Conservative Donnybrook

Check it out. The Super Bowl would never be the same

They don’t like him. Catholics, why don’t you heart Huckabee?

I’m not joking. This passes for an upper level course in college? Makes me proud that I didn’t go to the University of Michigan.

With thanks to The Superfluous Man.

Daniel Radosh has an interesting piece on Huckabee’s unusual rhetoric on “horizontal” versus “vertical” politics. It’s language that is apparently commonplace in the world of Christian rock music, and so TPM’s Josh Marshall cocludes that it is a “crypto-evangelical” dog whistle aimed at his fundamentalist supporters.  Radosh:

There was a period when George Bush got a lot of grief from the left for using evangelical code words. Sometimes I agreed, but just as often I found the charge paranoid. What Bush does is use biblical metaphors — a perfectly reasonable, even literate, mode of speech. It’s not his fault that secular elites don’t always recognize the language of the King James Bible, and it shouldn’t automatically be seen as sinister to employ such time-tested rhetorical devices. Huckabee’s “vertical” metaphor, however, isn’t lifted from the Bible. It originates in a particular strain of Christian culture. But I don’t think that necessarily means he’s intentionally using code words. A charitable interpretation — perhaps overly charitable, but not unreasonable — is that he’s simply adapting language that he’s comfortable with to an entirely new purpose. … he’s turned “vertical” into exactly the kind of vague and meaningless pablum that candidates always use. It’s merely his way of saying “positive” or “hopeful,” … It may well be that the word’s function as a signal to the evangelical base is just an added bonus.

We know that the Ron Paul train is full of Nazis, pimps, hos, and Daniel Larison. Add Google employees into the mix and it’s not a pretty sight. I’ll let you all decide for yourselves how to interpret the disturbing level of support that Ron Paul is attracting among this sordid rabble of XML experts, database gods, stock-option millionaires, C++ jockeys, and–let’s not sugarcoat this–nerds. How can you guys be associated with these people? Their logo is terrible!

What’s more, I’m sure you’ve all heard about the Ron Paul Blimp. Of course, it should really be called the Ron Paul Zeppelin, what with the disturbing teutonic origins of airship technology. Does anyone honestly think that’s a coincidence? And check this out:

Google employees, in fact, represent the single top contributor to Ron Paul’s campaign. They narrowly beat out men and women in the U.S. Army and Navy, who are in second and third place, respectively.

You know who else had an army and navy, which nearly destroyed the entire world? (Think lebensraum, goose-stepping, short guy with funny mustache, blimps.)

It is plain to see how Ron Paul’s platform of noninterventionism and devolution of federal power fits into the neo-Nazi/pimps/software engineers’ plan for world domination. Open your eyes, people!

I am less convinced than my colleagues of the significance of Hillary’s little misty-eyed soliloquy. It seemed a little stage-managed to me; perhaps her husband, well-known for his ability to turn on the waterworks, has been giving her lessons. I think we all know that whatever her faults, Hillary has balls of steel.