Everyone knows Mike Huckabee doesn't believe in evolution:

after evolution came up in a debate earlier this year, Huckabee said in a conference call with reporters, "If you want to believe that you and your family came from apes, that's fine. I'll accept that. I just don't happen to think that I did." 

Watch him avoid the question during a CNN debate: 

We've all seen the signs and bumper stickers - "I'm the NRA and I Vote."

But with the Republican Party in chaos, time the question must be asked: for whom??

Grandpa Fred is putting his last eggs in the basket of South Carolina gun owners, but gun owners aren't fools and they have no interest in backing a sure primary loser.

Their dilemma is expressed by F. Hewitt Grant, the grandfatherly president of Ellett Brothers gun manufacturing:

Grant has been wooed by three candidates: Thompson, Huckabee and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

NANCY ZUCKERBROD of the Associated Press must have written this before Iowan Republicans caucused for the Neanderthal of their choice:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientific advisers to the government emphasize in a report the importance of teaching evolution in public schools.

The report by the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine follows up on similar past publications, the last of which came out in 1999. The new document includes recently discovered evidence supporting evolution, including an important fossil find.

The report released Thursday also takes swipes at creationism and other anti-evolution views.

"Despite the lack of scientific evidence for creationist positions, some advocates continue to demand that various forms of creationism be taught together with or in place of evolution in science classes," the report says.

Yesterday Mike Huckabee released a TV ad featuring a white cross.

Today, Huckabee lied about the cross, claiming it was just a bookshelf, and dismissing those who see a cross as nuts. "I will confess this: If you play the spot backwards it says, 'Paul is dead. Paul is dead.'"

The Grand Inquisitor of American Catholicism, Bill Donahue, wasn't amused. "What he's trying to say to the evangelicals in western Iowa (is): I'm the real thing," Donahue said Tuesday on Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends. "You know what, sell yourself on your issues, not on what your religion is."

Why is Huckabee lying about the cross? Is he ashamed of his Christian faith? Or does he think Americans are blithering idiots?

I received an email today from the Humane Society. Following is a part of the story that was the focus of the email:

"Huckabee was the state’s chief executive for more than a decade, and was largely viewed by animal advocates as an impediment to moderate reforms, or at the very least, someone who never lifted a finger to advance animal welfare.  The governor’s record on animal issues was further tarnished in 1998 when the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that Huckabee’s 17-year-old son, David, was fired from his job as a Boy Scout camp counselor because he and another teen allegedly killed a stray dog.  Animal protection groups reported that the boys hanged the dog, slit his throat, and stoned him to death—but the teens were never charged with any crime. "

Someone is trying to knock Mike Huckabee out of the race with this hard-hitting ad attacking Huckabee for freeing Wayne Dumond. Who's behind the ad and the web site huckabeefacts.com?

AP reports,

Mike Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks in an upcoming article, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?"

The article, to be published in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, says Huckabee asked the question after saying he believes Mormonism is a religion but doesn't know much about it.

Huckabee is being coy - he certainly knows enough about Mormonism to cite some of its wackier theological positions that will make Baptists gasp.

Romney fired back by saying attacking his religion was "un-American."

But arresting millions of "tired, poor, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free" and sending them back is "American"?

CNN reports:

While presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is surging in new polls of GOP candidates, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Tuesday shows he would lose to all three leading Democratic candidates by double digits in hypothetical contests.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has doubled his support nationally among GOP voters, a poll says.

In head-to-head matchups -- the first to include Huckabee -- the former Arkansas governor loses to Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York by 10 percentage points (54 percent to 44 percent), to Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois by 15 points (55 percent to 40 percent) and to former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina by 25 points (60 percent to 35 percent).

Jerayln think Huckabee's hatred of AIDS victims will hurt his campaign. Back in 1992, Huck told the AP:

“If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague,”

Jeralyn writes:

Huckabee will sink like a stone.

But why would Huck's homophobia hurt him with the GOP base?

The GOP base is all about hatred of everyone who is not exactly like them - blacks, women, liberals, Mexicans, Jews, Mormons, and gays, to name just a few.

Digby points out that one week after playing "compassionate conservative" on immigration in the Youtube debate, Huckabee did a triple back-flip.

From Buzzflash:

We received a memo from Liberty "Falwell" University on November 30th, signed by Jonathan Falwell, son of the recently deceased Jerry -- and now overseer of the vast Liberty University/Moral Majority corporate empire.

According to Jonathan Falwell, presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee believes that it is God, not himself, who is behind his rise in the polls: "Mr. Huckabee also said that Divine providence was responsible for his recent surge in the polls in Iowa, as he noted that he is the candidate with much less capital firepower than his rivals."