Warming To Huckabee

Of course, Bill Kristol would warm to Jamie Lynn Spears if she won the Republican nomination, but he's right about Huckabee's political skills. Rod Dreher, who has backed Huckabee for non-cynical reasons, explains:

I don't get why Andrew calls Huckabee's rise a sign of "the perils of fundamentalist politics." For one, Huckabee is not a fundamentalist. He's more of a Rick Warren Evangelical, which is not exactly an Andrew Sullivan Catholic, to be sure, but it's not the same thing as a fundamentalist. For another, as more and more people are catching on to, Huckabee's rise is not because of some zombie Jesus cult. He's scoring with folks for much the same reason Obama is: because he's an exceptionally good orator whose style is in tune with the mood of the country right now. Plus, his Joe Lunchbucket economic populism is striking a resonant chord with many Republican voters.

Er, but religious faith is his bedrock political philosophy. Even his foreign policy is based on religion. On abortion and gay rights and the drug war, he holds the most extreme positions imaginable. This may, of course, be preferable to the cynical use of religion, a la Rove. But it's still a recipe for the end of limited government, free market, individual rights conservatism. Rod is fine with that. Kristol is fine with anything that keeps him close to power. I still believe in the Thatcherism I grew up with. Conservatives like me revere religion and hold religious faith. But we do see politics as a separate sphere. Huckabee doesn't. And in this fault-line of the twenty-first century, we are on opposite sides.