History's million dollar question

Howler, Whoops, and Miracles: Which Party is More Strange?

Great line.

"Democrats, who consider equality the value before which the virtuous genuflect, worry that their nomination might be settled by "superdelegates," who are more equal than others. These are august people (officeholders, party officials, former luminaries) who, although no one voted to give them the job, get to vote at the nominating convention because liberals believe that if they fine-tune the world's rules with this or that wrinkle, everything will come out just right."

So true, so true.

"Many Republicans," he continues, "think that, come what may, things will come out the way Providence intends. Daniel Webster said 'miracles do not cluster,' but Webster did not anticipate Mike Huckabee, whose campaign manager is, evidently, God. Two months ago, Huckabee said he rose in Iowa because of divine intervention (the power that propelled him there was not 'human' but the one that fed the multitudes with two fish and five loaves). On Saturday, as he was winning the caucuses in Kansas, where many Republicans think Darwin should go back to Missouri where he came from, Huckabee said that the arithmetic is daunting (he must win almost all the remaining delegates to stop McCain) but he shall persevere:

'I know people say that the math doesn't work out. Folks, I didn't major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in those, too.'

Although some of his supporters defend him against the accusation of sincerity, it is not unfair to assume that Huckabee, who has made his piety integral to his politics, means what he says. There is appealing clarity, but also a whiff of lunacy or charlatanry, in the theory that the Author of the Universe is writing his campaign story. 'The world,' wrote the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'is charged with the grandeur of God." The world, perhaps, but the Republican delegate scramble?'"

It's an equal-opportunity mocking. And well deserved.

At some point, people acting this dumb have to ask themselves why they take themselves so seriously.

Then, again, that's history's million dollar question, now isn't it?