This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 8, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

Iowa Hearts Hakeby, but it's a long way to November in the Live Free or Die State has it say today.

Cato Institute Executive Vice President David Bose,

after examining some of Mike Huckaby's public statements

on everything from dieting, music, public schools,

gaze and taxes, questions just how freely the

former Arkansas governor would dispense with your liberty.

He's a good campaigner. He's very charming. The first time I heard him was on national public radio, which might not have been his best audience, and he was very engaging and charming. So he's obviously a good campaigner.

He won in Iowa largely on the votes of evangelical Christians. That's not the case as much in New Hampshire.

Well that's right. I think that Iowa was a particularly good place for him.

It was a place where organization mattered.

Iowa does have a lot of Christian conservatives.

New Hampshire doesn't.

New Hampshire has a lot of rock-ribbed independent Yankees who keep their religion private and a lot of

people who have moved up from Massachusetts for whom religion is probably less

important. So I don't expect Chuckaby to do very well in New Hampshire. He may have a chance for a

comeback in South Carolina and possibly Florida. So I think he is in the mix. I

don't expect him to be the Republican nominee. Now normally you would applaud someone who has lost a great deal of weight, but the manner

of which Mike Huckabee did it, he immediately wrote a self-help book.

He has since endorsed a national smoking ban, and seems to be somebody

who's very much interested in health, especially the role that the federal government can play in health.

Well, that's right. I mean, I think it's sort of a nightmare that Republicans have been looking

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