Huck & Obama Start Party Civil Wars

Amazing is the feeling I had when I saw Huckabee's acceptance speech quoting G.K. Chesterton, the Catholic ueber-guru, with the line "I do not fight against an enemy in front of me because I hate them, I fight because I love the people behind me" or words to that effect. Huck comes across like an EST inspiration-coach I had 30 years ago, a fellow from Oklahoma. But a glance at the Church census map demonstrates how Huckabee was clever to insert Catholic Chesterton's quote about love, because Huckabee's tone was religious-inspirational. Love conquers all.

Obama's speech was simply "electrifying" in its inspirational intensity. He jabbed at Edwards with "there are not two Americas rich & poor, blue & red, but one United States of America." He didn't go through a laundry list [as Hillary & her tired cohort did on C-Span while Obama lit up the oratorical skies] of social bromides and programmatic to-do post-its. He comes across as a combination of JFK and Abe Lincoln in one package, at least rhetorically. Powerful stuff and Hillary won't be able to compete on that level---she honestly looked and sounded twenty-five years older than Obama's young forty-five.

I am in the course of re-reading David Hackett Fischer's classicAlbion's Seed and noticed today that both Rush Limbaugh and Huckabee come from Arkansas/southeastern Missouri where three separate speech traditions [Lowland South, Upland South, Midland Delaware Valley] all converge, giving people from that area three out of the four speech patterns intermingled [New England is the fourth tradition/argot]. Bill Clinton had the same Baptist origins, but was really a classic manipulator with a Jesuit education---again that Baptist/Catholic mix.

As Edwards' class warfare and Hillary's programmatic management seminar approaches appear trumped by Obama's religious/patriotic/rhetorical skills, so does Huckabee's religious/populist/good-old-boy skill set undermine the patrician CEO approach of Romney. McCain may still have the energy to head Huck off in NH & Romney may resurge, but Thompson is hanging on by a thread and he just comes across as not relaxed, but tired. The guy is 65 & may have a Tsongas-type illness gnawing away at him. Or the fire is not very stoked in his belly. He is the one TRUE conservative, but the MSM are writing him off, unfairly, but understandably. They hate true conservatives and have never forgiven themselves for letting Reagan slip in under the radar.

It's 4AM and I suppose a way to end this screed is by pointing out that the US is still a religious nation, as a read of Albion's Seed makes abundantly clear, and that the deeply-ingrained religiosity of Americans that Huck & Obama exude will usually trump the political commissar approaches of an Edwards/Clinton we-know-better perspective. Obama understands this. He is a sort of cafe-au-lait "secularized" Billy Graham with an exotic tincture of Afro-Asian mystery.

Huckabee unfortunately is a stylistic reminder of Billy Jeff & the pietist moronic Jimmy Carter in one package. But his aw-shucks down-home approach seems unimprovably brilliant---Larry the Cable Guy in the Oval Office. Sadly, his foreign policy ignorance is encyclopedic. He's got to find out what an NIE is, or Susan Estrich WILL be dancing at the Inaugural Ball---if she can wangle an invitation from Obama!