The American Spectator

This YouTube video has been making the rounds; in it, Mike Huckabee pleads with the Arkansas state legislature for tax increases on anything they might be willing to tax. Huckabee responded to this by falsely claiming that he was only asking for tax hikes to cover education spending that was mandated by an Arkansas Supreme Court decision. In fact, the special session dealing with the court’s mandate came several months after the speech excerpted in the YouTube video. The anti-Huckabee blogger who started this trouble comments: “He lied for a reason. He knew what he was saying was wrong. He had plenty of time to think about this. My video has been out there for 2 days. He lied because he knew that what I’ve been saying is true.” I’m not sure that’s fair — it could be that Huckabee’s underfunded campaign just doesn’t have a nimble enough operation to keep their candidate accurately briefed.

Jim Geraghty reports that the Romney campaign is gearing up to go after Huckabee on taxes. Huckabee’s handling of this flap doesn’t inspire confidence that he’ll be able to effectively deflect an attack from the very much not-underfunded Team Romney.