(or at least Judicial Watch was)

the Republican Party’s own Mike Dukakis, he drew attention to himself two weeks ago when he “innocently” questioned the albeit bizarre theology of Mormonism, the faith of his then leading rival, Mitt Romney. That charge of overplaying the religious card was echoed by many commentators after his Christ on Earth ad, with Huckabee’s disingenuous response What cross? That’s just a bookshelf certainly closing the deal for me.

Now that Huckabee is playing the religion card , new concerns are arising that he’s flirting a lot with ‘The Pope is the AntiChrist” wing of his faith. He made sure to spend some time with the Rev. John Hagee on the pre-Christmas Weekend. This and his deep ties to Left Behind fantasist Tim LaHaye mean that Catholics may be a part of the “not one of us” attack, however coded it’s been so far.It’s difficult to know whether his team will give this a more overt airing when going after Giuliani, given the fact that many Catholics already consider Giuliani to not really be one of them anyway. Like a double negative you can’t criticize a lousy Catholic for being a Catholic in the first place.

Nonetheless, this could lead to a more serious re-alignment should Huckabee win the nomination. After all, those faceless “Reagan Democrats” one hears so much about were largely ethnic Catholics (Irish, Italian, Polish etc) who veered away from their traditional Democratic allegiance.

If the religion of the Republican party is Southern Baptist (a group ill-poised to call Mormons a cult since we all remember just how they came to be distinguished as “Southern”) they could feel a fierce peeling away of Catholic support, and that would spell real trouble for them come election night.

And that might be all right with much of the GOP base. Huckabee’s approval rests less on a conviction that he can win, then on a resignation that the GOP is going to lose anyway. Evidently enough of the Republican base feel that it would be better to go down with one of their own – a man who is generally believed (and perhaps with some reason) as being a good, honest and principled white Southern Baptist.