It seems that I may have to use my rights as a senior blogger to respond to some of the critics of my recently posted remarks on RP. The aforesaid commentary was written several weeks ago and therefore the figures cited for Mike Huckabee are much lower than they would become after his recent surge had begun, a development that has already put him ahead of Romney and Thompson and has him apparently biting at the heels of the neocons”€™ star candidate. But everything considered, one should not underestimate the impact of the greater money and much better organization of Giuliani as critical factors in the primaries, particularly after the primary battles have moved on to the larger states. I still think Rudy will win the Republican nomination and that the Republican-neocon powerbrokers will then condescendingly throw the second spot to the preacher from Hope, Arkansas. Huckabee might upset journalists by not accepting the theory of evolution, but he would be fine in a possible Giuliani administration. Moreover, in the general race he could energize an electoral base that the National Review editorial board only rarely sees, even when it leaves Midtown Manhattan.
Pace Mr. Ball, I am not praising revenge as a noble motive for voting. I am merely observing that for much of the Old Right, which has been treated contemptuously by neocon snot-noses, the rise of Ron Paul as an anti-media, anti-FOX candidate has been exhilarating. And while revenge might not be a quality praised in the Sermon on the Mount, it could bring some benefit in a fallen world by helping to rid us of our current power establishment. I also don”€™t wish to be dismissive of my colleagues at the small college where I work, but when I said that self-described conservatives had “€œwrecked”€ my career, I was referring not to their unworthiness but to the opportunity I had lost to be a scholar of national stature. If I had been associated with an institution with more name recognition, and one that cultivated research scholars, my entire career would have been different. In more than one case, neoconservatives intervened to prevent that from happening. Mr. Ball may not be aware of this fact, but if I had been at a prestige university, my books would have received more critical notice and I would have had more time and funding to work on them. I also would have had the energy and leisure to work extensively on European social and intellectual history, which was my original field of concentration.
Those who notified me that Congressman Paul attends a Baptist church in Texas are of course correct. I made my statement about his religious affiliation from what he told me two years ago about being raised in Western Pennsylvania as a Lutheran.