Newsweek’s headline on its coverage of Romney’s speech and Huckabee’s rise: A New American Holy War.
What was the old American holy war?
What, precisely, suggests that either man is associated with a “holy war”?
Jon Meacham, who is usually better than this:
So it has come to this: the 2008 Republican Iowa caucuses have descended into a kind of holy war. The clash centers on issues that are, in Saint Augustine’s phrase, ever ancient, ever new: the nature of God, the disposition of power and the sanctity of conscience. The skirmish pits Huckabee against Romney in a story of hardball politics and high-minded history, of shadowy slurs and noble principles.
A kind of holy war, that isn’t warfare, and in which all the leading candidates want to talk about how their faith shapes their values… which would make it really not much of a holy war.