From the Associated Press:

On the Republican side, Mormons comprised a quarter of those attending Nevada’s GOP caucuses, and more than nine in 10 were voting for Romney. Romney is a Mormon, and his religion has been cited as a problem by some Republican voters.
About half of Romney’s overall vote in Nevada came from Mormons.

This would seem to be a clear-cut case of “identity politics.” Fine with me. I don’t give a hoot why a voter chooses to vote for a particular candidate. It isn’t any of my business. It isn’t anybody else’s business either.

Mike Huckabee has been criticized and reviled by a large number of conservative pundits and molders of conservative opinion for “identity politics.”

NRO’s Kathryn Lopez’s , in a post-Iowa Caucus piece captures the truly dramatic rhetoric from Michigan congressman Pete Hoekstra, who says he is “scared.” According to the Congressman, the identity politics of the Huckabee campaign, and the implied bigotry of Christians who will not support a Mormon candidate causes divisiveness, is a threat to world peace, apple pie, and the Rule of Law.

Republicans “need to stick up for our principles,” Hoekstra told National Review Online on Monday afternoon. We’re about “freedom and opportunity” — we don’t exclude people based on such things as race or gender, class or religion. But Hoekstra sees the Huckabee campaign as a divisive vessel of religious and class warfare.

No doubt Hoekstra, Lopez, Lowry, et al, have a perfectly reasonable explanation for the fact that 9 out of 10 Mormon voters in Nevada supported the Mormon candidate. And, we can be absolutely sure that it has “nothing at all to do with religion.”

After hearing CAIR deliver that same line for the last 6+ years, hearing NRO use jihadist rhetoric will be strange, to say the least.

But with NRO’s implicit support of Congressman Hoekstra for using Al Sharpton’s rhetoric, then I guess we really shouldn’t be too surprised.

Update: (1/21)
Chas Johnson calls Huck a Leftist. This time last year, there was a lot of buzz over there as to whether or not the social conservatives would support Rudy if he won the nomination. I thought so, at that time. Seeing this come from the self-proclaimed leader of the counter-jihad, I am now not so sure. You don’t win support by trying to marginalize potential allies. But, since Rudy has been invisible in the Republican race up to this point, I suppose Johnson is just releasing some pent-up energy, and the same can probably be said of Tammy Bruce’s statement that she would vote for the donk candidate rather than vote for Huck.

So, Johnson and Bruce join the NRO-WSJ chorus, accusing Huck of being unable to expand his base. The unspoken irony is that none of the leading candidates have been able to do so.

cross posted here

We’re counting on you, Carolina. You can do it!

You are very much in our mind.

Go Mike!

Go Mike!

Writing in Teh Spectator, Quinn Hillyer seeks to extend his allotted fifteen minutes in a major-league suck up move to the group of conservatives whose names he dropped in yesterday’s AS blog piece…

Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, George Will, Phyllis Schlafly, Michael Reagan, Jed Babbin, Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Lopez, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Peggy Noonan, Ann Coulter, Bob Novak, Bob Dole, Laura Ingraham, David Limbaugh, Donald Lambro, Thomas Sowell, John Fund, the Wall Street Journal, Pete Wehner, David Frum, Deroy Murdock, Paul Mirengoff, John Hinderaker, Frank Gaffney,the Club for Growth, Dick Armey, and Pat Toomey.

Revealing the “purely tactical” considerations for supporting Fred Thompson in Carolina, Hillyer’s Stage One reasoning is comically ironic.

Let me see if I can help…..“Fred Thompson is the Complete Conservative…The only candidate who can unite the Reagan coalition.. … … Consistent on all the issues… … He can unite all three legs of the conservative coalition… … Fred D. Thompson is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life….”

Glug, glug. Now go play some solitaire.
More from the koolaid brigade

: Ann Coulter, Bob Dole, Bob Novak, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum, David Limbaugh, Deroy Murdock, Dick Armey, Donald Lambro, Frank Gaffney, Fred Barnes, fred thompson, George Will, Jed Babbin, John Fund, John Hinderaker, Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Lopez, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Michael Reagan, Pat Toomey, Paul Mirengoff, Peggy Noonan, Pete Wehner, Phyllis Schlafly, Rich Lowry, Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth, the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Sowell

Quinn Hillyer, writing in Teh American Spectator on the subject that has made him cable news’ go-to guy for all things Huckabee…now he’s a name-dropper!

I know I have never spoken to Mark Levin about it, or to Rush Limbaugh, or to George Will, or Phyllis Schlafly, Michael Reagan….. all of whom have made their objections to the Huckster quite clear. Then there are Jed Babbin, Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Lopez, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Peggy Noonan, Ann Coulter, Bob Novak, Bob Dole, Laura Ingraham, David Limbaugh, Donald Lambro, the Club for Growth, Dick Armey, Thomas Sowell, John Fund, the Wall Street Journal, Pete Wehner, David Frum, Deroy Murdock, Paul Mirengoff, John Hinderaker, Frank Gaffney, and so many others who have strongly criticized Huckabee. This isn’t a conspiracy; it’s a consensus.

A consensus! Where have I heard that word before?

And, when are you ding-bat Evangelicals going to do as you’re told and get back in line? Heh! I love this stuff.

I was speaking yesterday with VH about this same topic. The one great paradigm shift that I see coming out of all of this is going to be a restructuring, not of the GOP, but of the way that conservatives receive and communicate information and opinion. I am seeing traffic patterns in the Rightosphere already moving in a direction away from A-list bloggers toward the forum model, and eventually I see it moving toward the community model embraced by the Left netroots. Moreover, I believe talk radio’s influence will begin to weaken as the Rightosphere begins to fully adopt 2.0 tools, much as the Leftosphere did several years ago.

If you’ve never read Robert Cox’s great piece, “When will the right recognize the cost of conceding web 2.0?”, then I urge you to consider the implications of this fast-changing and absolutely remarkable thing we call the internet.

Oh, and Quinn, one more thing. The distinguished list of conservatives you presented have earned their spot at the table of conservative public opinion. But, they are not the arbiters of conservative public opinion, and many of them are threatening to vote for the Donk candidate, or just sit home on Election Day should Huck get the nod.

So be it. I find it interesting that Ol’ Fred Thompson just told Neil Cavutto that he would support the eventual nominee of the Party. I’ve heard Rich Lowry say the same thing. It’s time for some grown up thinking on the right, because like it or not, supporters of six of the remaining seven Republican candidates are not going to be happy with the ultimate choice for the top of the ticket.

: Ann Coulter, Bob Dole, Bob Novak, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum, David Limbaugh, Deroy Murdock, Dick Armey, Donald Lambro, Frank Gaffney, Fred Barnes, fred thompson, George Will, Jed Babbin, John Fund, John Hinderaker, Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Lopez, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Michael Reagan, Pat Toomey, Paul Mirengoff, Peggy Noonan, Pete Wehner, Phyllis Schlafly, Rich Lowry, Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth, the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Sowell