Huckabee! Huckabee! The man of the hour! What is it that voters love so much about this guy? Is it a hitherto inchoate yearning for a president who knows less about international affairs than they do? Hope that a man who can lose 100 pounds could also get rid of the federal deficit?

Mike is soaring ahead in the early polls, in a surge to the front of the pack that suggests Republicans cannot come to grips with the idea that they are supposed to nominate either Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani for president. There has to be a way out! What about Huckabee? He has a good heart! True, his brain doesn’t seem to have a single thought about foreign policy or know much about domestic policy, for that matter. But one well-functioning body part is better than nothing.

Yesterday, the Republican candidates for president had their last debate of 2007, and let me say, there’s nothing that gets you in the holiday spirit like Rudy Giuliani pointing out that Islamic fanatics want us dead. While this was supposed to be Romney’s big chance to regain momentum in Iowa, it wound up being a pretty dull affair. Mitt did not even get a chance to ask Huckabee why, in a new Times Magazine interview, he coyly dropped the question of whether Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers.

(Coming next: Mike innocently asks whether it’s true that New York mayors worship false idols.)

In a great bit of luck for the Huckabee team, the event included Alan Keyes, a candidate so wacky he’s generally excluded even from the none-too-selective list of Republican debaters. It was the perfect way to combat the impression that Huckabee’s religious beliefs, which seem to rule out evolution, are extreme. Next to Keyes, he looks like a logical positivist.