Evangelical does not mean just that one is religious, to evangelize is the act of preaching or trying to convert. Trying to impose one's views

Whoops! Definition creep sometimes goes a lot quicker than the word "creep" would suggest.

"Trying to convert" is not the same as "trying to impose." When people come to your door to talk religion with you, they're trying to convert you.

When they go around blowing you up on buses and in pizza parlors, they're trying to impose their views on you.

Evangelicals and libertarians are a natural coalition in spite of the lame arguments made to the contrary. What could be more useless to either than more government intrusion?

Like hell. Evangelical does not mean just that one is religious, to evangelize is the act of preaching or trying to convert. Trying to impose one's views on others is the opposite of libertarianism, at least in my book

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down--up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order--or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

Then again, Huckabee's a bit fuzzier than this, so he's probably just stumbling across the metaphor independently.

I think the American people are hungry for vertical politics, where we have leaders who lift us up rather than those who tear us down

But wouldn't tearing us down also be vertical?

Sigh, at least it is better than our current vertigo politics.

Christian Leader Huckabee is obviously referring to that vertical connection between This World and Heaven.

Think of the paintings of The Assumption. Christ and Mary go vertical, Whoooosh!

Huckabee's politics isn't just of this world, but extends vertically to encompass the next as well.

I don't think New Hampshire voters are living in caves, utterly unaware of how Huckabee has been campaigning in Iowa.

The vast majority of voters aren't paying any attention. Even among primary voters, ostensibly the people paying the most attentionto politics, it is surprising how little they know. Consider that 17% of republican voters in Iowa decided the day of the caucus who they were voting for, another 13% decided in the three days before hand, and another 10% decided in the week before hand. That means a grand total 40% of the rep voters didn't know who they were voting for as recently as christmas.

People, by and large do not pay that much attention. We are a small minority group of freaks.

Something similar might be said of the stealth cross in his Christmas commercial. There's a sort of wink-wink/nudge-nudge quality about it. Not a dog whistle per se, more like giving the dog whistle a prominent place in the brass band.

I have family in Iowa -- aunts, uncles and cousins. And I've been following politics since I learned to read. Until the last couple of weeks I had no idea Iowa was the buckle of the Bible Belt; I always thought that was, like, the South, and into Texas and Oklahoma.

Learn something new every election cycle.

In New Hampshire, there is a pro-Huckabee leaflet that touts him as a "leader." In Iowa, there was an identical pro-Huckabee pamphlet, except that it described him as a "Christian leader." My guess is that Huckabee is going to drop the Christian stuff in non-evangelical states and therefore will resort to dog-whistle references in those areas. He wants the evangelical vote, but doesn't want to turn off non-evangelicals in the process -- a concern that didn't exist for him in Iowa.

Therefore, I do not think the mocking of Josh Marshall and his fancy degree is warranted. How many Americans do you think could have interpreted the screen shot quote on Huckabee's website? If you need a two paragraph explanation from a TV transcript to explain the context of "vertical," chances are Huckabee might be trying to communicate to only a particular subset of voters with the phrase as used on his website.

Evangelicals and libertarians are a natural coalition in spite of the lame arguments made to the contrary. What could be more useless to either than more government intrusion?

Have you kept abreast of anything the GOP has done in the last 7 years?

For some reason the name "Schiavo" just lept to mind...

VERTICAL....Apparently the latest hot word to convince evangelicals that you're one of them is "vertical." Who knew? It's like trying to keep up with the latest from the hip hop world. In other trendy word news, the American Dialect Society......