When I first typed that headline, I accidentally wrote, “Smart conservatives draw a line in the sane.”<\/p>\n
I very nearly let the typo stand, because that’s what it looks like a growing number of pundits and activists on the right are doing, or trying to do.<\/p>\n
Over the last week, in the kind of rolling narrative that suggests a tipping point has been reached, some of the nation’s smartest and most influential conservatives are demanding some coherence and common-sense from Republican candidates.<\/p>\n
The main provocation for this common-sense backlash was Fox commentator and ostensible 2012 presidential nominee Mike Huckabee’s fact-free claim that President Barack Obama grew up in Kenya.<\/p>\n
Huckabee went on to embrace the claim — widely held in fringe conservative circles — that Mr. Obama was shaped by some sort of radical, anti-colonialist African world-view.<\/p>\n
He later “corrected” himself, claiming that the President grew up in Indonesia, a claim which is equally false.<\/p>\n
“I have said many times, publicly, that I do think he has a different world view,” Huckabee argued.<\/p>\n
“Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings, and you know, our communities were filled with rotary clubs, not madrassas.”<\/p>\n
It wouldn’t mean much if a blogger like myself once again pointed out all the utter nonsense in Huckabee’s he’s-not-one-of-us narrative.<\/p>\n
But this time, it’s the conservative world that reacted with appropriate spleen.<\/p>\n
Mark McKinnon, the political strategist who worked for George W. Bush and John McCain, wrote in the Daily Beast <\/a>that Huckabee had “really stepped in it,” adding “I only wish I could believe it was entirely accidental.”<\/p>\n He went on to accuse the former Arkansas governor of\u00a0 “character assassination.”<\/p>\n