During the GOP primary, we kept hearing about the emergence of a “new evangelical” movement that cared about issues beyond the standard anti-gay, anti-abortion right-wing agenda and were repeatedly told that Mike Huckabee was the most high profile example of this new type of leader.
As we pointed out then, and have continued to point out, that was a dramatic oversimplification and fundamentally misleading. Because, when you get down to it, people like Mike Huckabee are in fact fully aligned with the traditional Religious Right agenda and, as Dan Gilgoff smartly notices, inevitably revert to form when it comes crunch time:
Remember back to the Republican primaries, when Mike Huckabee campaigned as a new kind of evangelical candidate, adding issues like the environment, education, and poverty to the hot-button agenda of God, guns, and gays?
That big-tent Huck seems to be in much shorter supply now. An email the Arkansas governor just sent out soliciting donations for his political action committee–whose beneficiaries include John McCain and Sarah Palin–asks fors $5 for each of these five red meat issues:
1. Protection of Human Life 2. Traditional Marriage 3. Tax policy that doesn’t punish people for working, but rewards them 4. 2nd amendment rights 5. Supreme Court and Federal Court judge selection
So much for all those professed concerns about poverty, the environment, and human rights.
