Huckabee Loses to Leading Democrats by 10 points or More

The Republicans need to worry. Although Huckabee is tied for the lead among Republicans nationally, he is a far weaker candidate than Giuliani in a head on race with the top 3 Democrats:

While Republican White House hopeful Mike Huckabee is surging in new surveys evaluating the GOP presidential horserace, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Tuesday suggests he might lose to all three leading Democratic candidates by double digits in a general election match up.

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

The poll comes on the heels of a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Monday showing that Huckabee has doubled his support nationally among likely Republican voters in the last month and now is in a statistical dead heat with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

They also have to worry about a candidate who has a record of contradicting himself. There is the pardoning of a rapist, and his views on immigration. Now it turns out he has flip-flopped on Cuba, no less:

As governor of Arkansas five years ago, Mike Huckabee joined a bipartisan chorus of politicians who concluded that the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba was bad for businesses. Now that he's a top-tier candidate for president, Huckabee has decided he favors the embargo -- so much so that he vowed Monday to outdo even President Bush in strangling the regime of Cuban President Fidel Castro and punishing those who do business there.

Huckabee's Cuba flip-flop comes just days after he released a new, hard-line plan on illegal immigration described as "radical" by some of the same immigrant-rights advocates who once lauded him for more liberal views. As governor, Huckabee supported in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants and stood up for illegal workers caught in a raid of a meatpacking plant. Now he wants all illegal immigrants to return to their native countries within 120 days.