January 2008

Mike Huckabee’s campaign rolls on, though he seems either unwilling or unable to branch out beyond his Religious Right base of support:

Huckabee surprised by winning the Iowa caucus, but has little money and finished a distant fourth in Florida.

The former Arkansas governor and Baptist preacher was in Newport Beach for a fundraiser at a supporter's home before traveling to Los Angeles for an Americans of Faith event and to Simi Valley for the GOP presidential debate.

Americans of Faith, which seems to be going by the name Operation Vote nowadays, was founded back in 2004 to register and mobilize 5 million Christian voters by Jay Sekulow, who just so happens to be Chair of Romney’s Faith and Values Steering Committee, as well as a member of Romney’s Advisory Committee On The Constitution And The Courts.

The Passion of the Religious Conservatives

1 May 2004

National Journal

Several prominent evangelical-movement leaders, as well as businessmen, social conservatives, and other like-minded believers, have put together ambitious voter-registration efforts that aim to get the Christian faithful to the polls on Election Day. Though nominally nonpartisan, these "ground- war" efforts are expected to benefit Republicans far more than Democrats because of such hot-button issues for conservatives as gay marriage and abortion.

One effort is being run by Americans of Faith, a Virginia-based tax-exempt group that is co-chaired by Bush fundraising "Pioneer" Edward Atsinger, who is president of Salem Communications, the nation's largest Christian radio broadcaster; and Jay Alan Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit launched by Pat Robertson that champions religious causes.

"I've been talking about this for the last 10 years," Sekulow said. "Evangelicals haven't been good participants in elections. We're talking about Christian civic participation." Americans of Faith hopes to raise about $800,000 and will use the Internet, Christian radio, and music festivals, as well as churches and other venues, to try to reach its goal of registering 2 million new voters from the conservative Christian community in time for the November election.

Giving extra firepower to evangelicals, the group's board includes such well-known leaders as Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council in Washington, and Frank Wright, the head of the National Religious Broadcasters.

According to a 2004 Talon News article, Americans of Faith’s Board of Directors includes, in addition to Sekulow and Perkins, the likes of Richard Land, Mike Farris, and David Barton. 

While Farris has endorsed Huckabee and Barton has been sharing the stage with him in recent weeks, Land and Perkins have been conspicuously cold toward his campaign - and considering that the organization’s founder is a key backer of Huckabee’s main rival, it is odd that Huckabee would be invited to address an Americans of Faith event, especially since the longer he stays in the race, the more damage he does to Romney.  

Last October, Mike Huckabee was hoping to score an endorsement from another second-tier, right-wing candidate who had dropped out, but Sam Brownback ended up backing John McCain. Huckabee, who was even more cash-strapped back then, probably never stood a chance. As the Los Angeles Times reports, Brownback had financial problems that only a nominee with deep-pocketed contributors could fix:

Some of John McCain's largest political donors sent checks to failed GOP presidential candidate Sam Brownback to help him pay off his campaign debt in the days after the Kansas senator endorsed McCain. …

Brownback's endorsement of McCain on Nov. 7 gave the Republican senator from Arizona a much-needed boost at a time when his campaign was faltering; it also helped bolster McCain's credentials among conservatives who have been skeptical of him.

As of Dec. 31, Brownback's presidential campaign remained more than $32,000 in debt. But his campaign made $226,000 in payments in the final three months of 2007, aided in part by donations from McCain backers, Federal Election Commission filings show.

Brownback's filing indicates that after he endorsed McCain, at least 17 donors gave him the maximum $2,300 each -- totaling nearly $40,000. Those donors are among McCain's largest contributors, having given almost $250,000 to his various campaign accounts in recent years.

Meanwhile, McCain is trying to get his money’s worth, name-dropping Brownback left and right while talking with conservative Catholics.

Mike Huckabee is hoping to pick up Fred Thompson’s leftovers, but that doesn’t seem to be going so well. Aside from Gary Bauer and other religious-right leaders who still don’t like Huckabee, a number of Thompson’s backers have switched to Mitt Romney. And now an embittered former Thompson staffer has started his own campaign hitting Huckabee where it hurts most: his sidekick, Chuck Norris.

Huckabee may joke about his action-hero endorsement, but as we’ve noted before, he’s made Norris a very serious part of his campaign. And not just in terms of livening up his stage shows: Norris is aggressively raising money, hoping to provide $10 million for the cash-strapped candidate (one recent fundraiser netted $250,000).

Dennis Ng, founder of BoycottChuckNorris.com, says that makes Norris “fair game”:

Saying he's 'kicking Chuck Norris where it hurts – his wallet,' Ng explains he's starting the boycott because Norris endorsed a presidential candidate and supports ideas "far out of the mainstream."

Ng singles out Norris' endorsement of Huckabee – "a candidate who says that he does not believe in evolution," and "who called for the isolation of AIDS patients – long after the Centers for Disease Control determined that the virus was not spread by casual contact." …

Ng is asking visitors to his site to join him in boycotting products Norris endorses and companies that purchase advertising on reruns of his long-running CBS television series, "Walker, Texas Ranger." In the first category, Ng lists exercise-equipment manufacturer Total Gym, endorsed by the actor. Sponsors listed are KFC, Payless Shoes, Nutrisystem, Tylenol and Geico Insurance.

“Republicans long decried celebrities telling us how to vote,” says Ng. So, uh, is that why Ng’s own candidate, famous actor Fred Dalton Thompson, had to drop out?

Yesterday, a new 527 organization called RoeGone.org announced that it would be "the conservative answer to MoveOn.org" and that its first order of business would be to run anti-Romney ads leading into Super Tuesday:

A new 527 group called RoeGone.org -- the conservative answer to MoveOn.org -- has produced a 60-second web ad responding to Gov. Mitt Romney's challenge to look to his record as governor as an indication of where he stands on the issues.

"Governor Mitt Romney challenged voters to look at his record. RoeGone.org has done just that," said spokesperson Sharon Blakeney, a lawyer in Boerne, Texas.

Blakeney said the group is raising money to place the ad on television in Super Tuesday states later this week. The group also plans to produce ads addressing other politicians' stand on similar issues, she said.

RoeGone.org is a pro-life organization committed to the appointment of judges who will support overturning Roe v. Wade.

Blakeney appears to be a standard right-wing activist, with ties to the Federalist Society, Texas Justice Foundation, the Alliance Defense Fund, and the Center for Reclaiming America ... which just so happens to be where Janet Folger, co-chair of Mike Huckabee's Faith and Values Coalition, used to work.

Oddly enough, guess what Folger's most recent WorldNetDaily column is about:

Finally, there is a conservative answer to MoveOn.org: RoeGone.org, as in Roe v. Wade – GONE. Nice, huh? What's even nicer is the ad they're launching to expose Mitt Romney's record. Be looking for secular conservative pundits and compromising pro-lifers to jump the Romney ship soon. No kidding. I predict this thing will signal the end of the Romney campaign.

What a coincidence! What is even more coincidental is the fact that Folger herself happens to narrate the new RoeGone.org ad (actually, it's not coincidental at all, considering that she is listed as the organization's president in the IRS filing):

Folger has been backing Huckabee ever since she declared him the “David among Jesse’s sons" after he won the Values Voter Debate, which she organized. Since then, she has been busy penning preposterous columns about how only Huckabee can save Christians from being imprisoned and organizing pro-Huckabee get-out-the-vote rallies in Iowa.

But with Huck's campaign fading, it seems as if Folger has decided to ramp up her activities and start a front group dedicated to attacking Mitt Romney.

That sounds like what John McCain is suggesting: "On the issue of appointments to the Supreme Court, McCain mentioned that Sam Brownback would play an advisory role in helping decide who he should nominate for the Supreme Court. As models of who he would select, John McCain pointed to Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia."

Like many other religious-right activists, Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council is not a big fan of John McCain. While Schenck gave him an okay assessment a year ago, the activist has made “in-depth examination” of candidates’ “religious beliefs” a key political test, and McCain apparently fails that test: Schenck recently wrote on his blog that the senator “doesn’t appear to me to have any vital faith.”

What exactly does that mean? Apparently, it has something to do with scheduling conflicts:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has scheduled a town hall meeting at 11:45 AM this Sunday in Polk City, Florida. … National Clergy Council president, the Reverend Rob Schenck (pronounced SHANK) today released this statement:

"John McCain is showing an obvious insensitivity to church people by scheduling a major campaign event smack in the middle of Sunday morning church hours. We object to any candidate interfering with church attendance by encouraging supporters to skip church services to participate in political activities. If Senator McCain or any other candidate wishes to connect with church attendees, they need to respect Sunday morning church hours."

On the other hand, Schenck had the chance “peer into the soul” of Mike Huckabee, and concluded that he’s “the real deal.” So we probably won’t be getting any press releases denouncing Huckabee’s campaign strategy of speaking at friendly, politically-involved churches and relying on church-based get-out-the-vote.

GodTube, the religiously-based alternative to YouTube best known for bringing us such videos as "A Letter From Hell,"The Day They Kicked God Out of the Schools," and some excellent Kirk Cameron-approved advice on "How to Witness to Someone Who's Gay," is getting into politics:

GodTube.com, the website which set the record as the #1 fastest growing website in the U.S. according to ComScore during its first official launch month, announces it will conduct ongoing election polling for the 2008 presidential race. Religion has already taken center stage in this year's Presidential election, and GodTube.com allows concerned Christians to have a voice on important issues, such as the war in Iraq, abortion, and the economy.

Currently there is no single source of nationwide Christian polling, and GodTube.com is uniquely positioned to reach the Christian community. With more than 2.5 million monthly visitors and over 250,000 registered Christian users, including 25,000 churches, GodTube.com connects with tens of thousands of Protestant and Catholic Americans each day seeking faith online. As Christians look to November 2008 and decide who will lead them for the next four years, GodTube.com gives users the opportunity to voice their opinions and discuss with other GodTube.com users how each candidate complements their own political and religious beliefs.

While most of the campaigns simply have candidate videos or speeches available, one candidate sat down with GodTube for an exclusive interview to praise "the importance of Godtube in the 2008 presidential election."

Guess which one:

"Well, the reason GodTube is an important part of the election process is because this myth that Christians ought to sort of keep to themselves in the church and never get outside -- that's like saying "let's never let the salt get onto things that are spoiling, let's never let the light actually show up in a dark places to illuminate the path."

That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. The whole point of being a Christian is to penetrate the darkness, is to preserve the things that are spoiling, and I don't know of anything more spoiled, more decadent, than politics.

So if there's ever a place where there ought to be a concentration of Christian activity and involvement, I'd say it's in politics and government.

The outreach seems to be paying off, as Huckabee is now leading in the all-important GodTube polling.

The National Clergy Council's Rob Schenck is upset with John McCain for scheduling a rally during church hours: "John McCain is showing an obvious insensitivity to church people by scheduling a major campaign event smack in the middle of Sunday morning church hours. We object to any candidate interfering with church attendance by encouraging supporters to skip church services to participate in political activities. If Senator McCain or any other candidate wishes to connect with church attendees, they need to respect Sunday morning church hours."

In September, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that Sen. David Vitter inserted an earmark into the federal budget to provide $100,000 to the Louisiana Family Forum, a Focus on the Family affiliate, apparently for the purpose of combating the teaching of evolution and global warming in public schools. Now the Kansas City Star is raising questions about whether earmarks from Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and Kit Bond (R-Missouri) are going to religious purposes:

Sens. Sam Brownback and Kit Bond used earmarks last year to direct about $1 million to an area group "empowering the un-churched urban poor for the kingdom of Christ."

On the surface, the taxpayer-supported appropriations for World Impact Inc. raise constitutional questions about the separation of church and state.

… Brownback, a Kansas Republican, and Bond, a Missouri Republican, note that World Impact does a lot of good for the urban poor in the region, with wanting to create an outreach and education center in St. Louis and running a ranch in central Kansas that is used as a "Christian training center for inner-city young men ages 18-25."

World Impact operates programs in several other states and received nearly $2 million in earmarks in the 2008 spending bill, according to a report last fall in Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper.

While recent rule changes have made the earmarking process a little more open, there is still far less scrutiny than to budget items that have been debated or the Bush administration’s own faith-based efforts. Still, the president of the World Impact charity assures us that “We are faith-based, but federal funds will be kept separate from our faith programs."

Alan Keyes is blaming "communist style of politics" for his lackluster campaign, but says his strategy "is based on support at the grass roots. I'm running to win."

We have written about David Barton, a right-wing political activist and self-styled historian, here many times pointing out that, for all of his claims to be dedicated to uncovering “America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built,” his primary functions appears to be using his supposed historical expertise as cover for run-of-the-mill Republican political activism.

This technique is most obvious in his 2006 DVD “Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White” which he claims is designed merely to recognize “the forgotten heroes and untold stories from our rich African American political history,” but is, in reality, little more than a 90-minute effort to portray the Democratic Party as responsible for every problem that has ever plagued the African American community in America and imply that the Republican Party is the antidote.

As we noted in our report on Barton, he runs through a litany of Democratic sins, ranging from slavery to Jim Crow to segregation while praising the Republican Party as the party of abolition and civil rights until his history lesson suddenly ends after the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and makes absolutely no mention of the political transformation that overtook the country in its wake and the rise of the Republican Party’s “Southern Strategy.”  The video concludes with Barton concludes telling his audience that African Americans cannot be bound blindly to one party or the other, but must cast their votes based on the “standard of biblical righteousness … the principles of Christianity … and an awareness that voters will answer to God for their vote” – and there is no doubt about which party he has in mind, considering that he served as vice-chairman of the Texas Republican Party from 1998 until 2006.

Until now, there was little to no footage available of Barton delivering any of his “historical” lectures to religious audiences so it was difficult to know just how much his political work colored into his presentations.  But the remarks he recently delivered at the Rediscovering God in America Conference in Florida dispel any doubt there may have been about just how much more political than historical Barton’s work really is. 

After a half-hour of recounting the nation’s history to coincide with his preferred religious views, Barton segues into a lengthy political analysis of the importance of getting Christians to vote, delivering a presentation more befitting a Republican Party activist than a "historian":

Barton has carved out a niche for himself as the Religious Right’s favorite historian, regaling them with tales of the faith of our Founding Fathers and the central role their brand of Christianity played in the founding of this nation. But as this video makes clear, Barton’s “historical” presentations are really little more than thinly-veiled GOP get-out-the-vote efforts and thus it is no surprise that the RNC regularly pays him to deliver them around the nation during election years.

In the early going, before the entrance of Fred Thompson and the rise of Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney set out to be the preferred candidate of the Religious Right.  And he was well positioned to do so, since Rudy Giuliani and John McCain were (and are) widely reviled by the Religious Right establishment and their supporters.  

Back then, Romney was hard at work meeting with Jerry Falwell and others, hobnobbing with right-wing leaders at their events, and buying victories in conservative straw polls.  But then Fred Thompson appeared on the scene and began siphoning off potential right-wing supporters while Mike Huckabee staked his claim as the most religious candidate in the field on his way to winning the support of a wide-range of Religious Right leaders.  

Through it all, Romney plodded along, picking up a handful of right-wing backer here and there, but the pickings were slim.  But now, with Thompson out of the race, it looks like things might be turning around for his campaign:

Joining Romney for President after having served as National Co-Chair of Lawyers for Fred Thompson, Victoria Toensing said, "Appointing strong judges is one of our President's most important responsibilities. The next President will make a number of appointments, and I am confident Governor Romney will nominate judges in the mold of President Bush's nominees, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. I am proud to work with Governor Romney and this outstanding group of legal minds."

Also joining the Advisory committee from Lawyers for Fred Thompson are Lizette D. Benedi, Rachel L. Brand, Reginald Brown, Charles J. Cooper, Joseph E. diGenova, Michael R. Dimino, Viet D. Dinh, Noel J. Francisco and Eileen J. O'Connor.

And with Huckabee’s campaign slowly collapsing due to lack of funds, Romney is able to starting picking up the support of right-wing leaders once again: 

Dennis Baxley, David Caton, Carole Griffin and Anthony Verdugo, representing over fifty years of combined pro-family leadership in Florida, support Mitt Romney in the Florida Presidential Preference Primary.

…

Mitt Romney is clearly the most conservative candidate among the top three competitive candidates (Giuliani, McCain, Romney) appearing on the Florida Presidential Preference ballot in Florida.

Dennis Baxley is the incoming Executive Director for Christian Coalition of Florida and former Florida State Representative for District 24.

David Caton is the Executive Director of Florida Family Association.

Carole Griffin is a pro-family lobbyist in Tallahassee and heads the Eagle Forum in Florida.

Anthony Verdugo is the president of Christian Family Coalition.

So, with the field thinning, things are starting to look up for Romney, at least as far as being the Republican candidate most willing and able to pander to the Right is concerned.

Now that Tommy Thompson, Duncan Hunter, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, Jim Gilmore, and even Fred Thompson have all dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, it is good to see that there are some candidates who have no chance of winning but still refuse to let reality get in the way of their personal vanity and desire to seem relevant … and no, we are not talking about Ron Paul, but rather Alan Keyes.

You would be forgiven for not knowing that Keyes is even running, but indeed he is, even though he can’t get into the GOP debates, has no money, and nobody is counting his votes. But to his credit, Keyes remains undaunted by such obstacles and is currently positioning himself for a major breakthrough:

On Tuesday, presidential candidate Alan Keyes began a six-week grassroots tour of Texas, originally his home state. Keyes is a 1968 graduate of Cole High School in San Antonio.

Although Keyes will make excursions outside Texas as needed, and will continue his nationwide radio blitz to counter the media's virtual blackout of his campaign, he plans to camp out in Texas until its primary on March 4. As most pundits agree, if Super Tuesday fails to produce a "presumptive" Republican nominee, Texas becomes all the more important as the last big prize of the primaries.

For all intents and purposes, the headquarters of the Keyes campaign has moved to Texas.

“For all intents and purposes,” the Keyes campaign appears to be a sham, with the majority of its expenditures going to “contribution refunds” which dwarf the $10,000 that has gone to a consulting firm linked to Keyes’ Declaration Foundation and Renew America organizations.  

At this point, Keyes’ only hope of securing the GOP presidential nomination is if every major Republican politician in the nation gets embroiled in a sex scandal, reducing the party to desperately seeking a D-list nobody to serve as a sacrificial lamb – a position for which Keyes is perfectly qualified.

Right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton has unveiled a new web video encouraging “church leaders” to get “people of faith” to vote in upcoming elections:

God ordained the institutions of civil government and it’s the Bible that provides us with clear guidance about electing God-fearing leaders of moral character and wise judgment.  In fact, it’s our duty as Christians to elect such leaders, for Proverbs 29:2 tells us that “When the RIGHTEOUS rule, the people rejoice.  But when the WICKED rule, the people groan.”  Or, to put it simply, when people of faith elect God-honoring representatives and government, all of America benefits. As Christians, we must take this to heart and vote in the coming elections.

Gratefully, in recent years, we’ve seen slow but steady progress not only in protecting traditional biblical, moral values in public policy but even in advancing them throughout the culture.  But as you know, there are still several key issues at stake, and the leaders we select in this election will affect the future of issues such as traditional marriage, protection of unborn human life, and the right of public religious expression, just to name a few. 

…

Voting is not only your right as an American citizen, but it’s your duty as a citizen in God’s kingdom.

Not surprisingly, Barton suggests that the voter guides put out by his organization, WallBuilders, can help “people of faith” choose the candidate most in-tune with their values.

This video is, in many ways, a condensed version of the message Barton regularly shares with pastors around the country, as he did over the weekend at the Rediscovering God in America Conference in Florida, where he shared the stage with Mike Huckabee, among others, and where he came across less like the academic historian he pretends to be and more like the right-wing political activist he truly is by delivering a Power Point presentation explaining to the right-wing crowd the importance of getting out the Christian vote in order to “control the political forces through elections.”   

Barton’s proclaimed goal is to uncover “America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built,” but his real goal is to mobilize religious voters to support Republican candidates – which is, after all, what the RNC regularly pays him to do.

The AP reports that "several top aides to Huckabee are now working without pay, while others have left. The adviser says some of those staying on have agreed to forgo their pay so that the campaign can run television ads in vital states. The adviser says campaign contributions are coming in, but the campaign is stretched thin as Florida's primary approaches."

The NY Daily News has Rudy Giuliani's latest religion-filled flyer.

The Washington Post reports that Duncan Getchell has withdrawn his name due to opposition to his nomination, which is not surprising given the circumstances under which he was nominated in the first place.

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."

"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.

Levey might not believe the Thurmond Rule exists, but it does and this article from 1980 explains where it origniated:

REPUBLICANS FIGHT CARTER NOMINEES
14 September 1980
The New York Times

Senate 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.

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."

Ron Paul becomes, thus far, the only presidential candidate to visit the controversial school.

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:

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."

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.

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”

Even after President Bush’s visit to Jerusalem, the prospect of peace between Israelis and Palestinians faces many obstacles, but at least one man hopes Bush’s plan fails: “It is just insanity!” said an exasperated Pat Robertson:

And if we do this, there is a judge in heaven, and that judge in heaven is going to take vengeance against those who damage Israel. That’s what the Bible says: Don’t touch them—he who touches you touches the apple of my eye. You’re sticking your finger in God’s eye. That’s what the Bible says. Terry, I fear for our country if we go forward with this nonsense.

Robertson said the U.S. and Israeli governments are “just asking for the wrath of God” by talking about giving part of Jerusalem to a Palestinian state. For Robertson, the “wrath of God” can mean a lot of things: natural disasters, terrorist attacks—even a persistent vegetative state. Almost exactly two years ago, when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke that has left him in a coma to this day, Robertson blamed it on God’s wrath over Sharon’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

While Robertson says Bush is “in a fog,” the televangelist has been campaigning for Rudy Giuliani because of the former New York mayor’s foreign policy stance. However, when Giuliani was asked about Bush’s visit during this week’s Republican presidential debate, he didn’t mention the wrath of God.

The Virginian-Pilot, located in Norfolk, VA, has long provided excellent, in-depth coverage of Pat Robertson and his various activities. In particular, Pilot journalists Steven Vegh and Bill Sizemore have regularly covered Robertson, often generating national news coverage of his exploits - including his yearly predictions, his health claims, his charities, his buisness dealings, and his outrageous statements.

And now the Pilot was the first to report another Robertson-related scoop - the televangelist is trying to buy the newspaper:

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, who has sharply criticized The Virginian-Pilot in the past, is considering making a bid to buy the newspaper, an associate said Thursday ... "I am considering a potential bid for the Pilot and have asked my attorneys to look into it," Robertson said in an e-mail forwarded by his personal assistant, G.G. Conklin. "It would be particularly helpful to provide internships for Regent University journalism students."

As the article notes, "Robertson has objected to articles in The Pilot that he has said unfairly characterized his pursuits." Presumably, should Robertson succeed in purchasing the paper, Vegh and Sizemore will both be out of jobs and the interns from Regent won't be particularly committed to carrying on their legacy of exposing Robertson's lunacy.

According to the Washington Times, the Republican primary in Michigan next week will be a “do-or-die” moment for Mitt Romney’s campaign. The candidate is polling ahead in the state, where he launched his campaign and where his father was governor. Hoping for a clean victory, Romney recently shifted resources to Michigan from South Carolina and Florida.

And now Romney can boast the support of a major religious-right force in Michigan: Thomas Monaghan, the billionaire founder of Domino’s Pizza, who created or funded groups such as the Ann Arbor PAC, Ave Maria List, and the Thomas More Law Center, along with Ave Maria School of Law, Ave Maria University, and an entire Ave Maria Town in Florida dedicated to his conservative Catholic vision. Previously, Monaghan had backed Sam Brownback, but the far-right senator dropped out of the race in October.

Although Monaghan has relocated his mini-empire to Florida, he may still carry enough influence to counteract Huckabee-backer Gary Glenn, the head of the American Family Association’s state affiliate, who has been an anti-Romney gadfly for over a year. Indeed, Glenn’s e-mail urging Huckabee supporters to mobilize churches all but cedes Catholics to Romney.

Says Monaghan,

As someone who values the importance of faith in one's life, I recognize in Mitt his deep religious convictions which will serve him well in facing the critical moral issues facing our society. I believe he will stand firm on the pro-life issues and for the traditional family values that our country was founded on and which are so critical to the future of our nation.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Romney, as the head of Bain Capital in 1998, made Monaghan a billionaire when it bought Domino’s.

With Sam Brownback out of the race, Domino's Pizza founder and right-wing money man Tom Monaghan has endorsed Mitt Romney: "Governor Romney is a man of principle. As someone who values the importance of faith in one's life, I recognize in Mitt his deep religious convictions which will serve him well in facing the critical moral issues facing our society. I believe he will stand firm on the pro-life issues and for the traditional family values that our country was founded on and which are so critical to the future of our nation."

Running as a “Christian Leader” was enough to proper Mike Huckabee to victory in Iowa, but it didn’t play too well in New Hampshire, where he finished a distant third.  

So what is his plan going forward?

Republican Mike Huckabee is trying to soften the image of the religious right as he reaches out to liberal Christians and blue-collar workers for support in his presidential campaign.

It's a delicate balancing act for the ordained Baptist minister who staunchly opposes abortion and gay marriage.

But the folksy southerner told Reuters he believed some evangelicals had widened their political concerns beyond the hot-button cultural issues that helped put George W. Bush in the White House and had mellowed enough to embrace causes like poverty and the environment.

Huckabee, who won the first presidential nominating contest in Iowa with the support of evangelicals and placed third in New Hampshire on Tuesday, wants to help bridge that divide.

"Unquestionably there is a maturing that is going on within the evangelical movement. It doesn't mean that evangelicals are any less concerned about traditional families and the sanctity of life," the former Arkansas governor said.

"It just means that they also realize that we have real responsibility in areas like disease and hunger and poverty and that these are issues that people of faith have to address," he said in an interview aboard his campaign bus.

Presumably, any effort to soften his image or reach out beyond his right-wing religious base will have to wait until he gets back from this: 

Together for Life Memorial Service and Walk, Georgia's annual pro-life gathering, will be held Tuesday, January 22, 2008 on the steps of the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Memorial Service, sponsored by Georgia Right to Life (GRTL) begins at 11:30 am and is followed by a one-mile long silent walk through downtown Atlanta.

This year's keynote speaker is Gary Bauer, an esteemed author, political activist, and President of American Values. He stated, "We must build an America where all of our children, rich and poor, black and white, are welcomed into the world and protected by the law. Human life has dignity at every age; the taking of innocent human life is always wrong."

…

Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee will also speak as a strong pro-life advocate and supporter of the Human Life Amendment. "I'm pro-life because I believe life begins at conception, and I believe that we should do everything possible to protect that life because it is the centerpiece of what makes us unique as an American people. We value the life of one as if it's the life of all... it's what separates us from the Islamic jihadists who are out to kill us. They celebrate death. They have a culture of death. Ours is a culture of life." The Georgia Right to Life PAC has endorsed Mike Huckabee for President.

Just before the New Hampshire Primaries, the Christian Defense Coalition (perhaps best known for anointing the seats in the hearing room before the confirmation hearings of John Roberts and Samuel Alito) announced that it would be taking part in something called "The New Hampshire Awakening" – an effort to ensure that “the voice of the innocent children that have been brutalized through abortion be heard loud and clear at the start of the Presidential Primary season.”

As part of their pre-Primary activities, they even planned a “non-partisan” prayer vigil to which all candidates were invited.  As their letter of invitation stated:

The prayer vigil will be non-partisan and we are inviting all Democrat and Republican Presidential candidates to attend. During the evening, we will take time to pray for each candidate individually. We will offer the same prayer for each person, asking God to give the candidates wisdom, guidance, courage and faith. Since this is the first in the nation Presidential Primary, it is imperative that we look to God for His direction and blessing as the primary season begins.

Presumably, none of the major candidates showed up (though the CDC claimed that Ron Paul had agreed to attend) which is probably just as well, since it would have only interfered with the CDC’s plans of targeting the Democratic candidate’s campaigns by forming a “life chain outside of the New Hampshire campaign office of Senator Hillary Clinton” and disrupting a Barack Obama campaign really:  

About 20 pro-life protesters made the leading Democratic presidential candidate confront the issue of abortion on Monday when they interspersed themselves in a rally he held at the Rochester Opera House. Obama had just begun speaking at the Monday night event when the pro-life advocates waved signs and chanted.

The protesters, members of the Christian Defense Coalition and the youth-oriented group Survivors, shut down the Obama campaign rally chanting "abortion is an Obama-nation."

The chant was a play on the phrase "abortion is an abomination."

More he said/he said from the Washington Times. Background here.

As we have noted several times before, Mike Huckabee’s primary campaign strategy to date has been focused almost exclusively on wooing evangelical voters – a strategy that paid off handsomely in Iowa:

Religion played a huge role in Mike Huckabee’s triumph in the Iowa Republican caucuses, though there are some mixed signals for him on the road ahead. On the Democratic side, it was fresh blood — and an outcry for change — that helped propel Barack Obama to his victory in the state.

Eight in 10 Huckabee supporters said they are born again or evangelical Christians, according to an entrance poll for The Associated Press and television networks. Another six in 10 said it was very important to share their candidate’s religious beliefs. In both categories, none of the former Arkansas governor’s opponents came close to that kind of support.

While it seems obvious to most that Huckabee’s success can be directly attributed to his ability to convince Religious Right voters that he is one of them, Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America doesn’t see it that way.  In fact, she rejects that notion all together and instead sees Huckabee’s Iowa victory as evidence of his ability to overcome anti-Evangelical bias among participants in the Republican caucus: 

While 46 percent of Evangelicals voted for Huckabee, more than half of them (54 percent) split their vote among the four other candidates (Romney, McCain, Thompson and Paul). 

…

Huckabee had to overcome extraordinary anti-Evangelical bias.  The message of Iowa is that anti-Evangelical bias was extraordinary and overwhelming.  Eighty-seven percent of non-Evangelicals voted against Huckabee, whereas only 66 percent of all Iowa Republicans voted against him — an astounding 21 percent gap.  [Exit polls] shows that among those who self-identified as non-Evangelicals, Huckabee finished 4th (behind Romney, Thompson and McCain).  It is significant that Huckabee got only 14% of non-Evangelical votes, while Romney got 19% of the Evangelical vote.

Huckabee was too busy running as a “Christian Leader” to make much of an effort to court non-evangelicals, so his limited support among that group is not surprising and certainly isn’t evidence of any sort of “anti-Evangelical bias.” 

By comparison, Huckabee won the support of a plurality (36%) of self-identified Republicans in Iowa, but only 17% of independents.  According to Crouse’s logic, Huckabee must have also somehow managed to overcome extraordinary anti-Republican bias as well.  

Mike Huckabee’s first-place finish in the Iowa Republican caucus was a victory for the Religious Right, after the combined efforts of a number of lesser-known right-wing figures eager to nominate one of their own. But while James Dobson and Richard Land issued cautious statements endorsing the victory if not the candidate, other national religious-right activists remained aloof, maintaining that Huckabee jeopardizes the vaunted right-wing coalition by alienating some of its partners, especially allies on the economic Right.

“I'm still skeptical that Mike Huckabee is the right man to speak for them because of his views on economics and foreign policy,” said Gary Bauer. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said Huckabee supporters “overlooked the fact he was not attractive to other members of the conservative coalition, and they said they don't care about us, and we don't care about them."

Indeed, these prominent religious-right activists are echoing people like Patrick Toomey of the Club for Growth, who called Huckabee the “John Edwards of the Republican Party,” FreedomWorks' Dick Armey ("Huckabee undermines the GOP's longstanding unity between its traditional and economic wings"), or American Enterprise Institute Vice President Harry Olsen. Toomey’s Club has done the most to convince Republicans of Huckabee’s alleged tax-hiking heresy, running anti-Huckabee ads heavily in Iowa since the summer.

Huckabee himself has played up this reputation as a populist, deriding the “Club for Greed” and talking about “the growing angst in the middle class.”

While many pundits seem to have accepted this presentation, it’s important to separate style from substance: When it comes to economic policy, Huckabee has arguably been running to the right of any of his major opponents.

In October, a group of 138 Muslim scholars, clerics and intellectuals came together to issue an open letter entitled “A Common Word Between Us and You,” a statement that sought to declare common ground between Christianity and Islam.

A short time later, the Yale Center for Faith and Culture issued a response that was signed by 100 Christian theologians and ministers that welcomed the effort, stating:

Given the deep fissures in the relations between Christians and Muslims today, the task before us is daunting. And the stakes are great. The future of the world depends on our ability as Christians and Muslims to live together in peace. If we fail to make every effort to make peace and come together in harmony you correctly remind us that “our eternal souls” are at stake as well.

We are persuaded that our next step should be for our leaders at every level to meet together and begin the earnest work of determining how God would have us fulfill the requirement that we love God and one another. It is with humility and hope that we receive your generous letter, and we commit ourselves to labor together in heart, soul, mind and strength for the objectives you so appropriately propose.

Guess who is not happy about it?

An attempt by leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to win friends and influence Muslims is alienating another group — evangelical Christians.

Reactions have been negative and strong. Islam expert Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo has called it a “betrayal” and a “sellout.” Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Seminary (Southern Baptist), termed it “naiveté that borders on dishonesty.”

…

Mohler said the agreement “sends the wrong signal” and contains basic theological problems, especially in “marginalizing” Jesus Christ. He also condemned the apology for the Crusades.

“I just have to wonder how intellectually honest this is,” he said. “Are these people suggesting that they wish the military conflict with Islam had ended differently — that Islam had conquered Europe?”

…

Gary Bauer, president of the Campaign for Working Families, told CitizenLink the NAE leaders “have left the (card) table without their pants — that is, they’ve been taken and may not even realize they’ve been taken.”

…

Sookhdeo called for Christian leaders who signed the letter to withdraw their names, saying the confession of guilt puts Christian communities in Muslim areas of the world at risk.

“I find it difficult to understand how senior evangelical leaders in the West can join hands with other Christians who actually are betraying the Christian faith (and) their Christian brothers and sisters in the Muslim world,” he said.

No word yet on whether this right-wing leaders will try to get Richard Cizik fired from his position with NEA for signing this letter, as they did a while back when he dared to care about the environment.  

A group of Democrats and Republicans, including former Senators such as Jack Danforth, Gary Hart, and Bob Graham, as well as Christine Todd Whitman, and Sen. Chuck Hagel, gathered at the University of Oklahoma today for a forum urging presidential candidates to work to “establish a government of national unity”:  

Today, we come together with hope and determination, with a determination to stop politics as usual which seeks to divide us for political gain.  We come together to resurrect that kind of bipartisan statesmanship that united us as Americans to win the Cold War.  We come together to appeal to all presidential candidates to tell us how they plan to bring us together.  Hear our plea!  Bring us together!

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins is having none of it and sees it as an effort to drive so-called “values voters” out of the political process: 

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC), says in their zeal to find common ground, the moderates want to jettison social issues from both party platforms and focuses. The FRC leader says the group of moderates "obviously did not get the message from Iowa," where former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee surged ahead because of "his unequivocal stand on core issues."

"I think we've seen in the wake of Iowa and in what's happening across the country that those issues are very near and dear to people," Perkins observes. "Those are issues that motivate people; they vote based on those issues. [And] those issues are important to Americans, not just evangelicals, but value voters make up a wide section of Americans who are concerned about the moral direction of our country."

Polls show that most Americans – including most Republicans and most Christians – don’t share Perkins’ abortion-and-gays political priorities.  But he’s got a point about the power of those issues to motivate a good chunk of the Republican base.  Mike Huckabee just won Iowa where “over 80 percent of [his] supporters self-identified as born-again Christian or evangelical.” 

Or as Perkins explained following Huckabee’s win last week, the GOP’s right-wing base is motivated by wedge issues and will rally around “one of their own” if given the opportunity:  

[E]vangelicals, dispirited by Republican indifference if not outright hostility to their concerns, cast their ballots for candidates who line up with them on their top priority issues (for example, all of the top five finishers contend that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be corrected).

…

Iowa evangelicals' voting pattern says, "If that is the way we are viewed by the other members of the conservative coalition, we are going with one of our own whom we can trust on our issues." The road ahead will be filled with challenges, but one thing is clear: the values voter turnout has reshaped this presidential campaign in a very good way.

In other words, Perkins seems to be saying, “values voters” aren’t even interested in “unity” with the rest of the conservative movement.  That’s quite a change from what he was telling reporters at the “Values Voter Summit” in October, when he was indirectly dissing Huckabee by repeating Romney’s “three legged stool” formulation that any Republican would need the support of social conservatives, economic conservatives, and foreign policy conservatives to win the White House.

You know something strange is happening within the Republican Party when the supporters of one GOP presidential hopeful start complaining that another is using religion to polarize the electorate.

A few weeks ago, we noted how the National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez, a vocal Mitt Romney backer, was accusing Mike Huckabee of using the issue of faith in order "to change the subject away from policy and record issues" - as if that has not been the Religious Right's primary tactic for the last two decades.

Now it looks as if this talking point has been picked up by others inside the Romney campaign as well:

Mark DeMoss – a fellow Southern Baptist leader and outspoken supporter of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney – argues that the most important qualification when electing someone to public office is proven ability to manage the country rather than the religion litmus test.

“I believe faith plus character plus experience plus competence is a recipe for the ideal presidential candidate,” wrote DeMoss in an opinion piece posted on the Web site Beliefnet.com. “But faith alone should neither disqualify one from getting my vote, nor guarantee that they will.”

The Christian public relations guru added that a candidate’s “character cannot be overstated” but that his or her “faith can be” and in “this election probably has been.”

Likewise, James Bopp, who is also a Romney supporter, took to the pages of the National Review yesterday to make much the same point:

By emphasizing his qualification for office as a “Christian leader,” the Huckabee campaign, however, has implicitly, and some of his supporters have explicitly, promoted a religious test for office. This threatens to tear this religious coalition apart. And if evangelical Christians legitimize a religious test for public office, they will pay the heaviest price. The liberal elites have long sought to drive people of faith from the public square. They view Mormons as a curiosity, like Christians on steroids, but they loath and fear evangelicals. If a religious test is legitimate for public office, then the Democrats will drive evangelicals out of our democracy.

In other words, Bopp and DeMoss realize that the issue of faith is important and helpful politically only so long as the Republican Party can lay exclusive claim to it and use it as a cudgel against Democrats. But now that Huckabee is doing to Romney what Bopp, DeMoss, and the rest of the Religious Right have been doing to their opponents for the last twenty years, there is a lot of hand-wringing about the inappropriateness of having this type of "religious test" for political candidates and fears that he's ruining the Religious Right's favorite tactic.

If the Romney campaign really is opposed to this practice of not-so-subtly denigrating a political opponent's faith and values, does that mean that he will eschew it should he become the GOP's candidate? If so, he might want to disband his "Faith and Values Steering Committee" - which is filled with people like Mark DeMoss and James Bopp.

Joe Carter, the scrappy FRC blogger who left to work for Huckabee press team, reportedly quit the campaign shortly before the caucuses. Meanwhile, Huckabee's press operation flounders. Coincidence? UPDATE: Carter says it was always temporary---and hints at some looming Romney scandal.