Following his second place finish in the Iowa Republican Party extortion straw poll, Mike Huckabee is the top of the second tier Republican Presidential Candidates, and unlike Ron Paul, is considered a serious candidate by Republican power brokers and rank and file. The fact that he is now calling out Bush on his execution of the Total War Against Terror^* is significant.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee leveled some of the harshest criticisms of the Bush administration’s foreign policy yet from the GOP presidential field, saying it has mismanaged relations with Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Laying out his foreign policy platform in Washington on Friday, Huckabee restated his support for continuing the war in Iraq. But the bulk of his speech was devoted to the United States’ and Bush’s shortcomings.

Huckabee said the U.S. is ignoring options besides armed conflict with Iran, has trusted the Saudis too much and has allowed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to go back on his commitment to allow American forces to root out terrorism within his borders.

“Just like Musharraf, since 9/11, the Bush administration has played both ends and the middle, assuring the American people that it’s doing everything it can to protect them, while tiptoeing around our supposed ally,” Huckabee said. “It’s been afraid of upsetting the apple cart, even though the cart contains poisoned apples destined for export to the United States.”

If his statements get any serious air time, it should boost both his name recognition and his poll numbers.

Bush is profoundly unpopular even with Republicans, and in the context of a multi candidate primary could very well give him a leg up.

Additionally, it’s tough to find anyone, except for the “very serious people” at places like the council for foreign relations, who does not realize that the source of 911 in particular, and terrorism in general is Saudi money and Saudi policies.

It should be interesting to see how this shapes up in the next few weeks.

^*Check out the initials.