Right Wing Nut House

This blog post originally appears in The American Thinker

Hard to guess what Obama’s game is here but in an interview with the Reno-Gazette editorial board, the Democratic contender for the nomination praised Ronald Reagan and gave some decidedly un-progressive reasons for his admiration:

I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

(Transcription from video courtesy of Open Left)

Many heads exploding today on the left. Matt Stoller:

It is extremely disturbing to hear, not that Obama admires Reagan, but why he does so. Reagan was not a sunny optimist pushing dynamic entrepreneurship, but a savvy politician using a civil rights backlash to catapult conservatives to power. Lots of people don’t agree with this, of course, since it doesn’t fit a coherent narrative of GOP ascendancy. Masking Reagan’s true political underpinning principles is a central goal of the conservative movement, with someone as powerful as Grover Norquist seeking to put Reagan’s name on as many monuments as possible and the Republican candidates themselves using Reagan’s name instead of George Bush’s in GOP debates as a mark of greatness. Why would the conservative movement create such idolatry around Reagan? Is is because they just want to honor a great man? Perhaps that is some of it. Or are they trying to escape the legacy of the conservative movement so that it can be rebuilt in a few years, as they did after Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I?

Mr. Stoller cannot be taken seriously if he actually believes that conservatives are trying to "escape the legacy of the conservative movement so that it can be rebuilt in a few years…" That’s the kind of shallow, vapid analysis one would expect from a partisan hack like Stoller but does not reflect the reality of what is happening on the right.

Indeed, others on the left have been pushing this notion that Reagan’s success as a politician was due almost entirely to his pandering to southern whites and playing the race card:

No, Ronald Reagan didn’t appeal to people’s optimism, he appealed to their petty, small minded bigotry and selfishness. Jimmy Carter told people to tighten their energy belts and act for the good of the country; Ronald Reagan told them they could guzzle gas with impunity and do whatever the hell they wanted. He kicked off his 1980 campaign talking about "state’s rights" in Philadelphia, Mississippi — the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964’s Freedom Summer. He thus put up a welcome sign for Reagan Democrats, peeling off white voters who were unhappy with the multi-ethnic coalition within the Democratic Party.

Only those ignorant of the concept of federalism and Reagan’s commitment to turning back the tide of federal control - not in matters of civil rights - but in education and other areas where there was federal overreach. would posit the notion that Reagan was giving a “green light” to racists.

In fact, Obama’s analysis would seem to validate Reagan’s critique - that the government had “grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.” This disconent was fed by people like Carter who talked consistently about America’s better days being behind it and that we must learn to live with less. With that kind of attitude, there would still be a Soviet Union today and America would probably look a lot like it.

The hard left will never understand Reagan nor what his revolution was about or what it has wrought. Obama has made one of the more astute moves of the campaign - if he isn’t forced to backtrack and qualify his words about Reagan. By invoking The Gipper, he establishes a powerful connection with a true agent of change - despite the fact that his policies would serve to undermine most of what Reagan accomplished and represented. As long as he sticks with generalities and platitudes, he can obscure that part of his program.

Obama’s surprising words about Reagan won’t garner him too many GOP votes. But it will soften his image so that he doesn’t look like quite the progressive ogre many on the right would like to paint him.

ADDENDUM

Edwards may be able to get away with trashing Obama for these words of praise for Reagan but one wonders what the Great Triangulator is going to say about it.

Many moderates and independents are also fond of the The Gipper and in a general election, Hillary needs those votes to win. My guess is, if pressed, Hillary will say something like “I wouldn’t have put it quite that way…” and then acknowledge Reagan’s optimism and skill as a politician.

Meanwhile, the netnuts are beside themselves. I’ll have more reaction in a while as the wailing and gnashing of teeth continues.

Mike Huckabee has said some very strange things this campaign season - mostly to obscure his center-left record as a tax and spend populist while governor of Arkansas. But during his speech Monday night in front of his most fervent supporters in Michigan, Huckabee said something that revealed perhaps the true nature of his candidacy and what it means for America and his brand of “conservatism:”

“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards,” Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

The Reverend Huckabee must be a privileged individual indeed to know the mind of God. I suppose it’s all a matter of interpretation; some people might violently disagree with the good reverend about just what those “standards” of God might be. But since Reverend Huckabee has been given the grace to see the light and pronounce the one true list of standards God has set for us then I guess the debate is over and we can simply bow to his superior insights and extra special holiness.

Christian conservatives are fond of saying that their critics don’t want freedom of religion but freedom from religion. In the grossest sense I suppose that’s true. But those making that argument ignore the ramifications of what they are proposing when protesting that they only want to be able to practice their religion in the public square. If that’s all there was too it, I doubt that too many Americans would be uneasy or even fearful. But then along comes Mike Huckabee talking about basically establishing God’s kingdom here in America by amending our Constitution to reflect his idea of “God’s standards” in moral behavior and even Christian evangelicals must look in askance at the Reverend’s candidacy.

As a conservative, I stand on the side of tradition so that when headline seeking atheists and their buddies at the ACLU initiate some unnecessary court action to remove a creche that has been placed in front of some city hall for a hundred years or a cross that has stood atop a mountain for 80 years and has become the centerpiece of a Korean War memorial, I stand with the Christians in complete confidence that I am living up to my conservative ideals. But Huckabee’s all too revealing utterance about exactly how he seeks to accomplish his idea of a “just moral order” should cause every conservative worth their stripes to denounce the candidate’s words and deplore his candidacy.

The impulse that drives Huckabee and his supporters is not a conservative one. It is a statist impulse - a desire to use the power of the government to enforce arbitrary standards of moral behavior on the rest of us. It is taking the conservative dictum requiring a moral order for justice to thrive and twisting the concept to allow for one group to not only dictate morality but also impose their own, necessarily narrow view of justice.

For my lefty friends who may not be familiar with conservative philosophy, I can assure you that going all the way back to Locke and coming forward to the present, you will not find Mr. Huckabee’s notion of state imposed religious standards for either personal behavior or law anywhere. It is, as Andy McCarthy of NRO puts rather mildly, anti-Democratic in the extreme:

Lisa, it’s really infuriating if you’ve had the experience — as I have — of being portrayed at various panels as part of the “American Taliban” for defending the purportedly Islamophobic efforts to root out Muslim terrorists. Part of my usual response, as a demonstration of how nuts this accusation is, focuses on the Taliban, their imposition of sharia (i.e., God’s law), and the marked contrast to our system’s bedrock guarantee of freedom of conscience.

Huckabee is made to order for the Left: his rhetoric embodies their heretofore lunatic indictment that we’re no better that what we’re fighting against. Let’s “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards”? Who needs to spin when the script speaks for itself? Where has Huck been for the last seven years? Does he not get that our enemies — the people who want to end our way of life — believe they are simply imposing God’s standards?

McCarthy’s reference to a “bedrock guarantee of freedom of conscience” is, in fact, the essence of conservatism. Huckabee apparently rejects this basic freedom as not being up to “God’s standards” and seeks to substitute a capricious slavishness to a single, dominant, narrow moral criterion that brooks no questions because it establishes itself from God.

As McCarthy points out, this is exactly the same thing our enemies wish to impose upon us and the rest of the world. Who cares if it comes from a devout Christian or a devout Muslim. The effect is the same.

The friction between genuine conservatives (even genuine social conservatives) and Huckabee and his acolytes is the story of this election. The Huckabites feel they are being put upon for their religious beliefs. Not hardly. In fact, most Christian conservatives are not supporting Mr. Huckabee. Where the fracture is occurring is in the Huckabites contention that their narrow, warped view of conservatism should dominate and rule the Republican party, that their issues should be given superior weight to other conservative issues.

Giving in to them would betray everything most of the conservative movement stands for. And giving them the leadership of the party would be a catastrophe for conservatism and for the country.

I would suggest those conservatives who prior to this had been taken in by Mr. Huckabee’s easy smile and winning personality to think twice before voting for this charlatan.

My latest PJ Media column is up. It’s on the Michigan primary and the mess that is the GOP race for president.

A sample:

Each successive contest in the Republican primary gauntlet has shown that GOP voters are dissatisfied with their choices and have very little idea of who should lead them. They tried on the center-left populism of Mike Huckabee’s religious crusade of a candidacy and didn’t like the fit. They decisively rejected the maverick McCain in Michigan. Now they’re tasting Romney a la King and will decide whether to enjoy the repast or send it back to the chef for being overdone.

The aimlessness of Republicans as they continue to search for a leader is not a catastrophe – at the moment. But if the GOP can’t make up its mind prior to the end of the primaries, the small but not impossible chance that they would enter their convention in September without a nominee stares them in the face.

Join me tonight for a two hour special edition of The Rick Moran Show. We’ll go live from 7:00 - 9:00 PM Central time to talk about the Michigan primary and beyond.

In the first hour, I will welcome Sean Hackbarth, Director of on line media for the Fred Thompson campaign. Sean will discuss the recent surge in Thompson’s fortunes in South Carolina.

The second hour I will once again welcome my comrade from The American Thinker Rich Baehr who is the National Political Correspondent for that fine publication. Rich and I will analyze the Michigan results and talk about what comes next in this wacky primary season.

If you’d like to call in to the show, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

You can access the live stream by clicking on the button below:

A podcast will be available for downloading or streaming shortly after the show ends.

Also, make sure you visit our chat room and get involved in the discussion.

UPDATE

It as a great show. Sean and I had a great time taking shots at Huckabee while Rich was his usual brilliant self.

You can access the podcast stream or download it by clicking the button above. Or you can stream it here:

Whatever they’re paying her, it’s way too much.

Watch this candid video of Katie Couric “anchoring” CBS coverage of New Hampshire. The breathtaking ignorance of the candidates, the issues, even her medium of television is so pronounced that one wonders how anyone that bad could actually have the hubris to appear on camera every night.

She is that bad.

At one point she says “I don’t know much about Huckabee.” At another, she carefully rehearses what she is going to ask the remote reporter.

It is a shocking, depressing thought that this woman is sitting in the same chair as Douglas Edwards, Cronkite, and Rather. Say what you will about the relative biases of those gentlemen, they were journalists to the core of their beings. Douglas Edwards literally invented the TV anchor position, bringing journalistic standards to the job honed through a career that included covering D-Day. Cronkite reported for Stars and Stripes during World War II and picked up with CBS toward the end of the conflict. Rather was in Dallas on November 22, 1963 and knew his way around a newsroom before ever going on the air.

And now…Katie Couric? A brainless twit of a woman whose ignorance of the personalities and issues she is reporting on makes her unfit to cover an American election.

Put the broad on the weather desk. Or maybe she could do sports. She and Olbermann were made for each other.

How’s this for a McCain scenario:

1. McCain derails Romney today in Michigan.

2. McCain destroys Huckabee on Saturday in South Carolina.

3. McCain sends Rudy packing in Florida on the 29th.

If that scenario comes to pass - and it is well within the Arizona Senator’s reach - McCain would have won a primary in the Northeast, the Midwest, and two in the South (probably finishing second to Romney in Nevada).

GOP voters see his broad appeal and decide to coalesce behind him due mainly to his electability, giving McCain a big Super Tuesday run of primary wins, driving a stake through Romney, and garnering an insurmountable delegate lead.

Not credible? It’s already happening.

In Rudy Giuliani’s backyard, a new poll out shows McCain ahead in New Jersey:

Monmouth University/Gannett GOP New Jersey Primary

John McCain 29%
Rudy Giuliani 25%
Mike Huckabee 11%
Mitt Romney 9%
Ron Paul 5%
Fred Thompson 5%

And in California, another new poll has McCain shooting into the lead (numbers in parentheses are from last month’s poll):

SurveyUSA GOP California Primary

John McCain 33% (14%)
Rudy Giuliani 18% (28%)
Mike Huckabee 14% (20%)
Mitt Romney 13% (16%)
Fred Thompson 9% (13%)
Ron Paul 4%
Other 3% (7%)
Undecided 4% (3%)

Is this love affair between McCain and the voters a one night stand or something more permanent? Ordinarily, I’d say it looks like it would be difficult to stop McCain given his huge lead in the national polls.

But this is the wackiest primary season I’ve ever seen. A loss in Michigan could deflate McCain’s balloon faster than it expanded while setting Mitt Romney up as the next victim/frontrunner. Romney just went back on the air in South Carolina so it is evident he feels a win in Michigan puts him right back on top.

A little more perspective on the hazards of being inevitable - for any candidate - from David Freddoso:

Consider:

* Even a win in Michigan next Tuesday cannot guarantee McCain anything further. He will probably do poorly in Nevada next Saturday and South Carolina will at least be a challenge.

* Although it appears unlikely, no one can yet rule out a Florida resurrection by Rudy Giuliani.

* Mike Huckabee could win Michigan and South Carolina, and then dominate the South on February 5, but is likely to lose badly throughout the West and the Northeast.

* Mitt Romney could still win in Nevada next Saturday — a state with more delegates than either Michigan or South Carolina. He could keep it close or even stay ahead in the delegate count with a “second-place-everywhere-until-Super-Tuesday” strategy, since most of the early states award delegates proportionally or by congressional district.

* And while it seems doubtful, it’s conceivable that Fred Thompson could win South Carolina after his debate performance.

(HT: Malkin)

GOP primary voter angst is not the result of too many choices but rather no good choices - at least if you can believe the pollsters. Believe me, I feel their pain.

But hey! Someone has to win. If it’s McCain, the party has a shot at the presidency next November - a long shot to be sure but McCain has demonstrated appeal among indpendents and Democratic hawks. Since a presidential election is actually 50 different elections, McCain could take some blue states away from the Democrats to offset the almost certain loss of Ohio and a few other formerly red states.

Giuliani could also but would lose some toss up states as well. Fred is the only candidate with a shot at repeating Bush’s success in 2000 and 2004 but would probably come up short in a couple of key states.

So if the voters are interested in winning and nothing else, it’s going to be McCain. If it’s anyone else, I think Republicans are looking at varying degrees of defeat. Close if Mitt, Giuliani, or Fred is the nominee. Historic landslide loss if it’s Huckabee.

No, McCain is not inevitable. But given his pluses for many GOP voters, he may be the default choice of a party in transition.

The fat lady has been canceled. The obit in the New York Times has been pulled. Funereal flower arrangements have been replanted. Behests have been returned.

And a moribund candidacy, coming to life at last, can boast that famous Mark Twain retort “Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”

Fred Thompson is alive and well and surging in South Carolina.

The latest Rasmussen poll shows Fred Thompson in a statistical tie for second place:

Over the past several days, the only real movement in South Carolina’s Republican Presidential Primary has been a four-point gain for Fred Thompson and a five-point decline for Mike Huckabee.

The big winner from that trade-off is John McCain.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows McCain at 28%, Huckabee at 19%, Mitt Romney at 17%, and Fred Thompson at 16%. Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul are tied with 5% support. Giuliani is betting his entire campaign on a strong showing in Florida, where he is now tied for the lead with three others. …

There has been much talk about Thompson going easy on McCain in the debate and in TV appearances since then. Yesterday on CNN’s Late Edition, Fred barely laid a glove on McCain. This has led to some spurious rumors that Thompson is a stalking horse for McCain and will drop out after South Carolina and endorse the Arizonian, being rewarded with the Vice Presidential nomination later.

That’s not quite how I see it.

It makes sense for Fred to lay off McCain until after Michigan. If his friend can knock off Romney in the state of his birth, even Daddy Warbucks would have to concede his candidacy is virtually finished. After Michigan, Fred would be free to go after McCain’s immigration record - a very easy task and one that would resonate powerfully with South Carolina voters.

Even if he doesn’t go after McCain, Romney might do it for him, seeing a Thompson win as the only way he stays viable into Florida.

A Thompson victory in South Carolina would essentially mean there would have been 4 major primaries with 3 different winners. This would mean on to Florida for everyone. Even a strong second by Thompson may tempt him to go on to Florida where Fred has also seen an uptick in his support, finding himself just 8 points out of the lead.

Okay, so it’s only 4 point surge. But it is a surge nonetheless and if it denotes momentum on Thompson’s part, watch out. The biggest hurdle Thompson has now is convincing people it is not too late to vote for him. The fact that a sizable number of South Carolinians have made that decision is heartening.

Someone pass the word to the eulogist to stand down. Fred ain’t dead yet.

UPDATE

Allah continues his torture of Fredheads. What is truly remarkable is that the Fredheads keep coming back for more. It’s like Allah has them trained to give a Pavlovian response to his sly insults and clever bon mots.

Allah evidently still doesn’t think Fred has much of a chance and I’d agree. But his prospects have improved since last week - even Allah would have to admit that. And given the utter weirdness of this primary season, I say that anything can and probably will happen before all is said and done. Whether that lightening strikes Fred or not is another matter.

UPDATE: “10 at 10″ Drive for a Million

C’Mon Fredheads. We’re almost there. Less than $30,000 to reach that million dollar goal (that was originally a $540,000 goal and then a $750,000 goal). Last Thursday, we had about $400,000 in the tank of the little red pickup. Now we’re kissing a mil thanks to your generosity and Fred’s building momentum.

If we all give just $10 at 10:00 PM tonight, we’ll smash that million dollar barrier so that Fred can blanket the airwaves in South Carolina with his positive message of true conservatism.

UPDATE: “WE’RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER TRUCK…”

At around 8:15 PM central time, the campaign surpassed their $1,000,000 goal.

The website is crashing. The videos on the site won’t load because of the heavy traffic. The campaign is turning people away from events an hour before Fred makes his appearance.

TOO LATE MY ASS!

For a party based on putting Americans into little boxes that identify them by their race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, the Democrats have been able to skate through for about 35 years with no major clashes among their many and varied interest groups which threatened the unity of the party.

Oh there have been ideological struggles to be sure. But as long as the party kept putting up white males for the top spot, clashes between people pigeonholed in those boxes was avoided.

Well, it can’t be avoided any longer:

After staying on the sidelines in the first year of the campaign, race and to a lesser extent gender have burst into the forefront of the Democratic presidential contest, thrusting Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton into the middle of a sharp-edged social and political debate that transcends their candidacies.

In a tense day of exchanges by the candidates and their supporters, Mrs. Clinton suggested on Sunday that Mr. Obama’s campaign, in an effort to inject race into the contest, distorted remarks she had made about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mr. Obama tartly dismissed Mrs. Clinton’s suggestion, adding that “the notion that somehow this is our doing is ludicrous.”

Mr. Obama’s campaign then attacked Mrs. Clinton for failing to repudiate one of her top black supporters for “engaging in the politics of destruction” with an apparent reference to Mr. Obama’s acknowledged drug use in the past. And throughout the day, supporters of Mrs. Clinton and of Mr. Obama each accused the other of injecting race in search of political gain.

The exchanges created apprehension among many of their supporters who viewed this moment — if perhaps inevitable, given the nature of the contest — as divisive for Democrats. At the same time, it offered a portrait of a party struggling through entirely unfamiliar terrain that has been brought into relief by Mr. Obama’s victory in Iowa and Mrs. Clinton’s in New Hampshire.

Hillary owes her victory in New Hampshire to the spectacular turnout of women to support her candidacy. Fully 57% of Democratic primary voters were women and Clinton received nearly 50% of their votes far outpacing Obama’s total. If women are going to support her and come out for her in such numbers, Obama is truly in trouble.

Meanwhile, we have yet to have a contest in a state where Mr. Obama’s race will give him a huge advantage. The latest CBS-New York Times poll shows that Obama garners nearly 50% of the black vote, besting Clinton by 15%. That same poll shows Hillary over Obama by 16% among women. Hence, we have the makings for a lot of potential friction that neither campaign wants but won’t be able to avoid.

Obama actually carried the women’s vote in Iowa, showing a measure of strength that absolutely floored the Clinton campaign. In fact, part of the feeling that Obama would sweep through New Hampshire was the stunning way in which women flocked to his candidacy in Iowa.

For whatever reason - many point to the “Crying Moment” as key - women came home to vote for Hillary. Perhaps part of it was the historic nature of her candidacy. Perhaps it was the feeling that the press was ganging up on her. The fact is, Hillary can thank women for her victory in New Hampshire and she knows it. Now comes the trick of maximizing that vote throughout the primaries.

For Obama, it is a little different story. With black support rising for him, he is expected to do very well in the deep south where African Americans make up from 40% to 50% of the vote in most states. He is comfortably ahead in South Carolina, the first southern state to hold a primary (1/26) and is making up ground fast in Florida.

Due to the historic nature of both their candidacies, it could have been predicted that some kind of row would erupt where the candidate’s identity was involved. After all, Obama’s race and Hillary’s gender are the ultimate cards to play for and against them. And Obama apparently either was planning to get off the mark first or it just happened that the Clinton’s played into his hands. It turns out that his campaign had already prepared an attack that would accuse the Clintons of raising the issue of race. A memo has surfaced that cataloged what the Obama people consider racially insensitive remarks:

In a tense day of exchanges by the candidates and their supporters, Mrs. Clinton suggested on Sunday that Mr. Obama’s campaign, in an effort to inject race into the contest, distorted remarks she had made about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mr. Obama tartly dismissed Mrs. Clinton’s suggestion, adding that “the notion that somehow this is our doing is ludicrous.”

Mr. Obama’s campaign then attacked Mrs. Clinton for failing to repudiate one of her top black supporters for “engaging in the politics of destruction” with an apparent reference to Mr. Obama’s acknowledged drug use in the past. And throughout the day, supporters of Mrs. Clinton and of Mr. Obama each accused the other of injecting race in search of political gain.

The exchanges created apprehension among many of their supporters who viewed this moment — if perhaps inevitable, given the nature of the contest — as divisive for Democrats. At the same time, it offered a portrait of a party struggling through entirely unfamiliar terrain that has been brought into relief by Mr. Obama’s victory in Iowa and Mrs. Clinton’s in New Hampshire.

Their identity politics is a double edged sword. Each knows that an attack that appears directed at Obama’s race or Clinton’s gender risks energizing the supporters of that candidate and can also loose the dogs of the media on the attacker as the press sees itself, as always, as a referee in these matters. On the other hand, accusing your opponent of falsely using the identity card is akin to crying rape where the victim was a willing partner. And in Obama’s case, it appears he was ready to unleash the race card using somewhat innocuous statements as “proof” of the Clinton’s “insensitivity.”

On the other side, the Clinton’s are hardly innocent. Using a loose cannon like BET’s Bob Johnson - inoculated against charges of using the race card by virtue of his African American heritage - was virtually a guarantee for some racial fireworks directed against Obama. As it was, Johnson alluded to Obama’s past drug use in a rather elliptical - and deniable way. Both the Clinton’s and Johnson now say that the TV exec was referring to Obama’s days as a community organizer. The snickers from one and all after that explanation should tell the Clinton’s that they need to be a little more subtle next time.

Clinton has already tried to play the gender card, especially at the debates where attacks by the other candidates on her became the guys ganging up against the girl. But each time, the press has called her out for it and the gambit failed to elicit the kind of response among women that she was looking for. And then came the day before the New Hampshire primary and the emotional moment in the coffee shop. Suddenly, the gender card was irrelevant - even though, intentionally or not, it had just been played. Now it was “cracking of the ice queen” that played out and Hillary Clinton recaptured the women who had deserted her in Iowa.

Where this is headed is anyone’s guess. Obama risks a backlash if it is perceived he is using the race card unnecessarily and solely for political gain. Clinton, on the other hand, must be able to attack Obama in ways that don’t bring race to the fore. She tried the experience vs. inexperience attack and that didn’t work. Now she is trying to co-opt Obama’s message of change by trying to show that she has worked for real change for many years. That seemed to play well among a very important constituency; the over 55 age group. The oldsters vote in higher percentages than any other group of Americans and are vital in the large states voting on Super Tuesday.

But the race card for Obama is just too good a weapon not to use. And judging by that memo and what it represents, I have no doubt that the candidate will make use of that weapon as often as the thinks he can get away with it.

This then is where identity politics has taken the Democrats. Walking on egg shells one moment and shamelessly pandering to their respective constituencies the next. It has the potential of splintering the party if one side goes to far. But I doubt that will happen. Self-interest being the driving force in both camps and given the temperament of both candidates, I would suppose that there will be limits to the lengths to which they will go in savaging each other.

Tonight would have seen the exciting two hour opening episode of 24. on Fox. Alas, the writers strike has delayed and possibly killed the season altogether with no guarantee that they will ever be able to get everyone back together and pretend to save America, vanquish her enemies, and not go to the bathroom for 24 hours.

To quote that famous philosopher and American hero Bugs Bunny, “What a revoltin’ development.” For the last three years I have immersed myself in the doings of Jack and Co. as few have, all to bring you, my loyal readers a summary of their adventures delivered with my signature snark and original allusions to history and literature. For three years, I took this show way too seriously, committing myself to late nights and very early mornings just so I could satisfy the appetite of many of you for reliving the episode and most importantly, speculating on what was to come next.

For a brief time, I gave very serious consideration to writing my own season of 24 and putting it on the blog as if each episode had been broadcast the night before. But the amount of work that I would have to put into the project would have been prohibitive. After all, the show itself has a half dozen senior writers with a dozen or so assistants. I would be trying to duplicate the effort of all those people plus write summaries of the episodes as I have in the past.

I have worked without a net on this site several times - witness my “Live blogging Gettysburg” and “Live blogging the Continental Congress.” I didn’t have a clue how those projects would turn out when I began them. Judging by comments and my own honest appraisal, they weren’t a total disaster.

However, writing and commenting on an entire fictitious season of 24 would just be too much work. I’m afraid I would get tired of it after a while and put in an inferior effort - the product of other, more pressing commitments for which I am paid cash money and cannot allow to slide.

I also was tempted to follow the new Fox show “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” but would hate to get stuck following a show that I didn’t like.

I will miss my weekly dose of Jack. I will miss Chloe’s bitchiness. I will miss seeing Jack violate the Constitution with impunity thus driving liberals insane. I will miss wondering when they are going to put Jack out of his misery and kill him off - his death being the only thing he has left that is truly his own. I will miss the broken plot threads, the insanely unlikely plot twists, the politically correct characters, the gee-whiz tech stuff at CTU, and the mayhem.

So tonight, when you hit your knees, pray that the producers relent a little and the writers give a little so that we can once again be thrilled, awed, and frustrated by Jack and his heroic cohorts who battle terrorism the way we wish it would be confronted - with a moral certitude that we are in the right and they are in the wrong.

Is Mike Huckabee carrying out a “scorched earth” campaign where he doesn’t care if he destroys the party and splits the conservative movement into its base component parts?

Sure looks that way:

“Many of us who have been Republicans out of conviction . . . the social conservatives,” he told reporters, “were welcomed in the party as long as we sort of kept our place, but Lord help us if we ever stood forward and said we would actually like to lead the party.”

Mark Levin:

Huckabee continues to use his faith as a weapon against those who question not his faith, but his political populism — much of which he shares with secular progressives. And he is clearly hoping to stir up resentment among Evangelical Christians against the other elements of the conservative movement and Republican Party as a way of encouraging them to vote in the caucuses and primaries. This is a tactic right out of Saul Alinsky’s playbook. Of course he wants us to believe the Reagan coalition is dead because he cannot win with it intact. But he cannot win either the nomination or presidency with the narrow focus of his appeal. This is why I find Mike Huckabee’s tactics and candidacy so deplorable.

For myself, I could care less if the evangelical social cons threw a tantrum and walked out of the party and the movement. They have always been willing to fall on their swords and lose elections rather than compromise so what’s the big deal? Less political baggage in my book. And with them gone, I trust that many former Republicans as well as libertarians would feel a lot more comfortable about casting their lot with a small government, fiscally conservative party.

If they want to promote a candidate whose ideas about a nanny state include a “Christian government” watching over us as opposed to a secular one, let them try that out on the electorate. Just do it from the obscurity of a third party rather than the floor of the GOP national convention in September.

I have made my feelings known about Huckabee on this blog. I believe him to be a shady operator who, as Levin points out, uses religion as a club against his opponents while setting himself up to be a “superior Christian” to the other candidates. The mindless enthusiasm for this “populist” only shows that the religious right is not ready or worthy to lead any party that purports to represent a polyglot collection of neocons, Main Street, Traditional, and economic conservatives.

I know that many social cons do not support Huckabee and are supporting other candidates who also espouse socially conservative positions. I have no problem with that whatsoever. Those other candidates are not using their religion as a wedge issue in order to maximize their support among one faction or another in the conservative movement. Huckabee, on the other hand, sees his only chance at success in breaking the party and the movement by throwing his weight around as a “Christian leader” while feeding the resentment and paranoia of some evangelicals who think opposition to his candidacy is the result of his religion.

Huckabee will be taken down eventually. There is no way 50% of the party will ever support his candidacy. But the damage he can do between now and then may be irreparable by cracking once and for all the conservative coalition - already under enormous pressure - and destroying any hopes for a GOP victory next November.