There’s a long-simmering debate going on in progressive political circles about the legitimacy of faith-based political appeals, as reflected in a recent TRB column by Jonathan Chait in The New Republic.
But concerns about the religious motivations of politicians aren’t limited to the Left. For one thing, there’s the drumbeat of conservative criticism of Mike Huckabee for espousing views on domestic issues characteristic of the Christian Left (sic!).
Huckabee’s not, it seems, the only major GOP figure that has been led astray into socialism and do-gooderism by Christianity. Check out this uintentionally hilarious post from Andy McCarthy at National Review‘s The Corner blog

When a politician who wants to be president of the United States adheres to them, I don’t see why we should hesitate to ask about what those beliefs are and why he thinks they are sensible. And when a politician holds himself out to be a person of deep religious belief, again I don’t see why we should not probe. I don’t think that’s hostility to religion; I think it’s common sense.
President Bush, for example, is a man of deep religious faith. Faith may be able to move mountains; but it can also substitute hope and blind conviction for experience and hard inquiry. In my observation, the president believes in democracy with a religious zeal that ignores the real limitations of democracy; he sincerely believes in the oneness and dignity of all human beings to a degree that makes him insensitive to the downsides of his proposed comprehensive immigration reform; he sincerely believes in our duty to help our fellow human beings in need with an ardor that makes him insensitive to the limitations of government (and, indeed, to the negative effects of public welfare on the individual). I could be wrong about this, but I perceive a connection between his religious convictions and the things I don’t like about his policies.

Jesus wept.

The latest evidence that the Ron Paul Revolution has achieved pop-culture Cool Status is in the puffy Washington Post Outlook Section piece today by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch that discovers libertarianism for readers who have somehow missed the whole phenomenon over the last few decades.
To be sure, the authors of this piece know their subject; they are both editors for the libertarian mag Reason. But they are pitching their faith in a skewed way aimed at seducing people who should know better.
For one thing, Gillespie and Welch gets some simple facts wrong: they call the hyper-clericalist Guy Fawkes an “anarchist,” and they falsely claim that the libertarian strain of conservatism was once “dominant” in the GOP. More importantly, they almost exclusively identify libertarians with their most fashionable, progressive beliefs–opposition to the Iraq War and to civil liberties violations, and support for decriminalization of drugs–and not with their virulently reactionary opposition to every conceivable positive function of government.
If I sound a bit cranky on this subject, it’s because I think libertarianism is the least Cool, and most pedantic and tiresome political ideology on the map. Maybe you had to go through (as I did as an adolescent) the Ayn Rand Virus to understand the extent to which Ron Paul’s obsession with bringing back the Gold Standard is typical of the libertarian mindset. These are people who consider even the mildest forms of progressive taxation as “looting,” and even the most basic regulation of corporations as steps on the road to communism and fascism.
The most ridiculous part of the Gillespie/Welch effort to make libertarianism Cool is their breathless citation of celebrity support for Ron Paul and his Cause (Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, Matt Stone, Tucker Carlson, and even Barry Manilow are cited as self-described libertarians, and Drew Carey is also dragooned into the category). Well, what do you expect? Is it a surprise that some wealthy and hedonistic celebrities might favor an ideology that simultaneously lets them oppose wars, take drugs and avoid taxation?
Gillespie and Welch also note Markos Moulitsas’ effort to claim libertarianism as part of a latter-day Democratic ideology. With all due respect to Markos, it’s tough to imagine any real coalition involving people like him, who think it’s heretical to consider any changes in the Social Security system, and want Democrats to stand for universal health care, and people like Ron Paul, who would happily abolish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and every other safety net program.
The simple reality is that libertarianism is neither new nor hip, nor progressive. No less an authority than Rand Herself described Bourbon Democrat Grover Cleveland, the late-nineteenth-century bete noir of the populists, as the beau ideal of libertarian governance. And the one contemporary libertarian who actually gained real power was Rand’s ever-faithful disciple Alan Greenspan, hardly a progressive figure.
I understand why some Democrats want to fete Ron Paul for his opposition to the war and his support for civil liberties. But get real, folks: an America run by the likes of Ron Paul might be peaceful and non-authoritarian, but from the perspective of every other progressive value, it would be Hooverism on steroids (though libertarians might well object to the analogy on grounds that Hoover was far too altruistic!).
The Ron Paul Counter-Revolution would be a better monniker for the Texan’s campaign.

Down in Australia, the Labor Party has won a decisive victory over the Liberal/National Coalition that previously ruled the country, and Kevin Rudd will replace John Howard as Prime Minister. Having spent some time hanging out with Australian (and New Zealand) Labor folk last year, I strongly believe that they deserve their electoral good fortune, and will provide a clear breath of fresh air for their country.
Howard has been one of the longest-reigning conservative leaders in the world. He will not be missed.

In just a few hours polls will be opening in Australia for its general election. For some time now, Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party has been favored to ouster John Howard’s long-reigning conservative Coalition party. But on the eve of the elections, at least one poll shows the race too close to call.
One thing’s for sure: turnout will be at levels Americans can barely imagine; Australia’s compulsory voting system assures that.
We’ll have more on the Aussie elections when the results become clear.

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for a lot of things that have nothing to do with politics, and thus have no place here. But on the political front, I am thankful that the Great Nominating Contest Calendar Dance of 2007 appears to have ended, with Michigan’s primary being set for January 15, and New Hampshire’s for January 8. The specter of NH and then IA moving up into December has finally been banished.
That means people like me don’t have to completely recalibrate many months of speculation about the dynamics of the nominating process. And more importantly, it means a lot of poorly paid campaign staffers and unpaid volunteers will get to have some sort of holiday season.

Tired of generational analysis of politics? You know, the assumption that this or that pol represents the world-view and/or aspirations of the age cohort into which he or she was born. If so, you’ll love this comment from Dana Goldstein at TAPPED:

Sure, the experience of living through Vietnam and the student protest movement indelibly shaped politicians like Clinton and Mitt Romney. But every generation has its liberals and its conservatives, its hopeful optimists and its hard-nosed power brokers, its intellectuals and its businesspeople. Furthermore, a “generation” is almost impossible to define in any self-contained way.

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Makes abundant good sense, eh? It’s sort of like the reason I’ve always had a hard time taking astrology seriously (apologies if I offend any astrology fans here). I mean, really, I’m supposed to believe I have more in common with a Bangladeshi hemp farmer who happens to be a Virgo than with, say, my Sagittarian father? To a lesser but still significant extent, I have the same objection to generational typecasting.
Moreover, Dana’s right: generational definitions are a little squishy. She notes that Barack Obama, the purported avatar of post-baby-boom politics, is himself a baby boomer, having been born in 1961. When the term “baby boom generation” first came into use, in the 1960s, it was applied to people born immediately after World War II, from 1946 to 1952. At some point it was extended to 1960. Now, apparently, the line between baby boomers and Gen Xers is 1964.
So maybe we need to start defining Barack Obama as a “baby boomer with X rising.” Or better yet, find another way to describe him altogether.

The GOP version of the Washington Post/ABC poll of Iowa is now out, and the storyline is all about Mike Huckabee.
Mike’s now within the margin of error of Romney in this poll (28%-24%). The other candidates are pretty much where they were back in July. More importantly, Huckabee’s base of support seems a lot firmer than Romney’s, as Gary Langer’s analysis for ABC points out:

[A]mong likely caucus-goers who are “very enthusiastic” about their choice, Huckabee leads Romney by 37-25 percent. Among those who say they’ve definitely made up their minds, 34 percent support Huckabee, 24 percent Romney. That makes for a better turnout profile for Huckabee.

This may matter a lot, because this and previous polls consistently show less enthusiasm among Republicans than Democrats in Iowa, which (along with strong indications that independents are likely to participate on the Democratic side) could mean a relatively low turnout.
One factor that doesn’t matter for the GOP is second-choice preferences. Unlike the Iowa Democratic Caucuses, the presidential segment of the Republican Caucuses is a straight straw poll, without all the thresholds and preference reassignments that make the Dem Caucuses so unpredictable. That’s too bad for Huckabee, since every other candidate would love to see him derail Romney in IA. You do have to wonder if they will avoid attacking Huckabee in Iowa between now and January 3, against the wishes of the conservative opinion-leaders who can’t stand him and are beginning to worry that an IA win could catapult him into serious contention down the road.

In a rare development, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post penned a column today that offered a cogent and oriiginal point about a political subject (though maybe I’m just suffering from Column Envy).
All the talk about Mitt Romney’s religion, says Cohen, has detracted attention from the fact that Mike Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist minister, which is a relatively unusual phenomenon on the presidential campaign trail. Indeed, while there’s not much evidence that Romney’s faith has any particular impact on his policy positions, Huckabee’s been trading on his evangelical credentials pretty heavily of late. So why, asks Cohen, isn’t anybody asking the Arkansan to do a JFK-style speech reassuring people about his religious views?
It’s a good question, and one that may get asked a lot if Huckabee manages to upset the Mittster in Iowa.

The big buzz today, just over six weeks out from the iowa Caucuses, is a new ABC-Washington Post poll of the Democratic field in Iowa. For casual news consumers, the top line of this poll–Obama up by 4 over Clinton–may seem like a big, exciting shift. But actually, the same poll had Obama up back in July. The more dramatic change is that Obama’s up 8 points over Edwards, though even that difference shrinks to 5 percent among the likeliest voters, and the margin of error is four-and-a-half percent.
Like last week’s CBS-New York Times poll, this one shows Clinton trailing Obama and Edwards in “second-choice” support, though it does not break out supporters of those second-tier candidates who might actually have to make a second choice at the Caucuses.
The internal finding that the Post finds most significant is that Obama’s now no more dependent on first-time Caucus-goers–and thus a big overall turnout–than HRC (though both are significantly more dependent on such voters than Edwards, the candidate who would probably most benefit from a lower turnout).
Meanwhile, there’s a new CNN/WMUR poll of the Republican field in NH, which shows Mitt Romney expanding his lead, Rudy Giuliani and (most calamitously) Fred Thompson declining, and Ron Paul leaping into fourth place. CNN/WMUR’s September poll was the one, you might remember, that sparked a bunch of “Giuliani Catches Romney” headlines. Not so much today, since Romney’s lead over Rudy is 17 points, with McCain actually in second place without adding or losing support since September. Big Fred dropped from 14 percent in September to 4 percent now, and an amazing one-half of poll respondents said they wouldn’t vote for him under any circumstances.
Sic transit gloria, eh Fred?

Via pollster.com, we learn that Elon University has done a presidential nominating candidacy poll of adults (e.g., no screen for registration or likelihood to vote) in VA, NC, SC, GA and FL.
This is interesting because most prior primary polls in the South have focused strictly on South Carolina and Florida.
Among Dems, Elon has HRC well ahead, at 45%, with Obama at 17% and Edwards at 11%. Front-runner-factor notwithstanding, this is pretty impressive, since Edwards is a southern white male (with his home state and native state in the mix), and Obama is an African-American (the black share of the Dem vote in these states is probably somewhere between a fourth and a third of the total).
On the GOP side, Rudy leads with 25%, with Big Fred at 16%, Romney at 12%, and McCain and Huckabee tied at 8%.
All these numbers are obviously vulnerable in a big way to early state results and regional campaigning. But it does indicate that all the down-ballot-fear-of-HRC stuff we hear about Southern Democrats is an elite, not popular, phenomenon, and that Rudy’s national lead is predictably smaller in the SE, and even more inviting to a candidate who can unite conservatives before the first Southerners vote in SC.