John Cole and Andrew Sullivan are enjoying the sight of non-Christianist Republicans freaking at the thought of Huckabee winning the nomination.

Cole has a round-up of said freak-outs, including Dan Riehl (go to Cole for the direct link):

That Presidential "R" in 2008 will stand for nothing I believe in. The guy is slick but doesn’t even look competent. And if Republican primary voters are that stupid, they deserve to lose next Fall. To pass over McCain, Thompson, Romney and Giuliani ONLY because someone’s slick and a Jesus Freak, which makes him your average televangelist – forget it.

Cole concludes:

I simply can not tell you how much I am enjoying this. The GOP has been pandering to these stupid bastards for years, and every time I pointed it out I was called "anti-Christian" or something or other. Those of us who saw what the party was becoming were told to shut up, that it was good politics. Enjoy your new GOP, folks. And here is something else to think about- are the evangelicals going to support Romney or Giuliani if you do manage to trash Huckabee enough to secure the nomination for them? Will the eye for an eye crowd learn to forgive and forget? Have fun!

And Sullivan:

And that is why part of me, I confess, wants Huckabee to win. So he can lose. So the GOP can lose - as spectacularly and humiliatingly as possible. If we are to rid conservatism of this theocratic cancer, we need to start over. Maybe it has to get worse before it can get better. But it is certainly too late for fellow-traveling Christianists like Lowry and Krauthammer to start whining now. This is their party. And they asked for every last bit of it.

As Atrios says, the conservative bloggers Cole cites are "using the kind of language to describe the religious right that I steer clear of personally." And can you imagine the outrage if liberal bloggers were going around talking about "Jesus Freaks" - for the next decade, we'd be hearing about Democrats' contempt for people of faith and how this is why Christians will always vote Republican. We're now seeing the cynicism of non-Christianist Republicans who were willing to go a ways down the path of theocracy if it got them the votes to push their own agenda. They would go so far down that path with people for whom they had fundamental contempt; faced with the prospect of going a few steps further, and not getting their corporatist agenda pushed in exchange, that contempt is revealed. Is anyone paying attention?