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With all due respect for Mr. Norris, I’d say he needs to listen to conservatives from Arkansas and take a good long look at Huckabee’s legacy rather than relying on Huckabee’s own version of the facts.

The “Shiites” of Arkansas, as Huckabee called state conservatives, know the real Mike Huckabee. We would all do well to heed their warnings.

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http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2008/01/09/DavidJSanders/344761.html

"In 2000, Huckabee insisted on controlling the state party’s separate Victory Committee, but the committee’s finances were so poorly handled that a Federal Election Commission investigation resulted in the largest fine ever handed down by the FEC to a state party. That same year Republican Rep. Jay Dickey lost the 4th District seat he’d held for eight years.

In 2001, when conservative Republican lawmakers opposed a higher sales taxes and fees the governor supported, he began calling them “Shiites.” Huckabee’s positions on fiscal policy became indistinguishable from Democrats’ positions. A year later, he openly campaigned against a ballot initiative to remove the sales tax on food and medicine. While he and Rockefeller won re-election in 2002, Sen. Tim Hutchinson didn’t.

In 2003, Huckabee not only begged lawmakers for new taxes to make up a budget shortfall, but he rebuffed conservatives’ (Republicans and a couple of Democrats) plan to cover the shortfall by tapping one-time money and cutting pork. In 2004, President Bush won re-election, but Huckabee campaigned for some Democrats - even some who had Republican opponents - and Republicans lost state legislative seats for the first time since 1990.

In 2005, a term-limited Huckabee frustrated conservatives when he pushed a bill to give in-state college tuition and scholarships to the children of illegal immigrants. The next year, Democrats swept Republicans in every race for statewide constitutional office and Republicans lost legislative seats for the second consecutive election cycle.

Shortly after becoming governor in 1996, one of Huckabee’s top aides predicted that his boss would do for Arkansas what Gov. Carroll Campbell did for South Carolina, meaning that Arkansas would cast aside its Democratic past and whole-heartedly embrace Republicanism by the time he left office.

Yeah ? that didn’t happen."

“Chuck: Look up Federalism in the Funk & Wagnalls dictionary...”

For the record, Senator Thompson’s weakness on the right to life is about much more than federalism. Even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, he’s said consistently since 1994 that he wouldn’t support state laws to prohibit abortion. During his 1994 campaign he said, “I’m not willing to support laws that prohibit early-term abortions.” He told Project Vote Smart, “Abortions should be legal in all circumstances as long as the procedure is completed within the first trimester of the pregnancy.” He explicitly refused to support laws prohibiting abortions for convenience:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=P5a_Fpu_8KE

In 1996 he signed a document saying, “I do not believe abortion should be criminalized.” He still personally opposes laws to prohibit abortion:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=F1tfGh3ITCc
http://youtube.com/watch?v=kTQxoXD-scw
http://youtube.com/watch?v=H-b1xQNRA4g

Here’s a quote from that November 7 conversation with Tim Russert:

“When I saw—and again, ALL CONSISTENT WITH WHAT I’VE SAID [emphasis mine]. I—people ask me hypothetically, you know, OK, it goes back to the states. Somebody comes up with a bill, and they say we’re going to outlaw this, that or the other. And my response was I do not think it is a wise thing to criminalize young girls and perhaps their parents as aiders and abettors or perhaps their family physician... I do not think that you can have a, a, a law that would be effective and that would be the right thing to do ...”