In another sign that the Conservative Establishment is getting worried about Mike Huckabee's rise towards political viability in Iowa, the Editors of National Review have published a brief piece dissing him on a wide variety of grounds, centering on his "mixture of populism [note: not a compliment] and big-government liberalism."

But here's the really interesting thing: NatRev also thinks Huckabee's advocacy of the so-called "Fair Tax"--a national sales tax scheme that right-wing talk show types love like drunks love cheap hootch--is a really bad idea, too:

This proposal would almost certainly make a presidential nominee unelectable. But even if he got elected, it would be impossible to deliver. To bar the door on the income tax we would need to amend the Constitution. Otherwise we would end up with the income tax and Huckabee’s sales tax. We would call it a pipe dream, if Huckabee weren’t so anti-smoking.

You might want to make a note of this graph, in case Chuck Norris' buddy takes flight in the Iowa Caucuses. Add in his increasingly strident support for a national constitutional amendment extending the full benefits of the Equal Protection Clause to human embryos from the moment of conception, and you've got a potential GOP nominee whose genial personality masks a lot of crazy talk.