Peter Wallsten reports in today’s Los Angeles Times that former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who is surging in polls in Iowa for the Republican presidential nomination, has done “a flip-flop” on Cuba. Wallsten writes,

Now that he's a top-tier candidate for president, Huckabee has decided he favors the embargo -- so much so that he vowed Monday to outdo even President Bush in strangling the regime of Cuban President Fidel Castro and punishing those who do business there.

Fred Thompson's campaign put out a helpful reminder that Governor Huckabee had supported lifting the embargo in 2002. A letter Huckabee signed to President Bush while Governor of Arkansas indicated that the embargo "harm[s] our own agricultural and business interests," "has not helped the people of Cuba" and has "provided Castro with a convenient excuse for his own failed system of government."

As a casual observer, it strikes me as strange that Governor Huckabee would sell out so unabashedly – and risk his credibility as a plain spoken leader of conviction – for a position that holds ever less support among Cuban American voters, as polls over the past few years have demonstrated.

Many Cuban Americans support “conditional engagement” with Cuba, 72 percent support negotiations with Raul Castro, and many more support an end to restrictions on travel by Americans and on trade. (See poll results from NDN and Bendixen & Associates and FIU-Brookings).

Bizarrely, the Florida State House Speaker Marco Rubio – who provided immediate evidence of a short term political bump for Huckabee - endorsed the former governor by saying that he had found "someone that will fight for what they truly believe in the depths of their heart."

I think I’m going to be sick.

-- Jake Colvin