The laughable thing is that Huckabee’s record in Arkansas was FAR more conservative than Romney’s in Massachusetts.
If you ranked all the Republican candidates from the beginning for their conservatism, from most conservative to least conservative, the more conservative the ranking the sooner you were booted from the contest (with some exceptions like Rudy who stayed in much too long.) That is what is really sad.
There is also a strong correlation between increasing FReeper angst and the order in which candidates dropped from the race, with each dropout forcing more FReepers to opt for an increasingly less conservative candidate. Many FReepers, myself included, reached a point where there were no remaining candidates even remotely acceptable. When the remaining candidates agree more with Hillary than with me, count me out.