GOD AS CAMPAIGN MANAGER: George Will is tiring of Bro. Huck sounds like. (And you should get a load of the wonderful film clip (above) The Daily Show put together of Huck’s holy pronouncements by way of answering his complaint that he gets all the God questions.) From Will’s column:
Many Republicans think that, come what may, things will come out the way Providence intends. Daniel Webster said “miracles do not cluster,” but Webster did not anticipate Mike Huckabee, whose campaign manager is, evidently, God. Two months ago, Huckabee said he rose in Iowa because of divine intervention (the power that propelled him there was not “human” but the one that fed the multitudes with two fish and five loaves). On Saturday, as he was winning the caucuses in Kansas, where many Republicans think Darwin should go back to Missouri where he came from, Huckabee said that the arithmetic is daunting (he must win almost all the remaining delegates to stop McCain) but he shall persevere:
“I know people say that the math doesn’t work out. Folks, I didn’t major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in those, too.”
Although some of his supporters defend him against the accusation of sincerity, it is not unfair to assume that Huckabee, who has made his piety integral to his politics, means what he says. There is appealing clarity, but also a whiff of lunacy or charlatanry, in the theory that the Author of the Universe is writing his campaign story. “The world,” wrote the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, “is charged with the grandeur of God.” The world, perhaps, but the Republican delegate scramble?
Maybe Huckabee hopes that his credentials as a potential running mate for McCain will be strengthened if he achieves a (strictly speaking) providential victory in the Texas primary. McCain might, however, prefer a vice president who is less directly guided by Providence. And McCain will not long be amused by Huckabee continuing to offer himself as a vessel into which conservatives pour their disapproval of the inevitable.
GOD’S MAP: Blogger here says Huckabee is doing Repubs a favor by continuing his windmill-tilting because the votes provide a precise map of where pockets of Religious Right voters are concentrated.
PITY PARTY: Huck asked about his Caymanian speech excursion:
“It bothers me more that I’m having to go out of the country to make money to pay for the other guys, … that you and I are having to fund candidaters who get a federal taxpayer paycheck whether they show up for the job and vote or not. I still have to pay my bills and I have to pay theirs. … I’m subsidizing my opponents in that way.”
‘GHOULISH CABARET’: A North Carolina alt weekly beholds what’s become of the party of Lincoln. A good sample is on the jump.