I don’t plan to make a habit out of praising Republican presidential candidates, but as my friend Ron Chusid noted, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) is being downright sensible when it comes to one of the staples of the GOP’s culture war: state-sponsored school prayer.
The family that prays together doesn’t have to worry about the absence of government-mandated prayer in public schools, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told a group of reporters today.
The comments from Huckabee, who recently stepped down after a successful decade as Arkansas governor, were something of a surprise coming from the former Southern Baptist minister who has enjoyed support from Christian conservatives in his political climb — and hopes to do so again in his bid for Republicans’ 2008 presidential nomination. Decades after the Supreme Court struck down prayer in public schools as an unconstitutional violation of religious freedom, the issue continues to rankle Christian conservatives.
But Huckabee said he never could understand why so many people “railed against (the absence of) prayer in schools when they didn’t even pray at home.” … “I felt it was not the schools’ job,” he said, to teach his children to pray, but the family’s. For himself, Huckabee quipped, “I prayed in school every time I took a math test.”
That’s, um, right. In fact, when I worked at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, I’d make practically the same argument on a regular basis.
There are two angles to this: what this says about Huckabee, and what this does to his chances in the ’08 primaries.
First, it’s worth noting that Huckabee hasn’t always sounded quite this sensible when it comes to mixing church and state. Earlier in his political career, Huckabee said, in explaining why he left pastoring for politics, “I didn’t get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.” Not long after, Huckabee said, “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”
Given these previous comments, it was a very pleasant surprise to see the candidate say that promoting prayer is “not the schools’ job.”
Of course, there’s the flip side — the GOP’s far-right base believes it’s absolutely the state’s job to promote prayer and foster a religious society through the power of the government. Indeed, on this issue, Republican activists tend to want the biggest of all possible governments — the kind that interferes in the personal beliefs of its citizens. Huckabee’s pronouncements on the issue are sane and sensible, but I suspect right-wing voters may not see it that way.
I’d actually worry a bit about taking Huckabee on in a general election, but at this point, he seems entirely incapable of winning over the party’s faithful (no pun intended). He raised taxes as governor, he has a Willie Horton-esque controversy in his background, and now he’s opposed to forcing religion onto public school kids.
He doesn’t have a prayer.