Still, the old Huckabee continued to show up now and then. Last Labor Day weekend, for instance, I found myself half-watching his weird, weekly version of a political variety show, when he launched into a sermonette about the meaning of the holiday. He celebrated the historic role of unions as “an important tool in protecting workers from being exploited and endangered” (though he was careful to cast it in conservative-audience-friendly language, explaining why unions once were important). He also sung the praises of profit-sharing and employee-owned companies in a way his white, older, Christian conservative audience could glom onto: “Publix supermarkets are strong in the South and Southeast, and I love shopping there, because employees act like they’re truly grateful for their customers. It’s a customer-focused culture. And Publix stores are employee-owned. So the better the store does, the better the employee does.”

This was the Huckabee liberals like me—the few, the slightly embarrassed—had fallen for back in 2007. I hadn’t had much company, but I hadn’t been alone. E. J. Dionne, the liberal sage of The Washington Post, wrote glowingly of “Huckabee the Rebel,” whose economic populism was putting “the fear of God into the Republican establishment.” The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg, who found Huckabee “funny” and “curiously unthreatening,” was impressed by his pragmatic record as governor of Arkansas, writing that “his history suggests that he prefers consensus to confrontation, that he regards government as a tool for social betterment, and that he has little taste for war, cultural or otherwise.” Even as hard-core a leftist as Cornel West became a fan after meeting with Huckabee following a debate at historically black Morgan State University—an event skipped by the other major Republican contenders. “I told him, ‘You are for real,’ ” West recalled to then–New York Times columnist Frank Rich. “Black voters in Arkansas”—who’d voted in unusually high numbers for Huckabee—”aren’t stupid. They know he’s sincere about fighting racism and poverty.”