Yes, the corporate elite was behind that, and they lost, but they'll be back. That battle is not over.

From the fact that comprehensive immigration reform has disappeared from the Republican platform and all the "Grand Compromise" Republican senators are trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo, yes it most definitely is over within the GOP. Within the GOP the populists have won and the cheap labor libertarians have lost. Within the Democratic Party, on the other hand, given that Clinton, Edwards, and Obama are committed to amnesty, forces hostile to working class and lower middle class Americans are very much in charge. It is not possible to say that you are an economic populist while you are supporting a Wall Street Journal editorial page agenda of flooding the American labor market to drive down wages and benefits.

Are you paying attention? At this point, it is mostly the GOP corporate elite, not "cultural elite Democrats," that is slamming Huck for his "public piety."

You mean the cheap labor libertarians who are culturally secularist Democrats ? Who are frankly, so much political deadweight because on immigration, health care, and trade this country flatly does not want libertarian policies ?

"will anger and alienate working class and minority Democratic voters"

No, it will mostly just anger knuckledragging fundies. The people Noonan described as "idiots". Needless to say, Noonan is not one of the "cultural elite Democrats."

Knuckledragging fundies. Hmmm. Do you mean Black and Hispanic fundamentalist Christians ? Yes, you most assuredly do. And frankly it is hard to reason with a mentality like yours that believes that it can insult core Democratic constituencies with total impunity. And refuses to comprehend how disgusting they find your ilk.

"Huckabee has abandoned his earlier support for 'comprehensive immigration reform'. Obama and Hillary have not. That will hurt them with working class voters."

It will hurt them mostly with the xenophobes, nativists and racists. But those are GOP voters to begin with, so it's OK.

Really ? Tell that to Eliot Spitzer, governor of the bluest of blue states whose support has collapsed because of his "licenses for illegals" scheme. Tell that to Hillary Clinton who saw her victory march to the nomination get tripped up on that same question. And who was booed by a Democratic audience when she promised amnesty for illegals within the first 100 days. Tell that to working class Blacks who see themselves being run out of the job market by illegals and who see Hispanic gains occurring directly at their expense. Are you aware that Black attitudes on immigration are pure Lou Dobbs ? Like a secularist latte liberal you have a relentless contempt for working class people and are totally willing to expend their lives and livelihoods in order to feel good about your "righteousness" and "compassion". Your dismissal of working class and lower middle class resistance to illegal immigration as "racism" and "nativism" and "xenophobia" is every bit as limousine liberal oblivious, as infuriatingly condescending, as politically suicidal as the 70's and 80's liberals who preached that people afraid of violent crime were "racists".

And that is the practical parallel here. The Democratic Party is handling illegal immigration every bit as stupidly as it handled violent crime thirty years ago. It tried then and is trying now to dismiss people's valid security concerns with lectures on "compassion" and "political correctness". It is aligning itself with anarchy against order. That is a one way ticket to the political wilderness. A Huckabee populist right GOP that would combine a law and order (always a strength for Republicans) approach to illegal immigration with economic populism and cultural conservatism would easily rout a Democratic party that is trying to import the lawlessness and poverty of Mexico in order to create a new "victim" constituency.

http://www.purplestates.org/

How exciting it must be to play sports to an empty arena without cameras and that annoying attention of the rest of the world! ...

THE GOOD THE BAD & THE UGLY"The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others," { he ......

Nope, only the Christians who make claims like this:

America is a Christian nation

That's from the official platform of the Texas GOP.

"To them, Huckabee having been a Baptist minister and his being a Bible believing Christian are campaign issues."

It was Huck's idea to make those things "campaign issues." And he got the idea from the way the GOP has been operating since Reagan: constant "overdose[s] of public piety," to use Kraut's term.

"The attacks upon 'Christianists' and 'theocrat, fundagelical, Christofascists' that will rain upon Huckabee from cultural elite Democrats"

Are you paying attention? At this point, it is mostly the GOP corporate elite, not "cultural elite Democrats," that is slamming Huck for his "public piety."

"will anger and alienate working class and minority Democratic voters"

No, it will mostly just anger knuckledragging fundies. The people Noonan described as "idiots". Needless to say, Noonan is not one of the "cultural elite Democrats."

That's one definition. Here's another one.

"You mean the institutions that secularists have done their best to undermine?"

You're claiming that "secularists" are trying to undermine "family, community and church." The surprising part is the way red states are packed with secularists:

In red states in 2001, there were 572,000 divorces … Blue states recorded 340,000 … In the same year, 11 red states had higher rates of divorce than any blue state … In each of the red states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Mexico, 46.3 percent of all births were to unwed mothers … In blue states, on average, that percentage was 31.7 … Delaware has the highest rate of births to teenage mothers among all blue states, yet 17 red states have a higher rate … Of those red states, 15 have at least twice the rate as that of Massachusetts … There were more than 100 teen pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 in 5 red states in 2002 … None of the blue states had rates that high … The rate of teen births declined in 46 states from 1988 to 2000 … It climbed in 3 red states and saw no change in another … The per capita rate of violent crime in red states is 421 per 100,000 … In blue states, it's 372 per 100,000 … The per capita rate of murder and non-negligent manslaughter in Louisiana is 13 per 100,000 … In Maine, it's 1.2 per 100,000 … As of 2000, 37 states had statewide policies or procedures to address domestic violence … All 13 that didn't were red states … The 5 states with the highest rates of alcohol dependence or abuse are red states … The 5 states with the highest rates of alcohol dependence or abuse among 12- to 17-year-olds are also red states … The per capita rate of methamphetamine-lab seizures in California is 2 per 100,000 … In Arkansas, it's 20 per 100,000 … The number of meth-lab seizures in red states increased by 38 percent from 1999 to 2003 … In the same time frame, it decreased by 38 percent in blue states … Residents of the all-red Mountain States are the most likely to have had 3 or more sexual partners in the previous year … Residents of all-blue New England are the least likely to have had more than 1 partner in that span … Residents of the mid-Atlantic region of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey were the most likely to be sexually abstinent … Residents of the all-red West South Central region (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana) were the least likely … Five red states reported more than 400 cases of chlamydia per 100,000 residents in 2002 … No blue state had a rate that high … The per capita rate of gonorrhea in red states was 140 per 100,000 … In blue states, it was 99 per 100,000.

More on teen pregnancy here.

"You mean the forces that were behind comprehensive immigration reform and got the tar beat out of them ? Twice ?"

Yes, the corporate elite was behind that, and they lost, but they'll be back. That battle is not over.

"Much as elite media prattle about 'xenophobia' and 'nativism' and 'racism', it was about working people of all colors seeing the threat of a glutted labor market reducing them to permanent peonage and fighting back."

It was about all of the above. It's an interesting and complicated issue.

"the corporate elites and cultural elites forged an alliance"

Since Reagan, the main alliance forged by "the corporate elites" has been with fundie knuckledraggers.

"Huckabee has abandoned his earlier support for 'comprehensive immigration reform'. Obama and Hillary have not. That will hurt them with working class voters."

It will hurt them mostly with the xenophobes, nativists and racists. But those are GOP voters to begin with, so it's OK.

"the socioeconomic survival interests of working class and lower middle class Americans"

You seem to be claiming that the GOP has some potential to successfully rebrand itself as the party of "working class and lower middle class Americans." Sorry, but I just can't take that seriously.

"Huckabee and only Huckabee can carry Ohio for the GOP."

To coin a phrase: "bring them on."

"I am not denying that this means a realignment in the GOP … The conversion of the GOP into a populist right party"

I think "realignment" is an understatement. What you're talking about is a radical and nearly unimaginable metamorphosis. Driving the GOP is a corporate elite that is anything but "populist." Good luck booting them out of your party. I think you might as well start a new party and call it the Jesus Party.

You would have more of a point if Obama was an icon of "lifestyle liberalism." But he's not. Neither is Hillary (notwithstanding many years of efforts to paint her as Satan).

As we have seen on this thread and we see on every political forum, the cultural elite secularists who run the Democratic Party find the Christian faith offensive. To them, Huckabee having been a Baptist minister and his being a Bible believing Christian are campaign issues. To the overwhelming majority of Americans they are nothing of the sort and the very fact that the Democratic Party is run by people who do think that way will reflect badly on it.

The attacks upon "Christianists" and "theocrat, fundagelical, Christofascists" that will rain upon Huckabee from cultural elite Democrats will anger and alienate working class and minority Democratic voters. Already over the McClurkin thing we saw Obama having to choose between homosexuals and Black fundamentalists. It will get worse.

When the real Thompson seemed less energetic and appealing than the imagined Thompson, Republicans fell out of love with him. They were still looking for someone not named Giuliani, Romney or McCain when they found Huckabee

Well if that doesn't whip the Ron Paul supporters into a tizzy, I don't know what will.