the point. But watching/hearing various religious right folks shill for this thing in the last couple days, it seems pretty clear that Huckabee's the guy they heart, and there's a lot of time left for him to emerge as a more "serious" candidate.

On the other hand, this Globe story about the Romney campaign's reaction to all this is interesting. Romney's the only one of the top four whom Dobson hasn't basically denounced. At any rate, I'd be willing to bet this whole incident is going to lead to significant gains in the polls and fundraising for Huckabee, Romney, or both.

I wonder if Romney (a documented flip-flopper!) would have an (even) harder time in the general than (the extremely likable) Huckabee would. But the education the country would get in the realities of mainstream LDS folks would be a positive thing regardless.