I, too, initially thought Huckabee would run very strongly in the general election. The more I see of him, the more I am not so sure about that. He has a lot of dirty laundry that has yet to be fully aired. Much of it has already been posted here, but the electorate doesn’t know about yet.
As far as flip-flopping, Huckabee has done his share of that. He says he’s a tax-cutter, his record suggests otherwise. He very recently swore to close the border, his record suggest he won’t do a thing. Hillary may actually be able to run to the right of him on some issues like the war. If Thompson is able to get the nomination, he’ll run just fine against the Democrats. After all, if he wins the nomination, that will kind of disspell the ‘boring, lazy, unelectable’ argument.
I don't think that will dispell that argument. We Republicans, while being correct on the issues (at the base level), have the habit of nominating some poor choices for president. We nominated Bush one who turned out to be a one-term flop, then we nominated Bob Dole (his style reminds me of Hunter, although Hunter is better on the issues), then we nominated Bush II who has been miraculously elected twice (and only won reelection because, fortunately, the democrats foolishly nominated an idiot like Kerry; Wesley Clark would have killed Bush). So Fred winning the nomination would not mean much except that Bush has so divided our party that we can't seem to get an all-around great candidate to run.