Since I'm Posting Again, Let's Watch Mike Huckabee Bow Out Gracelessly

I once had a very uncomfortable couple of minutes in an ambulance late at night. It wasn't that time on the backboard--that happened in the morning--but the time that I gave my honest thoughts on Mike Huckabee's campaign for President. Frankly, I was not complimentary. It turned out that my partner that night knows Governor Huckabee as "Brother Mike." Brother Mike was his pastor in Arkansas, and he has lots of folksy memories of church and church camp and the time he gave Brother Mike's son an attitude adjustment by slamming him down on a pool table.

Oops.

And speaking of oops . . . .

According to Michael Shear in the New York Times, Brother Mike Huckabee picked this week to wonder on air whether Barack Obama was really born in Hawaii. He doubled down on this strategy by mentioning that President Obama grew up in Kenya. The chief drawback of that approach was that it isn't true, and even the birthiest Birthers don't actually allege that it's true, so it was probably just misspoken.

In any case, maybe I'll get to see whether one of my pet theories pans out. Although I was far from the first or only to propose it, I believe it's likely that President Obama decided long ago that the Birth Certificate Controversy (tm) hurt its proponents more than it hurt him. I believe he has deliberately refused to settle the matter definitively by releasing his long-form birth certificate or any other evidence (which I believe do exist and can be released whenever he chooses.) I believe that he's doing all this in order to keep the controversy as high as possible and tempt prospective political challengers to try to use it. And I believe that when the controversy cools or when big enough Republican fish have taken the bait and committed themselves to the Way of the Birther, the President plans to pull the rug out very publicly.

In short, anyone who is still talking about the President's birth certificate is being given enough rope to hang himself, and Brother Mike has just stuck his neck into the noose. It's all fun and games until the President opens the trap door.