'Straw Huckabee' sums it up

No, the headline doesn't say it all. Mark Silk explains why the results of the Values Voters straw poll favoring Mike Huckabee as the 2012 Republican nominee are likely to blow away with the next light political breeze.

This time the winner might be wise to Huckpack his candidate bags and go home. Even if the Republican Party falls more deeply into disarray, Huck can't expect fellow Southern Baptist Richard Land to pull him out of a hat like a Palin Rabbit. He's a known quantity whose appeal was narrow at last election time and remains, narrow.

Abandoning the culture wars

Frink writes that "Values voters" ditch the culture wars. He says:

The culture wars lost the election, post-election polling tells us; the politics of the common good won.

Less than 20% of the "values voters" support the culture war's narrow, anti-abortion/anti-gay agenda, according to a Nov. 5-7 poll by Public Religion Research.

Instead a majority of both evangelicals and Catholics support a broad public-interest agenda which includes "fighting poverty, protecting the environment and ending the war in Iraq."

Read the rest here.