The most interesting thing among many interesting things in Iowa last night was Mike Huckabee’s speech. He hit all the right notes, and never a false one.

While none of the Republican candidates stands a chance of winning the White House in November, Huckabee showed himself to be the only one who wouldn’t lose in a landslide of Goldwater or Mondale proportions.

This is because Huckabee appealed to the growing number of voters who have become nostalgic for that outmoded New Testament crap. Big mistake, Mike. The cold-eyed moneylenders who own the Republican Party want somebody who can be counted on to understand that them with the gold, rule.

But Huckabee keeps showing signs of believing in that other Golden Rule, that whole Sermon on the Mount thing. As governor of Arkansas he even tried to follow it now and then, by raising taxes to improve schools and other such heresies. Consequently the party bosses are now set to strangle their strongest candidate in the crib.

They will attack Huckabee mercilessly for being soft on crime, for ignorance of foreign affairs, for preferring peace to war, for lying about his theological credentials, for raising taxes, for graft and corruption as governor. And that’s only the charges for which there is some basis, however slender, in fact.

As we know from the sliming of John McCain in the South Carolina primary eight years ago, however, no relation to truth at all is necessary when the GOP grownups get down to the short strokes.

Huckabee could find himself attacked as a queer, an equal opportunity employer, a pothead, a lush, an immigrant lover, a card-carrying member of the ACLU, a sodomizer of Eagle Scouts or Shetland ponies, an atheist. Or worst of all, a raghead, a haji:

“Would it change your opinion of Governor Huckabee to learn that he worships a Moslem prophet?” the anonymous telephone poller whispers to undecided voters just before the primary. (Hey, you can’t blame the RNC if folks don’t know that Moslems consider Jesus a prophet.)

Count on it. Whatever vile measures may be necessary to destroy a Baptist preacher with suspiciously New Testament tendencies and to throw the nomination to an spectacularly unelectable Mormon billionaire, those measures the GOP leadership is prepared to take.

Grunts in Vietnam had a name for this kind of thing. It was called stepping on your own dick.

Posted by Jerome Doolittle at January 04, 2008 02:32 AM

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