Merry Christmas!

It seems to me that accepting the resignation of Bill Shaheen, Clinton co-chair in New Hampshire, is the kind of stupid move that a panicked, desperate campaign makes.  It is a sign that Obama’s gains in the polls have completely confused the Clinton campaign.   Letting Shaheen resign is a mistake.  He is the husband of a popular former governor and favoured Senatorial candidate.  His remarks about Obama’s drug use may have been idiotic, but throwing him overboard is a very questionable move when Clinton needs New Hampshire Democrats to deliver for her more than ever.  If she loses New Hampshire, this will be part of the reason why.

Scott Richert has some additional thoughts on Mormon theology at Taki’s Top Drawer.

Huckabee’s immigration flop hasn’t fooled everyone:

Jim Gilchrist here speaks only for Jim Gilchrist, he does not speak for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, nor is he nationally representative of most patriots in the “Minuteman movement” – who under no circumstances could ignore the failed record nor endorse the duplicitous “plan” recently rolled out by candidate Mike Huckabee. The national media needs to recognize that Jim Gilchrist’s endorsement is his own personal statement, nothing more.

I should also apologise for any misleading statements on my part that claimed that the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps had collectively endorsed Huckabee.  As the letter points out, they are legally barred from making political enndorsements as an organisation.

I don’t define those events as you do. And I don’t think you have any right whatsoever to establish yourselves as the arbiter of what constitutes an event. I will do that in a way that reflects the best needs and purposes of the people who are working with me. Because as I see it, every time somebody comes forward and takes the pledge, that’s an Iowa event. ~Alan Keyes

Unleash weapons of mass instruction. ~Mike Huckabee

You have to be kidding me.  No wonder he received the New Hampshire NEA endorsement.

This is a shorter, simplified, terminologically flawed version of what I was saying last month:

The plutocrats got showered with riches, and the theocrats got lines from hymns dropped into speeches.

More than that, once the GOP met its electoral reckoning the so-called “theocrats,” which the rest of us on earth know as the social conservatives, were blamed for having wrecked the GOP, which, so we were told, they had so thoroughly dominated during the Bush years.  This was a classic error of identifying the base of the party’s electoral strength with the control of its leadership and agenda.  Having attributed to them supreme power over the party, it was inevitable that the media, both mainstream and conservative, would wrongfully tag them as scapegoats for the party’s failure, just as they had falsely described them as the masters of the party.  As Huckabee’s performance at the “values voters” summit and the Huckabee surge have shown, many of the rank and file social conservatives are not following the movement leaders and activists to endorse candidates deemed safe or acceptable by the establishment. 

Indeed, the one thing that makes me think Huckabee can’t be all bad is that the party and movement establishment leaders seem to loathe and fear him, but I am under no illusions that just because he is some kind of anti-establishment figure that he is therefore also a desirable one.  In most respects, he is Bush’s natural heir and would be another Bush, but a Bush without the corporate ties.  Were he somehow nominated and elected, this would not ultimately herald the movement of the GOP in a more populist direction, but would set the stage for internecine GOP warfare as conservatives would turn against him quickly and seek to oust him as progressives tried to do with Carter.  The Carter parallels are already overused, I know, but they seem eerily appropriate. 

Lately, I have been very down on Huckabee, since he now has a decent shot at prolonging his campaign into the spring as a real contender.  But I did say a few weeks ago:

I don’t like Huckabee, and I don’t want him to do well, but both he and Paul drive different parts of the establishment crazy and could throw the entire race into disarray, which would be a good thing for many reasons.   

Well, we have disarray now, and it is good that Huckabee is challenging the notion that blatant opportunism and money can dominate our political process without any resistance.  Unfortunately, what he offers in its place (feel-good quips and charismatic, personality-driven politics) is worrisome for different reasons.  I still don’t want him to win, but I think his candidacy may make the eventual nominee, whoever it is, have to take social conservatives much more seriously and offer them the kinds of concessions and influence that their leaders seem unwilling to extract on their behalf.

This line from Waldman is a summary of part of what I was saying yesterday:

This primary battle is a symptom, not a cause, of a crumbling conservative coalition.

He shows a Wikipedia-level appreciation of other religions, admiring “the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims” and “the ancient traditions of the Jews.” These vapid nostrums suggest his innermost conviction of America’s true faith. A devout Christian vision emerges of a U.S. society that is in fact increasingly diverse. ~Roger Cohen

I don’t think the speech presented a “devout Christian vision,” and indeed he was at pains to present anything but that.  The entire speech was premised on arguing for pluralism and against religious homogeneity or the cultural hegemony of any particular religion, boiling down the many religions to our “great moral inheritance” and a vague and minimally demanding theism.  It was a typical expression of the sort of superficial, smorgasbord approach to diversity that we have all grown up with in America.  For some reason, paeans to diversity seem to require “vapid nostrums,” because we must find something about every group that is distinctive yet not the cause of some offense among another group, which usually ends up leaving us with not much to say about them.  Had a non-Mormon given the speech, you could imagine him saying, “I admire the impeccable politeness of the Mormons.”  After all, to say anything in greater detail would be, by the standards of the speech, to establish a “religious test”!  

Romney could hardly have said, “I admire the spiritual journey of the Muslim who struggles in the path of God,” since this would mean that he is also admiring the mujahideen, so he was reduced to saying something meaningless.  Even Wikipedia-level appreciation would have offered more depth of understanding of other religions.  What was most disingenuous about this part of the speech was that Romney claimed to admire these elements so much that he wished they were part of his religion!  When he hears this speech, Cohen encounters the drippy multiculturalism of a religious studies seminar and mistakes it for religious militancy.

Roger Cohen makes a correction to a previous column of his that I criticised:

I wrote last week of the Tudor-Stuart alternation; I meant succession.