The Iowa caucuses are next week, and Peggy Noonan has a word for Iowans to consider before they select their candidates. Noonan thinks there are “reasonable” and “unreasonable” candidates on both the Democrat and Republican sides. She defines a “reasonable” candidate as follows: “a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane. We’d like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it.”

George Will’s recent column about Mike Huckabee gives us some pertinent information as we size-up the race for the Republican nomination for president. Here’s a piece of George Will‘s broadside against Huckabee: “Huckabee’s campaign actually is . . . a comprehensive apostasy against core Republican beliefs.”

Jeffrey Bell writes in The Weekly Standard that social conservatism is far from being dead. In fact, he argues, it remains a potent force in American politics. He writes: “Social conservatism continues to exist as a mass movement that cares very much about its core beliefs. Supporters of this movement may have some unusually tough decisions to make in the 2008 presidential cycle, but anyone analyzing American politics under the premise that social conservatism will soon disappear–or that these days it amounts to little more than an eccentric sideshow–is very likely to be proved wrong