I don't know why birthright citizenship keeps tripping Mike Huckabee up, but it does.

He was asked at last night's debate whether he supports "making changes in the law" to end the policy, which says almost all children born in the U.S. are automatically citizens, even if they are born to illegal aliens. Here's his answer:

MR. HUCKABEE: I think the Supreme Court's already ruled on that. The real issue is, that doesn't fix the problem.

Compare that to what he told this blog in August:

"I would support changing that. I think there is reason to revisit that, just because a person, through sheer chance of geography, happened to be physically here at the point of birth, doesn't necessarily constitute citizenship," he said. "I think that's a very reasonable thing to do, to revisit that."

Click here for audio of the conversation

And to what he said in a written statement last month:

"If the Supreme Court chooses to review lower-court decisions regarding the 14th Amendment, that is their prerogative, but my priorities for constitutional amendments are to protect human life and traditional marriage."

So here's the time line. In August he said he supported changing it. In December his chief immigration surrogate, Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist, said Huckabee called for a constitutional amendment to change it. Asked about it at the time, his campaign said they shared Gilchrist's view. After we printed that, Huckabee said he wasn't pushing for an amendment, and it would be up to the Supreme Court to take a case. For that matter, he told CNN in an interview he hadn't given the issue any thought. Now he says the court has already ruled on it — that point is in dispute among legal scholars — and says it's not the issue anyway. What happened between August and now?

-- Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times