“Giuliani for all intents and purposes has virtually no chance to win,’’ said pollster Rob Schroth, noting the difficulty of overtaking two other candidates comfortably ahead. ~The Buzz (St. Petersburg Times blog)

Duncan Hunter, who actually opposes free trade and illegal immigration, has endorsed Mike Huckabee, who wants you to think that he does.  My one-time, quite ludicrous prediction that Duncan Hunter would be the Republican nominee (based once again on the implausibility of all of the alternatives) was informed partly by the idea that Hunter’s protectionist and border security credentials would help the GOP this cycle with those states that they must win.  One of the crucial flaws with this is that I assumed voters would want the experienced legislator who knew what he was talking about, rather than the artful showman who does not.  Nonetheless, the Huckabee phenomenon shows that there is some response among Republicans to the themes Hunter has articulated–they just needed someone a bit smoother and more glib to gesture towards them very generally before they would get excited. 

P.S. Hunter’s endorsement statement is here.  It clearly helps Huckabee’s reputation on border security and national security that one of the leading restrictionists and former Chairman of the Armed Forces Committee has endorsed him.  It’s an interesting split of the two also-rans: Tancredo went for Romney, which was frankly more bizarre than this, and Hunter has backed Huckabee.  As recent and cynical as Huckabee’s shift on immigration has been, the Hunter endorsement doesn’t strike me as being nearly as odd as Tancredo’s support for Romney.  The latter is just wrong on so many levels.

That’s part of the reason why you don’t have as rich a set of religious institutions and faith life in Europe. Part of that has to do with the fact that, traditionally, it was an extension of the state. ~Barack Obama

As I said last month, most European churches had been disestablished by the 1920s, and many had been disestablished long before then, and there are numerous other, far more significant factors that explain the secularisation of Europe.  These were my main points then:

Here is a list, by no means exhaustive, of some of what were significant causes of the process of secularisation in Europe: scientific advances, materialist philosophies, the uprooting and deracinating effects of industrialisation and urbanisation, the introduction of ideological politics and mass political mobilisation, the material and moral ravages of the two wars, followed by the effects of two essentially materialist worldviews that claimed to “deliver the goods” more effectively or justly than the other.  Where the experience of Europe clearly differs from our own, and one of the reasons why Europe has gone further in its secularisation, is in their experience of the wars.  I have to wonder whether Americans would have been church-going and believing in the numbers that we are today if we had experienced the full horror of these conflicts and had endured the same losses.  There is a basic problem with the thesis that “faith thrives in a free market,” which is that there are now “free markets” all across Europe where there are no established churches or, where there are technically established churches they have no real authority over all citizens of that country who are not members, and yet faith isn’t exactly thriving and has been largely going into decline in the free, western European part since the war.  There has been some religious revival since the Cold War, but it is sporadic.  If “faith thrives in a free market,” Spain should not have undergone the rapid secularisation that it has experienced since the end of the Franco regime.  Italy disestablished the Catholic Church in 1984, which must be why religions of all kinds have been flourishing in Italy.  The Republic of Ireland hasn’t ever had an established church, yet it is experiencing the same secularisation that overtook Spain before it.  It has been the last twenty years of economic and social changes that have sapped the strength of religion in Ireland.  Clearly there is something much more complicated going on that cannot be explained with easy reference to establishment/disestablishment of religion.   

What strikes me about Obama’s comments is that they are perfectly conventional and could have come from the most anti-European neoconservative.  If Obama casts this in terms of the separation of church and state rather than describing religious pluralism in terms of “market forces,” he is nonetheless coming to the same liberal consensus answer that most Americans maddeningly endorse without thinking about whether there is any truth to it.  If our civilisation were devastated in two gigantic conflagrations and much of our territory subjected to the depredations of totalitarian governments for decades on end, we might find our religious life rather less “rich” as well.

The latest TACis online.  In it Austin Bramwell has an utterly devastating review of Goldberg’s book:

Instead, lacking even the excuse of ignorance, he chose to sling the term “fascism” around as casually as the most vulgar leftist. It does not speak well of Goldberg that, by his own admission, he wrote his first book not to enlighten but to exact revenge.

People love Obama down here.  The scene a moment ago was a bit like that anecdote from Gregory the Theologian about the people in the marketplace holding forth on the Trinity, albeit concerning a much less elevated and important matter.  Out of nowhere people offer you their opinions on the presidential contest.  Down the street came a black man asking for some help to get to a shelter (tonight it is miserable out in Chicago, must be in single digits), and so we got to talking.  I explained that I lived in the neighbourhood and studied history, which prompted the man, out of the blue, to complain about Hillary Clinton’s use of MLK to attack Barack Obama.  Granted, this is Obama’s turf and he will probably carry this part of Illinois about 98 to 2, but the genuine disgust the man felt for Hillary Clinton was something to behold.  Obama may lose this contest, but I don’t think I appreciated how much the Clintons had alienated black voters until tonight.  Come November, she may find a lot of very unmotivated Democrats here and around the country.

With his departure from the race, it’s time to look back on selections from Eunomia’s Fred Thompson coverage, starting right from the beginning.  After recognising the absurdity of his candidacy, I was forced to acknowledge that Thompson had far more support than I could have ever imagined.    I then embraced that absurdity and claimed that he would win the nomination (mainly for lack of any viable alternatives), whereupon his campaign imploded with the same kind of dullness with which it began in September.  Only then, after the implosion of his campaign, did the NRLC endorse him, which pretty much everyone thought to be a mistake.  It turns out I was just a little too impatient–the lack of any rationale for his candidacy soon overtook his most earnest efforts.  Now, here we are at the end.

Jim Antle concludes:

If Mitt Romney can’t prosper with Thompson out of the race, there are no conditions under which he could win the nomination.

Let me be the first, then, to affirm that there are no conditions under which he could win the nomination.

You’ve waited for it, and now here it is: First Principles, ISI’s web journal, is online.

Here’s something that keeps puzzling me.  Some people say that Democrats are afraid of McCain as the GOP nominee, and some people say that Republicans are afraid of Obama as the Dem nominee.  No doubt, this is an accurate portrayal of attitudes within both parties.  One party or the other may be right to be afraid, but I’m pretty sure that both sides can’t be right in their assessment of the danger.  The more I think about it, though, the less it makes sense to me that Democrats fear McCain and Republicans fear Obama.  It seems to me that there are at least two things that explain this fear: admiration for the opposing party’s candidate and contempt for that candidate’s rivals.  Contempt blinds both sides to the political strengths of the other candidates, while their admiration exaggerates the abilities and appeal of the one candidate, whose exaggerated abilities and appeal then make them fear for their party’s success in the fall.  Another factor seems to be that the candidate whom each side fears the most seems to represent something, whether in style or substance, that exposes what each party sees as a glaring weakness in itself.  Republicans have built up an entire mythology about the importance of optimism as central to the appeal of Reagan, and if there is one thing Obama has in spades it is optimism, while the modern GOP traffics in the most blatant fearmongering and doomsaying, so perhaps Republicans fear that Obama’s comparison of himself to Reagan isn’t merely self-important bluster.  Meanwhile, Democrats fear McCain because he represents unvarnished militarism and appears to Democrats, conditioned for decades to be constantly on the defensive on military and national security matters, to have an insurmountable advantage on foreign affairs and national security.  What neither side seems to grasp is how completely wrong its assessment is: one of the last things Americans want after seven years of Bush is more starry-eyed optimism, and probably the last thing they want is more of the same confrontational, aggressive meddling overseas.  What each side fears about the other’s possible nominee is actually the candidate’s weakness, and what each party believes to be its weakness is actually one of its best electoral assets in the current cycle.

It would probably be best for John [McCain] if there were still three potentially viable opponents splitting up the Florida pie. ~John Weaver

But even if that vote were split just two ways, Thompson wasn’t drawing that much support in Florida anyway, so the gain for either candidate would be minimal.  If Thompson supporters in Florida are anything like his supporters in South Carolina, more will break for McCain and Huckabee than for Romney.  Working even more to McCain’s advantage, Huckabee is reducing his presence in Florida, which may not bode ill for his campaign if he can hang on for two more weeks to those strong leads in Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma and the like.  But whatever happens to Huckabee later, some of his supporters in Florida will probably drift to McCain, while only a few will go to Romney.  Romney seems to have a marginal advantage among Thompson supporters, and no advantage among Huckabee supporters.  McCain stands to expand his lead over the field during the next week, and there is every reason to assume that weak Giuliani supporters will decide to back a similar candidate who already has won a couple of primaries.  Romney will gain strength, but he won’t be able to gain as much as quickly as McCain.  The remarkable thing about all of this is that reporters and pundits have assumed, as have I, that Thompson’s supporters were obvious Romney voters, but nearly two-thirds (at least in South Carolina) were apparently more interested in other candidates.  That doesn’t just reflect Romney’s last-minute retreat from the state, but hints at a deeper resistance to Romney’s candidacy. 

Of course, based on my track record of making predictions about this race, you can almost certainly ignore all of that.

P.S. Nationally, if I’m reading this right, Thompson supporters seem most likely to favour McCain and Giuliani, but they have the profile of a Huckabee voter.  (Don’t ask me to explain it!)