Running Scared

Yes that's the name of Jazz's old blog. Jazz was a Republican at the time and he was running from what his party had become. Today it's the people Jazz was running from who are Running Scared. I have already discussed their sudden intolerance of "too much" religion as Mike Huckabee is suddenly a front runner. Now their target is Huckabee's lack of foreign policy experience. Of course neither Rudy or Mitt have any either but at least they are saying the right words. Huckabee isn't.
The Perils of Huckaplomacy

More problematic for his presidential prospects, when Huckabee did speak clearly he often sounded more
like Dennis Kucinich than Dick Cheney, something Republican primary voters are not likely to find appealing.

The Bush administration is guilty of a "bunker mentality," said Huckabee. The war in Iraq has "distracted" the administration from pursuing al Qaeda. Although Iran wanted better relations with the United States, he averred, "when President Bush included Iran in the axis of evil, everything went downhill pretty fast." And according to Huckabee, it was not Saddam Hussein but "the U.S. occupation" that "destroyed Iraq politically, economically, and socially." (Huckabee's remarks won praise as "nuanced and comprehensive" from the host of the event, a senior adviser on Bill Clinton's National Security Council.)

In the 11 weeks since that speech, Huckabee has made several other statements about foreign policy in a Huckabee administration. He favors a comprehensive ban on the use of harsh interrogation techniques to extract information from terrorists, and he has urged the Bush administration to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay. And as the writers at the Powerline blog have pointed out, Huckabee seems to believe the best foreign policy is one guided by the Golden Rule--"you treat others the way you'd like to be treated"--and mutual respect, "showing the kind of respect that other nations would want and deserve."

Now all of this of course blaspheme to the corporate elite and neocon wings of the Republican party. As Kevin Drum points out:

But then along comes Huckabee, and guess what? He's the real deal. Not a guy like George Bush or Ronald Reagan, who talks a soothing game to the snake handlers but then turns around and spends his actual political capital on tax cuts, foreign wars, and deregulating big corporations. Huckabee, it turns out, isn't just giving lip service to evangelicals, he actually believes all that stuff. Among other things, he believes in creationism (really believes), once proposed that AIDS patients should be quarantined, appears to share the traditional evangelical view that Mormonism is a cult, and says (in public!) that homosexuality is sinful. And that's without seeing the text of any of his old sermons, which he (probably wisely) refuses to let the press lay eyes on.

I think this brand of yahooism puts off mainstream urban conservatives every bit as much as it does mainstream urban liberals. They're afraid that this time, it's not just a line of patter to keep the yokels in line.

The party needed the "yokels" to win and tolerated the nonsense as long as it didn't threaten to actually go anywhere. But now one of the Republican's front runners actually believes this stuff. He is also familiar with what Jesus actually said and thinks it might be a good idea to apply it to foreign policy. That makes him almost sound like one of those dreaded "liberals". Yes the Republican party elites are Running Scared.

Update

Digby has some thoughts worth reading