Triple Fake-Out From William Kristol?

William Kristol's first column for the NYT is full of praise and admiration for Gov. Mike Huckabee.

My first reaction is Where's The Feet?!?

My second reaction is, guess he wants people to talk to him at NYT soirees.

My third reaction is that maybe he's making the case that the GOP shouldn't fear a Huckabee nomination so that the Dems will fear him, and the liberal press will begin ripping into him before the primaries are over.

It's not just a head-fake, its a triple fake-out, he's pretending to like an unlikeable candidate, so that liberals think that conservatives might actually like this guy, and by doing so he hastens the attacks on Huckabee that will help change the nature of the primaries so that there is no chance of actually having a Huckabee nomination (which would be just as big of a disaster as liberals would hope it would be).

I'm not a huge William Kristol fan, though I do like the Weekly Standard, he's my least favorite writer there, I prefer a more direct Fred Barnes type. The gnashing of teeth and wailing over his new gig at NYT has been amazing and instructive, though.

It's quite possible that he's loony enough to think a Huckabee presidency is likely to happen, and that it would be good for conservatives. It's not likely, and his conservative Christian tinged populism would be disastrous (not as disastrous as Obama's liberal Christian tinged populism, though).