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January 18, 2008
Neo-Confederate Behind Pro-Huckabee Flag Ads in South Carolina
As in 2000, a belated Civil War battle is being fought in this year’s Republican primary in South Carolina. But if advocates of flying the Confederate battle flag over the state capitol hope to convince people it’s unrelated to racism, they could hardly have a worse spokesman than Ron Wilson.
Wilson is the man behind the eloquently-named Americans for the Preservation of American Culture, which is running radio ads lambasting John McCain and Mitt Romney for their stances on the flag issue while praising Mike Huckabee. Huckabee—who recently expressed his enthusiasm for amending the U.S. Constitution to align with “God’s standards”—said this week that it was a states’ rights matter:
"In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do," Huckabee said.
According to Wilson, “This is close enough now that this issue is probably going to determine whether McCain wins or Huckabee." Huckabee may appreciate the attack ads on his behalf, but he might want to reconsider.
From the Southern Poverty Law Center:
Wilson is a former member of the League of the South and the Council of Conservative Citizens, both hate groups. His education expertise is limited to the business he ran out of his home selling textbooks to home-schoolers. One of these, Barbarians Inside the Gates, theorized that Jews are working towards world domination — and was specially touted by Wilson's Web site, which insisted, "You MUST READ THIS BOOK."
In his role heading the 32,000-member SCV [Sons of Confederate Veterans], Wilson was part of a takeover attempt by extremists, and led efforts to purge more than 300 members for publicly condemning racism in the SCV.
The SPLC reported in 2002 on the extremist takeover of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, as members hoping “to take the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists, and the skinheads and show them to the door” managed to defeat one white supremacist candidate for leadership in a raucous vote, only to have his close ally, Wilson, elected as a “stealth candidate.”
Posted by Ezra at 6:34 PM | Permalink
Why Seek Consensus When You Can Complain?
As we have noted several times in the past, nothing can rally the Right quite like a battle over judicial nominations - and just because there aren't any high profile battles taking place right now doesn't mean the Right isn't still complaining about the issue:
In an interview with Cybercast News Service, Curt Levey, general counsel of the Committee for Justice, pointed out there is always a temptation for those who are in the opposite party from the president "to not fill vacancies in the hopes that the next president will be from their party."Levey might not believe the Thurmond Rule exists, but it does and this article from 1980 explains where it origniated:"That temptation becomes very great when you're only a few months away from an election," Levey added.
However, Levey and others question whether the Thurmond Rule has ever actually existed.
There is no explicit deadline for the rule to take effect within the election year, and the term "consensus nominee" also has no definitive meaning.
REPUBLICANS FIGHT CARTER NOMINEES
14 September 1980
The New York TimesSenate Republicans have begun an organized campaign to use various parliamentary strategems, from committee boycotts to filibusters, to ''slow down or completely stop'' Presidential appointments that could outlast the Carter Administration.
The action was taken last month by the 41-member Senate Republican Caucus, which appointed a three-member committee to sift 155 pending Presidential nominations and weed out those whose terms would overlap that of a new President.
The primary targets include 13 judicial nominees as well as nominees to vacancies on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and the Legal Services Corporation, among other agencies. Not affected are nominations to advisory boards and those who serve at the pleasure of the President without any fixed term.
Republicans contend that they are merely upholding a Senate tradition in preventing President Carter from making election-year appointments to positions that a Republican President could be able to fill.
If Republicans are concerned about getting President Bush's judicial nominees confirmed before he leaves office, one way to overcome the Thurmond Rule would be to consult with senators and nominate consensus nominees - of course, that is exactly the opposite of what they are doing:
Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, one of 14 senators who broke a logjam of judicial appointments in the 2005 ''Gang of 14'' compromise, said Thursday the White House has failed to consult with him on appointments to the federal district court in Denver.''I have not been consulted with by the White House in any way, shape or form on these judicial nominations,'' said Salazar, a Democrat. ''In my view, it's a violation of our understanding with the president and the requirement of the Constitution.''
...
With pressure mounting to supply the president with names of potential judges, [Republican Senator Wayne] Allard said Thursday that he and Salazar could not agree on candidates after beginning discussion in September.
Allard said he had proposed a list of four candidates that included a Democrat, an undecided and two Republicans one of which was endorsed by Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter, a former Denver district attorney.
But Allard said Salazar, a Democrat, was unhappy with the list. Allard said he submitted the names anyway.
...
Allard said the president has already vetted the names he submitted and is ready to release them.
Posted by Kyle at 4:20 PM | Permalink
January 17, 2008
Huckabee Out-Tancredoing Himself
“We're going to win South Carolina,” said a confident Mike Huckabee last week, even as he saw his solid lead in the polls dissipating. Perhaps hoping to broaden his base beyond those looking to elect pastor-in-chief, Huckabee is once again repositioning himself further to the right on immigration.
Huckabee’s first rightward stab on immigration last month caused quite a bit of confusion. He adopted a plan from the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies and announced the endorsement of Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minutemen. Dozens of anti-immigrant activists soon denounced Gilchrist’s endorsement—Chris Simcox, the other Minutemen co-founder, called Huckabee’s plan “duplicitous.”
Last week, Huckabee made another attempt by convincing Gilchrist that he supported a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship. This, too, was met with confusion, as Huckabee quickly denied that he would push such an amendment, but left open the claim that he would advocate a fringe interpretation that simply writes it out of the Constitution.
Now Huckabee has signed a “no amnesty” pledge from another right-wing group, Numbers USA (through its advocacy arm Americans for Better Immigration). From the Washington Times:
The pledge, offered by immigration control advocacy group Numbers USA, commits Mr. Huckabee to oppose a new path to citizenship for current illegal aliens and to cut the number of illegal aliens already in the country through attrition by law enforcement — something Mr. Huckabee said he will achieve through his nine-point immigration plan. …
yesterday's pledge — signed at a press conference with Numbers USA Executive Director Roy Beck — was an effort to provide answers. It's a major reversal from less than two months ago, when Mr. Beck told The Washington Times that Mr. Huckabee was "an absolute disaster" on immigration during his time as governor. Americans for Better Immigration, another group Mr. Beck runs, has rated Mr. Huckabee's record as "poor." …
But Mr. Beck yesterday said Mr. Huckabee has made a number of key promises going forward, including to not grant illegal aliens long-term legal status; to reject a guaranteed right of return for those who go home voluntarily under his nine-point plan; and to not increase green cards as a way of allowing them to come back more quickly.
"Probably, this is the strongest no-amnesty, attrition plan of any of the candidates," Mr. Beck said.
And as part of a tag-team effort, Gilchrist is back defending his endorsement, similarly promising that Huckabee supports “no amnesty whatsoever.”
These efforts may help Huckabee in South Carolina against John McCain, who continues to take heat for supporting comprehensive immigration reform in the past. But they are still not enough to convince William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, who has been a leading anti-immigrant critic of Huckabee. Gheen has launched an attempt to draft Lou Dobbs, the CNN host with some far-right views on immigration, as a candidate. The dim possibility of a Dobbs candidacy was talked about back in November, but Gheen said his group is prepared to “camp outside his office” to make it happen.
Posted by Ezra at 5:09 PM | Permalink
Huckabee Says Opponents of SC Flag Can Shove It
Mike Huckabee refuses to take a stance on the South Carolina flag, saying it is up to the state to decide: "In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do."
Posted by Kyle at 2:55 PM | Permalink
What Does The Presidential Campaign Need?
According to the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, what it needs is Lou Dobbs.
Posted by Kyle at 2:17 PM | Permalink
Ron Paul Hearts Bob Jones
Ron Paul becomes, thus far, the only presidential candidate to visit the controversial school.
Posted by Kyle at 2:13 PM | Permalink
Gay Marriage Leads to Bestiality
The Constitution needs to be amended to meet "God's standards," says Mike Huckabee, before it leads to polygamy and bestiality: " I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal."
Posted by Kyle at 2:07 PM | Permalink
The Huckabee Conspiracy
Mike Huckabee has not been shy about criticizing Washington’s Religious Right powerbrokers for failing to back his campaign, repeatedly accusing them of choosing “political expediency” over core values and questioning their reluctance to support a “true soldier for the cause” and exhorting them to be ‘‘Christian leaders, not Republican leaders.”
But as The New Republic reported yesterday, all this bellyaching only seems to be alienating the Washington insiders even further:
Huck shouldn’t expect a flood of big-name endorsements any time soon. For one thing, the erstwhile minister has seriously cheesed off some leaders with his public complaints about their not showing him the love. They express bemusement at his sense of “entitlement” and find his whining about their not rushing to endorse him downright irritating. As Bauer notes, “I for one give no credence to the idea that, because somebody worships the same way I do, they automatically have a claim on my support."
Some leaders also worry (hope?) that, with Huck now being taken more seriously, his record and positions will draw greater scrutiny—and harsher criticism. “As he comes under more examination, there is a real possibility of there [emerging] misgivings about him on economic and foreign policy issues. So then those voters will go somewhere else,” says Bauer. Particularly on foreign policy, he stresses, “his instincts are not good."
In the past, Huckabee has had particularly harsh words for his fellow Southern Baptist Richard Land:
‘‘Richard Land swoons for Fred Thompson,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t know what that’s about. For reasons I don’t fully understand, some of these Washington-based people forget why they are there. They make ‘electability’ their criterion. But I am a true soldier for the cause. If my own abandon me on the battlefield, it will have a chilling effect.’’
Apparently, the bad-blood between Huckabee and Land goes back to the days in the early 1990s when fundamentalists set out to take over the Southern Baptist Convention and Huckabee failed to side with them:
Only a handful of prominent SBC leaders have come out in Huckabee’s favor as well. While churches and non-profit religious institutions are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates, a handful of Southern Baptist pastors and leaders have offered personal endorsements of their colleague. Among them are former pastor and denominational executive Jimmy Draper and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President Danny Akin.
Perhaps the most obvious omission in Huckabee’s crowd of supporters is Richard Land, the head of the SBC’s social-concerns agency and a conservative veteran of the denomination’s struggle. While he has, in the recent past, spoken glowingly of former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson and negatively of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Land has had little to say about his fellow Southern Baptist’s candidacy.
…
Paul Pressler, a retired Texas judge who is one of the two acknowledged masterminds of the conservative battle plan to wrest the SBC from moderates’ control, has also endorsed Thompson.
Privately, some close to Huckabee and familiar with Southern Baptist politics say that leaders like Land and Pressler simply don’t trust him because he refused to be a loyal foot-soldier during the SBC wars.
Maybe that explains it. Or who knows, maybe there is some sort of conspiracy at work:
Posted by Kyle at 8:57 AM | Permalink
January 16, 2008
Fringe Activist Hopes Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Will Carry Him to Congress
With his career as an anti-immigrant activist stalled and his unemployment running out, Ted Hayes has announced that he is running for Congress against Los Angeles Rep. Maxine Waters (D).
Hayes first came to our attention in 2006 as a spokesman for Choose Black America, a front group assembled by the Federation for American Immigrant Reform, a mainly-white anti-immigrant organization that has, as the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, taken “more than $1 million from the Pioneer Fund, a foundation that funds writers seeking to prove that black people aren’t as smart as whites.”
“This illegal invasion, in my opinion, is the greatest threat to American black citizens since chattel slavery itself,” said Hayes, who also headed his own anti-immigrant “Crispus Attucks Brigade.” According to Hayes, the idea behind these groups is to put a stop to solidarity between blacks and Latinos struggling for civil rights: “They got some brothers running around here like Jesse Jackson and them talking about brown and black unity and ignoring the real issue,” he said. That issue, apparently, is immigrants supposedly taking away the civil rights of blacks: “Don't come here telling us about our civil rights. These aren't yours; these are ours. And you can maybe holler human rights here, and we'll give you some wiggle room on that. But you can't have them civil rights, brother.”
(Hayes embracing Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist. AP photo via SPLC.)
Before converting to the Republican Party a few years ago and joining the anti-immigrant movement, Hayes was famous as a homeless activist who started the Dome Village shelter in L.A. But his divisive immigration rhetoric—along with his Minuteman connections and confrontational protest style—failed to catch on. A Los Angeles Times article from just two weeks ago noted his events haven’t drawn crowds and his groups haven’t gotten many members or donations. Meanwhile, Dome Village shut down, and Hayes is almost broke, with his unemployment benefits set to run out this month.
But in announcing his congressional campaign, Hayes was hardly looking to move on from the anti-immigrant rhetoric that’s defined him for the past two years. Instead, immigration is the focus of his run:
Hayes says it is unfortunate that many of the new residents have become very belligerent to the blacks. "As the numbers increase, they begin to take on a whole other mindset," says Hayes, "[that implies] 'get out Negro, this is now Mexico' -- and they're threatening people and forcing them out of the community with violence, in fact. In the high schools, they begin to have an intimidating presence and they begin to attack the black children."
The congressional hopeful says he is challenging Waters this fall because blacks are feeling the ill effects of illegal immigration more than any other group. According to Hayes, illegal aliens are taking jobs that used to go to black citizens. "They'll take less than half the amount of money that we normally should be paid. They're forcing us out of our homes. They're forcing us out of our hospitals. They're claiming that what they're doing is their civil right to do so," he offers.
Posted by Ezra at 5:26 PM | Permalink
The Non-Endorsement Endorsement
Richard Viguerie has launched a new Ron Paul website - UltimateRonPaul.com - but insists that it is in no way an endorsement: "I remain uncommitted to any of the Republican candidates, but it is clear that Ron Paul is truly a principled conservative in the grand tradition of Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan."
Posted by Kyle at 3:05 PM | Permalink
Huckabee: A New Kind of Evangelical?
Several articles have appeared in recent months suggesting that Mike Huckabee is some sort of “new breed” of evangelical – one who is not committed only to opposing abortion and gay rights, but also cares about the environment and the poor. And Huckabee has worked hard to play up the idea that he is nothing like traditional demagoguing Religious Right preachers such as Pat Robertson or the late Jerry Falwell.
As Huckabee likes to say, while he may be conservative, he’s “just not angry about it” – or, to put it another way, he drinks “a different kind of Jesus juice. To the press, this seems to be enough to qualify Huckabee as a “different kind of evangelical,” and exempts him from having to explain himself when he proclaims that we need to “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards.”
An example of this sort of coverage appeared on the New York Times over the weekend:
Much of the national leadership of the Christian conservative movement has turned a cold shoulder to the Republican presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, wary of his populist approach to economic issues and his criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But that has only fired up Brett and Alex Harris.
The Harris brothers, 19-year-old evangelical authors and speakers who grew up steeped in the conservative Christian movement, are the creators of Huck’s Army, an online network that has connected 12,000 Huckabee campaign volunteers, including several hundred in Michigan, which votes Tuesday, and South Carolina, which votes Saturday.
They say they like Mr. Huckabee for the same reason many of their elders do not: “He reaches outside the normal Republican box,” Brett Harris said in an interview from his home near Portland, Ore.
The brothers fell for Mr. Huckabee last August when they saw him draw applause on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” for explaining that he believed in a Christian obligation to care for prenatal “life” and also education, health care, jobs and other aspects of “life.” “It is a new kind of evangelical conservative position,” Brett Harris said. Alex Harris added, “And we are not going to have to be embarrassed about him.”
The article noted how Huckabee’s rise in the polls has occurred “without the backing of, and even over the opposition of, the movement’s most visible leaders, many of whom have either criticized him or endorsed other candidates.” While Religious Right powerbrokers like Tony Perkins, James Dobson, and Gary Bauer have credited Huckabee for energizing evangelical voters, all have made clear that they do not support his candidacy and seemingly have no intention of doing so.
But just because the most prominent right-wing activists are reluctant to climb aboard the Huckabee bandwagon doesn’t mean that those already on board are in any way moderates or representative of some sort of new, more moderate evangelical movement. In fact, most of Huckabee’s backers are even more radical.
Take this misleading quote from the same article:
“Some of my Christian friends, just like some of my not-so-Christian friends, have become a little too Washingtonian,” said Rick Scarborough, an aspiring successor to the previous generation of conservative Christian leaders. He recently argued that his allies were wrong to balk at Mr. Huckabee’s turn toward environmentalism and “social justice.”
“Can you imagine Jesus ignoring the plight of the disenfranchised and downtrodden while going after the abortionist?” Mr. Scarborough wrote on the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com.
Scarborough did indeed write this in his endorsement of Huckabee, but rest assured, Scarborough is not backing Huckabee because he cares anything about the environment, social justice, the disenfranchised, or the downtrodden – he cares mainly about this:
Many are praying that God will spare our great nation from the judgment we certainly deserve for the killing of over 45,000,000 pre-born children, not to mention the millstone we deserve to have hung around our necks for allowing our living children to be exploited by the sexual anarchists that now control public education and Hollywood. We need revival for survival.
I suggest that God may be sending us a lifeline. Who better to lead a nation nearing moral collapse and perhaps World War III than a president who is also a pastor with 10 years of senior executive experience as a governor?
We have been watching Rick Scarborough since he first came on the scene and it is safe to say that concerns about social justice and the downtrodden have played next to no role in his political activity – he’s been too busy declaring himself a “Christ-Ocrat,” organizing conferences designed to highlight the “War on Christians and Values Voters,” and penning books entitled “Liberalism Kills Kids.”
If Huckabee really is some new kind of evangelical, it is certainly not reflected in his choice of who serves on his Faith and Family Values Coalition, which is dominated by professional right-wing activists known solely for their commitment to pushing the Right’s extreme social and religious agenda:
Star Parker, Founder and president of CURE;* Washington D.C.
Michael Farris, Chair of Home School Legal Defense Association* and Chancellor of Patrick Henry College;* Virginia
William J. Murray, Chair of Religious Freedom Coalition,* Chair of Government is Not God PAC,* and author; Washington D.C.
Don Wildmon, Founder and Chairman of American Family Association;* Mississippi
Rick Scarborough, Founder and President of Vision America;* Texas
Janet Folger, President of Faith2Action;* Florida
Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel*/ Dean of Liberty University Law School;* Virginia
Kelly Shackelford, Chief Counsel, Liberty Legal Institute and President of Free Market Foundation;* Texas
Phil Burress, President of Citizens for Community Values;* Ohio
Huckabee may very well care about issues beyond the traditional right-wing agenda, but his most avid supporters most certainly do not. Ironically, while the more mainstream Religious Right figures like Perkins, Bauer, and Dobson have been reluctant to embrace Huckabee because of fears of what his campaign would do to the Republican Party's traditional coalition, fringe activists like Scarborough - who believe that politics is “not about winning elections … It’s about honoring Christ” - have been flocking to Huckabee’s campaign.
Which raises the question: Are Huckabee’s right-wing supporters mistaken about his true agenda, or is the press?
Posted by Kyle at 9:22 AM | Permalink
January 15, 2008
Anti-Gay Petition Runs into Trouble in Florida
After the high-stakes interrupted recount in the 2000 presidential election and the computer error that may have thrown a congressional race in 2006, the state of Florida has become synonymous with electoral snafus. Now election officials are reporting problems with machines counting signatures for petitions, but this time the confusion may stymie efforts to place an anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot in November.
Last month, the Religious Right was boasting that it had gathered more than enough signatures to put the measure on the ballot—in contrast to 2006, when an anti-gay petition fell short. But the campaign, Florida4Marriage.org, was apparently using faulty numbers, as it turns out that machines in at least one county had submitted duplicate signature reports. Now the effort is at least 22,000 signatures short, with just two weeks to go.
“We are in a state of constitutional emergency,” declared John Stemberger, who is leading the campaign. Backers of the anti-gay campaign called on pastors to mobilize their congregations in a last-minute push:
“Right now we are called as men and women of faith are often called to first pray and depend on our faith and then to come together and absolutely take this emergency sitiuation seriously,” [Bill Bunkley of the Florida Baptist Convention] said. He suggested those who support the amendment spend the next 7-10 days armed with petitions and share them at church, at school and anywhere they travel in the state, asking two questions: “Are you a registered voter? and “Have you signed the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment?”
Bunkley predicts that within the next seven days “if the sanctity of marriage is truly a top priority for men and women of faith” this state-wide deficit should be able to be made up.
“I call on all Florida Baptist pastors at their Wednesday night and Sunday services to have petitions available for anyone in attendance who would like to sign the Florida Marriage Amendment but who has not yet had an opportunity to do so,” Bunkley said. …
Mathew D. Staver, president and general counsel for Orlando-based Liberty Counsel said he believes pastors and churches should be actively involved in the urgent movement to get signed petitions in.
"There is no restriction on pastors and churches, Staver told Baptist Press. What I would encourage pastors to do is to distribute a marriage petition to every single member in the congregation and set aside a few minutes to walk them through how to fill it out, and then have the ushers collect those and get them to Florida4Marriage.org by Federal Express. I would not simply have a table in the back, because you could have a several-thousand-member church and only obtain a few hundred signatures that way. We don't have time to do that anymore.
Posted by Ezra at 5:33 PM | Permalink
Confusing Seniors For Profit
It looks like The Traditional Values Coalition’s front-group, the Christian Seniors Association, is again mailing out its bogus “U.S. Taxpayer Census” forms in an attempt to extort donations from confused senior citizens:
Local seniors who contacted this newspaper said they found the letter they received from the Christian Seniors Association confusing, saying at first glance it appears to be a government mailing of some kind.
On the front of the document, in large block letters, are the words "U.S. Taxpayer Census" and a seal similar in design to the U.S. official seal. (The official seal of the United States, which features an eagle holding arrows in one claw and olive leaves in the other, differs in detail from the design on the letter).
Also printed on the front of each letter are the words, "Census Document #" (followed by a 11-digit number) and the words "assigned to:" (followed by the recipient's name).
Inside, the form further identifies itself as a "U.S. Taxpayer Census on the Social Security Preservation Act (HR 219).
In smaller print at the bottom of the first page of the document, the mailing is identified as "a special citizen action project of Christian Seniors Association, a division of Traditional Values Coalition."
…
The monetary appeal portion of the letter has check boxes next to suggested donation amounts of $15; $25; $50; $100; $250; $500 and "other."
Alternatively, seniors are invited to donate $8 to cover the "cost of tabulating my census and delivering results to Congress," if the recipient feels they are unable to make "a substantial contribution" in the amounts suggested above.
It is no surprise that TVC would stoop to this sort of fundraising tactic considering that, according to their most recent tax filing, their “total net assets” are -$4,288,151.
Posted by Kyle at 4:29 PM | Permalink
Pastor in Chief
One of Mitt Romney’s standard talking points when seeking to assure potential evangelical voters who might be concerned about his Mormon faith is that he is running for commander-in-chief, not pastor-in-chief and that his religious views will take a backseat to his Constitutional obligations.
Not surprisingly, this is not a point being emphasized by Mike Huckabee, who has been explicitly using his faith to win over evangelical voters and differentiate himself from Romney and his Mormonism. In fact, Huckabee seems to be hoping to become, literally, the nation’s first Pastor in Chief and has been regularly delivering sermons around the nations, especially in churches in primary states:
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tiptoed around any mention of his run for the Republican presidential nomination. And the ex-Baptist minister assured 5,000 members of First Spartanburg North Baptist that that he'd come to their church Sunday to give a sermon, not a speech.
But if church protocol forbade Huckabee from overtly asking for their votes in South Carolina's hotly contested GOP primary on Saturday, he still managed to court them in code.
At the 9:30 a.m. service and again ate 10:50, preacher Huckabee talked about his ties to past Southern Baptist leaders, read a passage from Luke's Gospel, led the congregation in bowed-head, eyes-closed prayer, even mentioned the day he accepted Jesus — it was at Vacation Bible School, when he was 10 years old.
In other words, Huckabee said without having to say it: Unlike those other guys on the ballot, I'm one of you.
Huckabee has delivered sermons in Arkansas, Texas (in San Antonio, Irving, and Plano,) in New Hampshire, and Michigan. In both South Carolina and Michigan, Huckabee also sought to mobilize pastors to get out the vote in support of his campaign:
"I'm not going to ask you to get up in your pulpit and use your pulpit to endorse me, because I think the only person you ought to endorse from your pulpit is Jesus, and you don't need to endorse me there," Huckabee said at this morning's pastor's breakfast.
"But most of you have email lists or phone call lists or you have – as an individual, you are unrestricted in what you do as an individual, not using the facilities or the nuances of your church, but as an individual because you've got great influence.
"And I'm asking you to help get people to think about this election…in terms of direction of where this country's going to go and whether or not it's going to be led by people who share that Judeo-Christian value and ethic or whether they do not."
Huckabee sees his campaign, as the Washington Post put it, “chance for evangelical Christians to lead the Republican Party rather than just support its candidates.” And should he end up in the White House, it looks like Huckabee would be open to carrying on his tradition of delivering Sunday sermons:
It is also no accident that less than a week before the primary, Huckabee chose one of the largest congregations in upstate South Carolina, where he will need a significant evangelical turnout to win.
The more interesting question is this: What does it mean for America to have president who continues to semi-privately preach his personal religious views? At a press conference Sunday afternoon, Huckabee said he would be open to delivering sermons as president, even though he acknowledged it would be logistically tough.
You can get a sense of Huckabee’s sermons from these remarks he made to the “Iowa Renewal Project's Pastors and Pews Dinner” in June, where he claimed to be speaking “pastor to pastor” as he urged those in attendance to be active in politics because “pastors cannot be AWOL when it comes to establishing what is right, what is wrong, and what will make the difference in this country to establish the boundaries of good, decent, Godly living”
Posted by Kyle at 9:19 AM | Permalink