Posted 3:35pm CT in Minneapolis, USA
LONDON 9:35pm – JO’BURG 11:35pm  – MANILA 5:35am 6/1 – SYDNEY 8:35am 6/1

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble,
whatever is right, whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable -
if anything is excellent or praiseworthy -
think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8 NIV)

By Gloriscope staff

Today’s review of national opinion in major city dailies focuses on Mike Huckabee, who scored a big success in Iowa as a result of an evangelical resurgence within the Iowa Republican party.

The New York Daily News says in its editorial that Huckabee “wasn’t pretending to be the second coming of Ronald Reagan. But he proved himself a canny pol who made the most of a winning personality and a shrewd understanding of Iowa Republicans. An evangelical Christian among evangelicals, Huckabee connected as the most authentic candidate among those who chose to court the state’s GOP. ”

Peggy Noonan, a Catholic and always very sensitive to cultural currents in national politics, writes about Huckabee in her column in the Wall Street Journal today: “I would say his great power, 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.” But she sees a problem: “I’m sorry to say it is my sense that Mr. Huckabee is not so much leading a movement as riding a wave. One senses he brilliantly discerned and pursued an underserved part of the voting demographic, and went for it. Clever fellow. To me, the tipoff was ‘Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?’”

The Wall Street Journal is reserved about Huckabee’s prospects. Its editorial today says, “Mr. Huckabee is also only now being discovered by most Republican voters. His innocence (or ignorance) on foreign policy, penchant for borrowing liberal economic attack lines, and even his rejection of Darwin’s theory of evolution deserve to be understood by voters before they make him their standard bearer.”

The Dallas Morning News says in its editorial: “Mr. Obama and Mr. Huckabee both have the potential to bring about a clean break with the hyper-partisan politics of the recent past. You could see this in their gracious, hopeful victory speeches. Quoting the English writer G.K. Chesterton, Mr. Huckabee said, ‘A true soldier fights not because he hates those who are in front of him, but because he loves those who are behind him.’”

The New York Times, which published a negative view of Mike Huckabee in an editorial yesterday, shares the conventional skepticism about him expressed by most media commentators yesterday and today. In today’s editorial, the newspaper notes that “some powerful political currents were on display in Iowa” and says about Huckabee: “If the currents Mr. Obama is exploiting are as powerful as they seem, Mr. Huckabee may find himself out of touch with large swathes of America should he win the nomination.”

The Detroit Free Press points out that Huckabee’s populism runs against some key tenets of the Republican ideology. The newspaper says in its editorial: “But Huckabee also displays an unusually deep concern, at least in Republican circles, for the struggles facing the average family. When he’s framing a problem on health care or unemployment, he sounds very much like John Edwards; it’s the solutions that diverge. Huckabee surely will draw blowback within his own party because he regularly violates the tenets of so many of the groups the GOP tries to keep within its tent.”

The conservative syndicated columnist George Will says in his column today that Huckabee threatens the balance of power between the left and right wings of the Republican party: “Under the doctrine that conservatives call ‘fusion,’ each faction has respected the other’s agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.” George Will is negative to Huckabee’s populistic message: “Although Huckabee and Edwards profess to loathe and vow to change Washington’s culture, each would aggravate its toxicity. Each overflows with and wallows in the pugnacity of the self-righteous who discern contemptible motives behind all disagreements with them, and who therefore think opponents are enemies and differences are unsplittable.”

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TO GOD BE ALL THE GLORY!

Published in the U.S.A. Copyright © 4T4C News Corp. 2008. All rights reserved.