What the Republican Party doesn't understand about Huckabee

Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal regarding Huckabee's win in Iowa says of Huckabee's supporters:

the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture.

They have been bruised and offended by the rigid, almost militant secularism and multiculturalism of the public schools; they reject those schools' squalor, in all senses of the word. They believe in God and family and America. They are populist: They don't admire billionaire CEOs, they admire husbands with two jobs who hold the family together for the sake of the kids; they don't need to see the triumph of supply-side thinking, they want to see that suffering woman down the street get the help she needs.

They believe that Mr. Huckabee, the minister who speaks their language, shares, down to the bone, their anxieties, concerns and beliefs. They fear that the other Republican candidates are caught up in a million smaller issues--taxing, spending, the global economy, Sunnis and Shia--and missing the central issue: again, our culture. They are populists who vote Republican,

I am one of these people. It's about abortion, it's about gay marriage and it's about an evil culture that doesn't work anymore.

The Republican party keeps telling me, Rush Limbaugh keeps saying, Hugh Hewitt keeps pronouncing, NO, you are wrong, things are just fine. Vote for more of the same an it'll be OK.

I'm not buying it. Neither are gazillions of motivated voters like me. We want mercy. We want Justice and fairness. We want judges to issue righteous judgment, not the buffoons who sit on benches across the land. We will vote our conscience but we won't vote for a pro abortion democrat and only under great duress would vote for a pro abortion republican like Romney or Gulliani.

If anyone thinks for a second that this attitude isn't resonating across America right now you are blind. This is 1992. This is 1980. Things look terrible to many. Trying to happy talk populists into thinking things are OK is a losers strategy. It didn't work in 1992 and it won't work now.

Something is rotten in American, something is rotten in the Republican Party and if we as republicans are unwilling to address those problems with determination we will lose the election to the Dems and deserve to do so.

Even if Huckabee doesn't get the nomination he has framed a message that fiscal conservatives need to hear.

In the opinion of people motivated to vote, America is rotting from the inside out and needs a serious operation. Like a cancer diseased things must be removed. Infections must be drained. Tax cuts and illegal immigration policy are sideshows to the real problems in America.

So, you decide fellow Republicans, either you will get with the zeitgeist that Huckabee has identified or lose to the democrats. Edwards is the pro abortion other side of this populist wave. There are Edwards supporters who would vote for Huck because of abortion. Lots of them. We used to call them Reagan Democrats. But we abandoned them long ago.

I will still support almost any Republican candidate. Early on I was a Thompson supporter. He lost me on his 15th yawn. I want a candidate who gives a rats behind about this country and this election. I don't want some technician with gravitas who is determined to keep the status quo that isn't working.

I wish we had a real candidate who understands the situation. Till then, I like MIKE.