It's not easy being on a diet when you're at the Iowa State Fair. Just ask Mike Huckabee. The former Arkansas governor dropped more than 200 pounds before he jumped in the race for the GOP presidential nomination. On Friday, he gave a speech at the fair in a last-minute attempt to woo voters on the eve of the Ames Straw Poll. Going to the Iowa fair is considered a right of passage for anyone with White House ambitions. Ditto for testing out the food, which includes everything from funnel cakes to deep fried pickles. How can Huckabee, now a healthy heart evangelist, resist all the transfat temptations? Huckabee admits it's tough going, but says he plans to follow a basic rule. "If it wasn't a food 100 years ago, it's not a food today," he told your Gaggler. In other words, corn dogs are out. "We'll let you have that," he said. (Thanks, but we've already had two.) All around us, the air was thick with the soul satisfying aroma of artery hardening treats. But Huckabee, like any wartime Commander in Chief In Waiting, stayed the course. "I saw the Fried Twinkie booth over there. he said with firm resolve. "You aren't going to see me in that line." He also vetoed some of the fair's more exotic offerings, including the potato lollypop--"Potato what?" he said, and waved it away.

Huckabee's fortitude is, on the one hand, admirable. But for voters in Iowa, it may also hint at a troubling, Bush-like stubborn streak--a refusal to admit when he's wrong and make course corrections when the facts on the ground demand them. Case in point: Huckabee, who proclaims himself a patriot, outright refused even a single forkful of the fair's proudest culinary achievement: the sublime Hot Beef Sundae. This siren song of mashed potatoes smothered with chipped beef, cheese and gravy is so deeply, Americanly delicious that just one bite is enough to make all who taste it place their hands on their hearts and spontaneously recite the National Anthem. Yet Huckabee was unmoved by its obvious appeal. "You've got to be kidding me," he said incredulously when your Gaggler tried to tempt him. "My gosh. Even in my fattest days, that doesn't appeal to me." So sad. But then, perhaps sensing that Republican straw poll voters might think twice about the bona fides of a candidate who goes to a fair and orders salad, Huckabee went off in search of manly fare that wouldn't betray his principals. "I'm looking for meat," he said. "A pork chop. That's something good and decent."