A complete about face. It’s a Panderfest!

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has reversed his position on a federal ban aimed at workplace smoking and now believes the issue should be addressed by state and local governments.

The about-face is apparent in a Huckabee campaign statement, sent to The Hill Tuesday evening in response to questions about the smoking ban proposal. It clashes with the stance Huckabee has taken during his race for the White House and with his record as governor of Arkansas, when he signed into law a measure prohibiting smoking in most indoor public places…

Huckabee’s campaign, however, is backtracking. In its statement to The Hill, the campaign stated, “At a Lance Armstrong cancer forum last August, Governor Huckabee said that if Congress presented him with legislation banning smoking in public places, he would sign it, because he would not oppose the overwhelming public support that such a congressional vote would reflect. However, since such sentiment for federal legislation doesn’t exist at this time, and since he has said that the responsibility for regulating smoking initially lies with the states, the governor believes that this issue is best addressed at the local and state levels.”

That could be a credible excuse…if Huck didn’t try to take credit for the Arkansas ban.

 But at that same August event, Huckabee sought to take the lion’s share of the credit for the Arkansas law and argued that such an initiative would not be possible without the involvement of the executive.

“As a governor, I led our state to become the first state in the South to have a statewide ban on smoking anywhere indoors and I’m proud of that and it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to get done,” Huckabee said. “It was hard.

And I’ll tell you something, Chris, it takes the personal involvement of the chief executive to make that happen,” he said.

In doing so, he pissed on conservatives and didn’t please pro-smoking ban groups. Conservatives because we tend not to like Nanny Statism, and Nanny Staters because they feel a national ban wouldn’t be be as tough as local and state bans.

Meanwhile, Markos didn’t seem to have as big of an effect as he hoped.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Despite urging from some activists like Markos Moulitsas that Michigan Democrats vote for Mitt Romney over John McCain, CNN exit polling indicates the Arizona Republican won the liberal vote.

McCain captured 41 percent of Democrats who voted in the Republican primary, 10 points more than Romney. Mike Huckabee meanwhile, only captured 14 percent of Democrats.

Democrats consisted of just 7% of the voters in the Republican primary.