Opinion: Mark Krikor... er, Mike Huckabee on immigration

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For all Mike Huckabee’s astute image-making -- the funny campaign spots, the clever quips -- the guy can’t put together a decent platform.

The Washington Post reports that Huckabee copped his immigration stance straight from the Center for Immigration Studies. Mark Krikorian, head of that hard-on-illegal-immigration tank, didn’t mind, but Mitt Romney did. (The camp of John McCain, one-time progressive on illegal immigration, used the opportunity to throw some mud Romney’s way: ‘It’s particularly amazing that Governor Romney would attack anyone on immigration when he’s on his third position.’)

Huckabee’s conservative bona fides may serve him well in South Carolina, as they did in Iowa. (He couldn’t beat McCain loyalites in New Hampshire or long-memoried Michiganites for Mitt.) But his inability or failure to put together an original plan (or at least one that wasn’t quite so clearly copied) on one of the country’s most pressing domestic issues doesn’t bode well for him as a would-be national candidate.

For more Mark Krikorian, check out our first-ever Dust-Up, a face-off between him and the Manhattan Institute’s Tamar Jacoby.