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Mike Huckabee Makes Up With the Economic Right

... or not.

In the Ben Smith piece Mike cited earlier, Huckabee has some choice words for Pat Toomey:

Huckabee met in the spring with Pat Toomey, then the president of the Wall Street-backed Club for Growth, which had attacked him during the 2008 campaign for raising taxes in Arkansas.

“It wasn’t very productive,” he said of the meeting. “I realized then that these guys are just what I thought they were — they’re pay for play, and they do it anonymously on behalf of people who don’t want to be known as the funders of these hit operations. I find that repulsive.”

That Huckabee would feel this way is of course no surprise at all. But given that his primary barrier to winning the GOP nomination is the distrust of economic conservatives such as Toomey, making these comments on the record seems borderline insane--the functional equivalent of Mitt Romney trashing evangelicals. Authenticity is all well and good, but if Huckabee wants to make a serious run at the presidency, he'll have to channel his inner Mitt and learn to suck up to people who don't like him.