CNN reports:

While presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is surging in new polls of GOP candidates, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Tuesday shows he would lose to all three leading Democratic candidates by double digits in hypothetical contests.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has doubled his support nationally among GOP voters, a poll says.

In head-to-head matchups -- the first to include Huckabee -- the former Arkansas governor loses to Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York by 10 percentage points (54 percent to 44 percent), to Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois by 15 points (55 percent to 40 percent) and to former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina by 25 points (60 percent to 35 percent).

The poll comes on the heels of a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Monday that showed Huckabee doubled his support nationally among likely Republican voters in the last month and is in a statistical dead heat with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The sound you hear is Republicans Money Men pouring themselves very stiff drinks as they contemplate Mike Huckabee winning Iowa, sailing on to victory in the Republican primaries, and getting crushed by the Democrats in November.

I know there are fools like MSNBC's Jonathan Alter who think Huckabee has miracle-making TV skills that will crush the Democrat. But Alter clearly has never looked at an electoral college map. Huckabee could turn out the religious right in Dixie, but the swing states are Ohio, Florida, and the Southwest, where the key issue of 2008 will be mortgages, not miracles.

Moreover, Huckabee has more political baggage than any candidate who has ever run for office, starting with Wayne Dumond but hardly ending there. Last week we learned Huck wanted to quarantine AIDS patients as recently as 1992. Today we learn:

In August of 1998, Huckabee was one of 131 signatories to a full page USA Today Ad which declared: “I affirm the statement on the family issued by the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention.” What was in the family statement from the SBC? “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”

Remember the key group of swing voters in 2008 is single women. Huck's views on marriage will be a huge hit with them, dontcha think?

Of course the Republican Money Men know Huckabee will get crushed. And they also know Huckabee will lead the GOP to electoral disaster everywhere outside Dixie. But what can they do to stop him?

Mitt Romney just launched his first attack ad against Huckabee on immigration, trying to appeal to the GOP's racist base. But that won't cut Huck's support with his Southern Baptist base. Mitt will never get their votes because he's a Mormon, and his massively-hyped speech increased his GOP support by a pathetic 1% at best. And by going negative against Huck, Mitt is squandering his one true asset - his image of optimism and CEO-style accomplishment.

And Huck is no dope at right-wing politics, as his cute Chuck Norris ads demonstrated. Huck immediately answered Mitt's attack ad with an endorsement by Jim Gilchrist, founder of the far-right Minuteman Project.

If immigration was Mitt's Iowa trump card, he might as well fold. Mitt cannot stop Huck in Iowa, and Mitt's victory in next-door New Hampshire has already been fully discounted by political pundits, just as it was for Paul Tsongas in 1992. 

So the crucial test will be South Carolina, where Ralph Reed's religious-right dirty-tricks machine helped George Bush bury secularist John McCain in 2000. If Huck wins the Bob Jones University vote, it's all over for Mitt. Can Mitt use his personal fortune to buy off South Carolina's religious right leaders? I'm sure he'll try, but that strikes me as a bridge too far.

So once again I say: Go Huck Go!