Some conservatives seem to be realizing what they have wrought.

A number of conservatives are starting to get uncomfortable with the rise of Huckabee. Seems the talk of the importance of faith, and the need for it to be preeminent in society, is reaping returns they just don't want.

From TPM:

It took a while, but David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter seems to have noticed a problem with the conservative movement's approach to competence.

It also has to be admitted: Many of us on the conservative side have fed this monster. (Rightly) aghast at the abuse of expertise by liberal judges, liberal bureaucrats and liberal academics, we have sometimes over-reacted by denying the importance of expertise altogether.

"'Heart' is crucial," one of George W. Bush's early evangelical supporters argued in a 2005 newspaper column. This same writer accused those conservatives who questioned Bush's "faith-based initiative" of having "holes in their souls."

So now instead of holes in our souls, we conservatives are getting candidates with holes in their heads.

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More TPM:

It may be an exaggeration to say conservatives are having a major-league freak-out over the prospects of Mike Huckabee winning the Republican Party's presidential nomination, but only slightly.

In the new issue of the Weekly Standard, conservative Stephen Hayes highlights the many ways in which Huckabee seems to have a child-like understanding of international affairs. In the new issue of National Review, conservative Rich Lowry writes that Huckabee's nomination "would represent an act of suicide by his party," in large part because the Arkansan is "manifestly unprepared to be president of the United States."

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It's pretty obvious why the left is frightened by the notion of a Huckabee presidency -- we've already seen the results of electing a nutty southern governor who doesn't know anything about policy, who runs on his charm, his evangelical religion, and his appeal to far-right activists -- but what's up the right's apoplexy?

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I think Kevin Drum's reaction was spot-on.

[A]s with blogosphere conservatives, mainstream conservatives are mostly urban sophisticates with a libertarian bent, not rural evangelicals with a social conservative bent. They're happy to talk up NASCAR and pickup trucks in public, but in real life they mostly couldn't care less about either. Ditto for opposing abortion and the odd bit of gay bashing via proxy. But when it comes to Ten Commandments monuments and end times eschatology, they shiver inside just like any mainstream liberal. The only difference is that usually they keep their shivering to themselves because they want to keep everyone in the big tent happy.

But then along comes Huckabee, and guess what? He's the real deal. Not a guy like George Bush or Ronald Reagan, who talks a soothing game to the snake handlers but then turns around and spends his actual political capital on tax cuts, foreign wars, and deregulating big corporations. Huckabee, it turns out, isn't just giving lip service to evangelicals, he actually believes all that stuff.

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The Republican Party's religious right base is supposed to be seen, not heard. Candidates are supposed to pander to this crowd, not actually come from this crowd.
Except it's clearly not working out that way this time. The panic is palpable.