THE COME-TO-MOLOCH MOMENT. A few years back, Peggy Noonan was saying "God is Back," seeing "the face of the Evil One" in the falling World Trade Center, and calling for the Democratic Party to join her in festooning America with creches and the Ten Commandments ("Confound them, Terry [McAuliffe]! Come forward with a stand. It is the stand that is the salvation, not mysterious words or codes or magic messages").

Today she calls Mike Huckabee's cross-enhanced Christmas message "creepy," chides Republican evangelicals for over-sensitivity, and even manages to simultaneously compare Huckabee with evil Bill Clinton ("Like Mr. Clinton, he is a natural, charming, bright and friendly. Yet one senses something unsavory there, something not so nice") and denigrate Huckabee's religious certainties ("...it is not a philosophy that allows debate. Because it comes down to 'This is what God wants.' This is not an opener of discussion but a squelcher of it. It doesn't expand the process, it frustrates it").

A few weeks back, she discoursed on the Christers' "problem" with Romney's Mormonism, spoke up for atheists (!), and announced that "we've bowed too far to the idiots."

She's come a long way from the days when I called her the Crazy Jesus Lady. I never entirely trusted her religious effusions, but I have to admit I didn't think she'd go this far. But I never expected Huckabee to get this far. Neither did she, I guess, and that's why she has suddenly snapped to secular statism. Jesus Boy is off the reservation, apparently. Who knows what Republican funding streams would suffer from his possible nomination? Maybe Noonan's new boss had a talk with her.

I'm certainly not against any efforts enlisted against the dangerous buffoon Huckabee. And I take some pleasure in seeing the GOP's business interests openly at war with the Jesus folk. But I mourn this large loss of seemingly principled insanity among the chattering class. I worry that next The Anchoress will escape her metaphorical cell and become just plain old Daffy Suburban Rightwing Lady, and Rod Dreher will hang up the End-of-Days talk and become just another aging hippie who loves granola and hates homosexuals. The salt of blogging will then have lost much of its savor, and who shall savor it again?