Huckabee’s faith-based campaign continues to freak out GOP establishment

December 24, 2007

If anyone from Bush’s inner circle is going to defend Mike Huckabee’s Christian-centered presidential campaign, you’d think it would be Peter Wehner. Not only is Wehner, the former White House director of strategic initiatives, a self-described evangelical Christian conservative, but he also helped oversee Bush’s faith-based office. It’s not like the separation of church and state would be high on Wehner’s priority list.

And yet, in an interesting WaPo op-ed today, Wehner said Huckabee’s emphasis on religion is giving him a “queasy feeling,” because the former governor’s tack is “disturbing.”

After noting a litany of recent examples — the “Christian leader” ad, the talk of being God’s anointed candidate, the theological shots at Mormons, and the “birth of Christ” ad — Wehner suggests Huckabee is confused about his goals.

This is a man who, in 1998, when explaining to a Baptist pastors conference why he got involved in politics, answered, “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. . . . I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”

Now isn’t that odd — a former pastor who leaves his ministry so he can get involved in politics because he “knew government didn’t have the real answers.”

Well, sure, when you put it that way, it is odd.

Wehner ends up focusing on how very unusual all of this, asking whether Huckabee is “playing the Jesus card in a way that is unlike anything we have quite seen before.”

Invoking one’s faith is not unprecedented in American politics and is not, by itself, disconcerting. It can even be reassuring. But it is also fraught with danger. If certain lines — inherently ambiguous lines — are crossed and faith becomes a tool in a political campaign, it can damage our civic comity and our politics and demean our faith. […]

Mike Huckabee, by all accounts a faithful Christian, may not have crossed any bright lines yet — but he’s edging close to them. He should pull back now, before his political ambitions injure what he claims to care about, and undoubtedly does care about, most.

All of this sounds quite persuasive, but I was on a radio show yesterday with my friend Bill Simmon who raised a good point: as aggressively as Huckabee is pushing a line, and as uncomfortable as he’s making a lot of people feel, there’s an upside — at least there won’t be any surprises from this guy.

In other words, Huckabee’s candidness has the benefit of transparency. There’s no real wink-wink here; Huckabee is laying it out there for all to see — on matters of faith, he’s a right-wing evangelical creationist who has admitted publicly that he wants to help take the nation “back for Christ.” It’s better for Americans to see that and evaluate those beliefs accordingly, than for Huckabee to believe this and keep his agenda under wraps.

To a certain extent, Huckabee is undermining American political norms and using Christianity in ways no credible, modern candidate has. But at a minimum, at least we know what we’re getting.

The Republicans opened the door.

  • Any one who says that the Bush regime has a paranoid bunker go-it-alone bunker mentality can’t be all bad…

    Just sing along, “All I want for Christmas are my two front Impeachments…”

  • Sublimation going on here – they attack him for “excessive religiousity” because they can’t or won’t say much about his real great sin, which is badmouthing Dear Leader Bush.

    These authoritarian follower types can’t stand it when Bush, the current alpha male of their personality cult isn’t kowtowed to.

    So they find other stuff to pick on – stuff that never bothered them before.

  • Hucklebee, for christ’s sake.

    calvin was just wondering whether or not the TM were going to do the same number on Up Chuck Huck for his Dumond deal as they did on Dukakis for Willie Horton. Gov. D. was hardly complicit in releasing Horton. Dumbo went out of his way to twist arms. Parole board members have confirmed the arm-twisting. Horton killed one woman. Dumond did two.

    Or, in the spirit of the holiday, has the TM decided to forgive him and not hold him accountable?

    calvin was wondering whether or not the TM would be so forgiving if Stumblebee were a Democrat.

  • I hope The Huckster is the candidate of “God’s Own Party” (as I saw on the hat of some old white moron at the 2004 Thug convention). He not only gets defeated but gets smashed worse than Barry Goldwater got smashed in 1964, and takes the bastards down with him so far it takes them a generation to recover, like what happened to them in 1932. How nice that would be: the last 25 or so years of my life spent Republican-free.

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  • The GOP is worried that Tom Cleaver might be right. They know how centrists feel about creationist preachers having the big red button. And if you lose the centrists you go down in flames. Big time.

  • I’m counting on Huckabee to say something so over-the-top that even some evangelicals will be freaked; I think it’s only a matter of time, as he begins to buy into his own surge. And I think the traditional GOP can feel that, too, and know that once it happens, they can just kiss it all goodbye,

  • While I would never vote for Huckabee, so don’t take this as a word of support for him, there are upsides to Huckabee. In some ways I have more respect for Huckabee, who at least campaigns on what he believes in, as opposed to someone like Mitt Romney who changes his views based upon political expediency.

    Another upside is that Huckabee has nothing to prove to the religious right and he was able to govern as somewhat of a centrist. I fear that if Giuliani or Romney is the nominee they will feel the need to offer far more to the religious right to get them out to vote.

    Another upside is that Huckabee’s views, as much as I disagree with them, are his actual views based upon a lifetime of considering them. As a result sometimes he makes more sense than Republicans who just try to say what the religious right wants to hear. For example, Huckabee has considered school prayer and has stated that he sees no need for prayer in the schools when people can pray at home. Many other Republicans would just give knee jerk support for school prayer thinking that this is what someone campaigning for the votes of the religious right should say.

    While I hope Huckabee doesn’t get the nomination, there is also some benefit to having open debate over the role of religion in government, and debate over issues such as whether evolution is established science and why it is important for political leaders to understand this.

    Besides, it is fun to see country club conservatives, who previously pandered to the religious right for votes but never planned to give them much, go nuts over the prospect of people like Huckabee taking control of their party. (They may have missed the fact that to a considerable degree, such people already have.)

  • Thank Goodness!! that all Republicans/conservatives don’t think like Huckabee!!! I think he’ll soon be going through a slow meltdown. Huckabee: continue being a preacher and leave politics alone.

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  • Peter Wehner’s remarks about Huckabee reveals an arrogant bunker mentality to those evangelicals who voted for Bush in the first place on the basis on his supposedly “compassionate conservative” program. This “bunkermentality” has been counterproductive at home and abroad.

  • Any winger criticizing Huck right now is doing it because he’s not Frog-Faced Fred, Multiple Mitt or Girliani.
    They know that Huck doesn’t have a chance in Hell to win the presidency. You see, they only want a pretend Bible banger with no conscience. Not someone who might actually implement real Biblical principles.

  • Most important is Hukabee is opening a door that should not be there and should definitely not be opened. He is mixing religion and politics in a confusing manner when they should not be mixed or even mentioned to the extent he is “innocently” invoking it. “Take the nation back for Christ”….It was never Christ’s to begin with, nor does it need to be ‘taken’ anywhere. Christianity is being singled out rather than just a “religious” nation. Puritans believed in Christ too Huck and look what they did to the Indians.
    He has brought his pulpit into the arena which should disqualify him from holding office as he has already sworn an oath to something he considers more important than the constitution( and NO it’s not god, but his oath to his religion). The GOP has brought this on itself trying to turn the party into a religious organization. They’ve let outspoken fanatics set the agenda…one they don”t really believe…one that has gone too far.

  • “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. . . . I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”

    Wehner may slam on this paradox today, but it could be the very mission statement of The Christian Coalition, The Moral Majority, and other dominionist political action committees that have been absolutely central to Republicans and conservatives over the past 30 years. There is nothing unusual or even out of the conservative mainstream about Huckabee’s take on this. The only thing out of the right-wing mainstream about Huckabee is that he raised taxes and doesn’t spew enough hatred.

    It astounds me to see all of these Republicans, including Bushies, questioning things like the “birth of Christ” ad. Tell me how this is different from Dumbya himself, who in a fit of crass pandering, and wholly overmatched in intellectual firepower, sat in a debate in Des Moines, Iowa, in the Republican nominating process for the 2000 election and when asked who his favorite political philosopher was (other candidates discussed luminaries in philosophy like Locke, and American founders like Madison), Bushie answered “Jesus.”

    Those of us with functioning brain cells laughed our assess off. But immediately Bush’s poll numbers started going up among Republicans.

    Just like Huckabee’s have since he started openly campaigning as a “Christian Leader.”

    So tell me again how stupid or crazy Huckabee is?

    If the Republicans dont like him or his ways, they have no one to blame but themselves.

  • “I like Huck, he’s nice and FairTax.” – Mark M.

    FairTax? Please! If the idea is to get rid of the IRS going over every tax return, but the FairTax is going to give poor people tax credits for their children, then you’re going to have the same bureaucracy arguing over which parent in a divorced family credit for how much of a child’s credit that you get right now for the Earned Income Tax Credit. We’ll still have the same dumbass system driven by Republican’t politicians whining about poor tax cheats. and thus still have the IRS (though under a different name).

    As for the tax itself, if you apply a sales tax without an income tax, then I could go to a yacht builder, give him $10,000 for an unfinished yacht, pay $2,250 in taxes (assuming 22.5%), and then pay him $10,000 for the labor of finishing the yacht and pay NO TAX on that. Taxes evaded, $2,250.

    House, private planes, boats. All sorts of luxary items will start appearing in kit form and businesses will spring up to service the “finish it for you” tax-free market.

    In short, it’s just a dumb idea.

  • Another reason why a Federal sales tax is a dumb idea.

    There is nothing stopping the Government from imposing a 200% sales tax.

    There is no way the Government can impose a 100% income tax.

    In short, when the revenue fails to appear, the Government can just up the sales tax.

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