In case you missed it, Sam Stein attended a Christian Science Monitor event today with potential White House aspirant Mike Huckabee, who expressed lingering doubts about the "end game" of the war in Afghanistan and the reliability of Afghan President Hamid Karzai:
"I don't know [what to do next]," Huckabee said at an afternoon talk organized by the Christian Science Monitor. "I don't think any of us know exactly. We are there. The question is, I'm asking people, 'Tell me, what is it we do to say we are done? Help me to understand that because I'm not sure.'"
"My doubts about Afghanistan happen from being there in January 2006," he said earlier. "And when I say my doubts I believe our military is capable of doing whatever they are assigned to do given the resources to do it. But I came away from that experience wondering: What does the end game look like here? I can't see a conclusion."
Says Sam: "What's telling about Huckabee's remarks is the sense they portray that, within the Republican Party, there is some political gain to striking an anti-war stance." Go read the whole thing.
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In other Huckabee news, Maggie Haberman finds the former Arkansas governor drawing down on RomneyCare in his new book A Simple Government: "If our goal in health-care reform is better care at lower cost, then we should take a lesson from RomneyCare, which shows that socialized medicine does not work." Expect more of this on the campaign trail, should both men actually decide to formally set out upon it. By the way, as he was walking out of today's Christian Science Monitor event, Huckabee was asked about a Politico piece from earlier this week that asserted that he is, in particular, driven to mount a campaign out of his intense dislike for Romney. Huck called it "utter nonsense." [Politico]
Dan Savage is planning to "relaunch" the "Spreading Santorum" website that has so bedeviled Rick Santorum. (For his part, Santorum is mostly concerned these days with big-upping the Crusades, so, hide your foreskins, infidels.) [The Stranger, TPMDC]
Still not done with the 2008 campaign? Former John Kerry campaign finance director Bridget Siegal hopes so, because she's writing a book "loosely based" on John Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter, which was itself "loose" and "base." The forthcoming book is "described as Primary Colors meets The Devil Wears Prada," which is sure to whet the appetite. [New York Post]
This is a 2012 campaign blog post that starts off as a sensational alarm-raiser about Michele Bachmann leaving the country to a mysterious "undisclosed location," and then you keep reading and you find out that Bachmann is simply off on a codel, which is a very standard activity for lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee. [Politico]
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