Republicans, Scattered and Struggling

The ascent of Mike Huckabee had exposed a deep fracture in the Republican Party even before the caucus results came back from Iowa. For many years now there has been an uneasy alliance between religious conservatives and their fiscal brethren. There's no clear, bright line between both camps, and there is common ground on defense and very general cultural issues - but in the wake of George W. Bush it seems like the wheels might be coming off the GOP bus.

It's everywhere: Name calling, confusion, defeatism, and relentless negativity.

It's too early to declare the kind of collapse that political parties seem fated to endure every few cycles - November is months away, and we're only one race into a 50-state nominating cycle. But everyone wants to argue about who passes the conservative "litmus test" - or indulge in uncompromising, schoolmarmish tirades about some Rightward policy point. I just listened to a few moments of Rush Limbaugh chiding his audience about how they need to be taken back to school on the basics of ideology. Like Rush or not, his analysis is usually valuable. But in this case it was too bitter to endure.

Huckabee and Obama have one thing in common - an uplifting populism with broad-based appeal. Their moment, however long it lasts, has not come because they embody their party's respective "core" ideology to the Nth degree. It has come, I think .... and here I'm abandoning the sardonic pragmatism that is usually my M.O. ... voters, in contrast to the political/chattering class, really crave a likable, trustworthy president that they can get behind and support, one with some overlay of classic American idealism.

And idealism, in contrast to ideology, is a much-needed balm.