The Politics of Resentment and Self-Pity.

By George Will
Sunday, January 6, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement's two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee's desire to "take back this nation for Christ," have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call "fusion," each faction has respected the other's agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.
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Huckabee says "only one explanation" fits his Iowa success "and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people." God so loves Huckabee's politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons? (To Continue: The Tearing of the Conservative Fusion)

My Comment: Excellent article! I share Will’s concern about Huckabee’s believing he is God’s chosen. The larger point of the article is that both Edwards and Huckabee are populist who appeal to the worse instincts in people. As Will points out, the middle class is shrinking because so many middle class are becoming upper class. The politics of resentment and self-pity is dangerous to the Republic.

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