Conservatives aren't challenged because of the basic principles that define us, but by the failure of the principles being translated into policy and practice.

Ghandi once said, "If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today."

I would be so brazen to say that if conservatives would really live according to the principles of classic conservatism, all of America would be conservative today.

The crisis is not one over the precepts, but the practice. It's not that we've failed in our doctrine, but our "doing."

And...

Over the past few years, Republicans have been either acquiescing in or encouraging the acquisition of more power and control by the federal government - in policy shifts in education, health care, and even how a driver's license looks.

Plus...

Perhaps no other example is more glaring than having painfully watched so-called Washington conservatives abandon the most fundamental principle of conservatism - fiscal restraint. A Republican administration pushed for and got the authority to spend $700 billion that we had to borrow from our grandchildren's future so we could do what government has no business doing - picking out winners and losers in the private sector marketplace.

It was especially disgusting to me to watch some of the very leaders who had smugly dismissed my candidacy for president because I had the audacity to speak out against the excesses of Wall Street and Washington as early as February 2007 now stand up and flop-sweat as they explained why they were about to support the government taking off the striped shirts of the referee and put on the jersey of a team to play the game for one team against another all in the name of "saving the markets."

I've said this before, to many people's chagrin.

Mike Huckabee is now the front runner for the nomination for conservative voters in 2012. He has done the little things to position himself there. His platform at Fox gives him access to Americans every week. And a wide array of people at that. Last week his featured interview was with Keshia Knight Pullam (Rudy of the Cosby Show, and now with Tyler Perry), he closed the broadcast with some guy who had been singing for 60 years that I had never heard of, but had great appeal to the 60 plus among us.

He is also doing exactly the opposite of what John McCain did. He is making the argument in public policy discussions that Reagan was right! He is unafaid to speak to the moral crisis facing America, and pointing out that its repercussions loom as large as any economic ones. And he is unafraid to unabashedly embrace the base of the conservative majority of America.

When Reagan lost the nomination in his first run for President to the incumbent Ford, times were very similar. A lunatic leftist had taken control of the White House, and the GOP was in a shambles. Reagan began a conversation with America about the principles that were distinctly American, freedom, limited government, personal responsibility, and national security.

Huck has now started that conversation all over again, and largely all on his own.

What Limbaugh, Coulter, and the National Review did to Huckabee was in large measure unfair. They mischaracterized his positions and misrepresented his past votes.

And none of them would have even been able to dream of the right to do so, had Reagan not given Huckabee the blueprint to do so.

I'm the voice crying in the wilderness I realize. (I was also the only pundit in America in 2006 to proclaim with some pretty surgeon-like precision who would take the oath of office in 2009.)

But Huck IS the front runner, and with his television show, books, radio commentaries and his willingness to embrace the voters that John McCain viewed as pains in the backside, his advantage is becoming sizable!

TRACK KMC 24/7: