Governor Mike Huckabee has received praise again for another solid performance in the Iowa Republican debate yesterday in Des Moines.  Today Noam Scheiber in his article in the New Republic gives high marks to both Mitt Romney and Huckabee saying, "Romney brought his A-game. Huckabee was just a little better."  Here is an excerpt from his article today:

And yet… Each time Romney went on one of his goal-mongering rampages, it seemed like Huckabee was there to one-up him--to see Romney’s technocratic optimism and raise him to some new thematic height. Never was this more apparent than after Romney’s romp through his first year in office. “Well, I like the laundry list that everybody's had,” Huckabee said. “The reality is none of that's going to happen until we bring the country back together.” At this point he reached for an Obama-like flourish: “I think the first priority is to be a president of all the United States. … We've got to quit fighting amongst ourselves and start putting the better interests of this nation [first]. If that doesn't happen, we'll get none of these things done.” I later heard some cynics in the press corps sneer at this sentiment. But a Huckabee aide told me the staff collectively swooned when he uttered the line (which, she said, was completely spontaneous), and I suspect Iowans will follow suit.