Huckabee: The GOP's Cynical Use of Religion Has Come Home to Roost

With Mike Huckabee's continuing surge, the Republican Party now has an Iowa front-runner whose religious beliefs are virtually identical to those of George Bush. He's anti-choice, born-again, against gay-marriage, and gets political advice directly from God.

So why is the Republican establishment suddenly in a state of near-apoplexy about Mike Huckabee? Shouldn't they be happy? They've been cultivating evangelicals and fundamentalists for 30 years. Now they finally have a candidate who's truly part of the movement. So what's the problem?

Actually, that is the problem. The evangelical crowd was fine when it was just a resource to be cynically exploited every few years in demagogic anti-gay get-out-the-vote campaigns. But now the holy-rolling monster the GOP's Dr. Frankensteins have created has thrown off the shackles, fled the lab, and is currently leading in Iowa. And the party doesn't know what to do.

It's actually fun to watch the consternation. Ross Douthat has dubbed this feeling "Huckenfreude," which he defines as "pleasure derived from the outrage of prominent conservative pundits over the rising poll numbers of Mike Huckabee."

And there is certainly no shortage of outrage among hyperventilating conservative columnists across the country. The National Review's Rich Lowry has coined a neologism of his own: "Huckacide." This is when a national party commits suicide by nominating an "under-vetted former governor who is manifestly unprepared to be president of the United States."

Yeah, that would certainly be crazy, wouldn't it? Makes you wonder where these people have been for the last seven years.

Over at the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer is wringing his hands about an "overdose of public piety," "scriptural literalism," and how the 2008 campaign is "knee-deep in religion."

At the Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes worries about the fact that Huckabee "told a producer for Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network that his religious background made him most qualified to lead the war on terror," and that he "seems to believe the best foreign policy is one guided by the Golden Rule." Scoffing at the Golden Rule? What's next, attacking the Boy Scout Oath? And what it is about Huckabee's name that inspires a whole new lexicon? The Weekly Standard's headline writers couldn't resist, dubbing his perceived foreign policy shortcomings "The Perils of Huckaplomacy."

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan frets that the Republican Party of today wouldn't like Ronald Reagan much now that "faith has been heightened as a determining factor in how to vote," and says that voters in Iowa "may be deciding if Republicans are becoming a different kind of party."

If? If??

Turns out that when you define your party a certain way for a two or three decades, people actually start to believe it, and that definition can, in fact, become your party.

According to Andrew Sullivan, "it is certainly too late for fellow-traveling Christianists like Lowry and Krauthammer to start whining now. This is their party. And they asked for every last bit of it."

The Republican establishment is tying itself in knots trying to land on a publicly acceptable rationale for their Huckabhorrence (I told you, it's irresistible). Some criticize his "fair tax" plan -- but since when have nutty economic plans ever disqualified a Republican presidential candidate?

No, the real reason is class. As Kevin Drum puts it, "mainstream conservatives are mostly urban sophisticates with a libertarian bent, not rural evangelicals with a social conservative bent. They're happy to talk up NASCAR and pickup trucks in public, but in real life they mostly couldn't care less about either. Ditto for opposing abortion and the odd bit of gay bashing via proxy. But when it comes to Ten Commandments monuments and end times eschatology, they shiver inside just like any mainstream liberal."

As Steve Benen writes at TPM, "The Republican Party's religious right base is supposed to be seen, not heard. Candidates are supposed to pander to this crowd, not actually come from this crowd."

They want their base to be a kind of electoral cicada: wake up every four years, vote, and then go underground and shut-up.

Will Huckabee win the nomination? No one knows. But win or lose, I can't see this genie going back in the bottle. One danger for the Huckabee haters is that right wing social positions aren't the only thing they've been nurturing for 30 years -- there's also this sense of aggrieved, martyred hatred of "the elites." Of course, it's usually completely manufactured. But this time, there really is a group looking down its nose at the evangelicals -- and it's not godless liberals. It's the supporters of Romney, McCain, Thompson and Giuliani. So what's going to happen when evangelicals realize this and tap into the hatred of "the elites" the GOP establishment has been whipping up in them for three decades?

Mark Kleiman points out that Huckabee is the only non-millionaire among the serious GOP contenders, and the only one who doesn't court what Kevin Drum calls the "money-cons" -- those Republicans for whom globalization is the only true religion.

Republicans have been running on a faux populist/religiously conservative platform ever since Richard Nixon. It was refined and heightened by Lee Atwater and again by Karl Rove. And now that they have a rising candidate who truly represents that platform, the movers and shakers of the party are doing all they can to kneecap him.

But as the Good Book says: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Comments

[Hirnlego]

Pimping For Jesus

It's the Brit Pat Condell again on the United States Presidental Election and a couple of Republican candidates who are pimping for Jesus.

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/12/pimping_for_jes.html

[Dansden]

Republicans cannot believe in the U.S. Constitutional rights of ALL citizens being equal in freedom, justice, opportunity and access to hope, health and happiness
BECAUSE OUR U.S. CONSTITUTION IS AGAINST THE BASIC PLATFORM OF REPUBLICANS WHICH IS TO CONTROL THE MASSES WITH THEIR WEALTH!

[mrtshw]

When Paul Greenberg is not cheerleading the war crimes in Iraq or sharing space via his retreaded ArDemGaz sermons at Townhall.Com with Ann Coulter or using his learned Jewish heritage to teach Arkie Christians the nuanced differences between evangelicals and fundamentalist(at least we're spared, for now perhaps, lectures regarding Dominionism); he's busy bestowing valentines upon his newly designated conservative hero, Mike Huckabee..the same Mike Huckabee who proudly denies his 'primate' heritage and presumably also the role of science since the Dark Ages.
At age 21, Huckabee came under the wing of the extreme right wing, millionaire televangelist James Robison who hired Huckabee at the time to work on Billy Graham-style crusades and television programs.
Huckabee's association with Robison also introduced him to the Nelson Bunker Hunt/Amway's Richard Devoss funded ultra right wing
Council for National Policy which has secretly shaped Huckabee's political career since its inception.
His 'Adam and Steve' type socio/religious beliefs did not carry over to his taxation policies. In fact, he raised taxes (+ $500 million overall) more than any previous Arkansas governor; taxes added onto the burdens of one of the most impoverished, most regressively taxed citizenry in the country. And to make matters even worse, Huckabee left office in January,2007 with a surplus of a BILLION dollars; thus insuring his legacy as the greatest " Tax and Hoard " politician in Arkansas' history.
Huckabee's evangelical ties also forged his association with characters such as Ted Suhl, founder of The Lord's Ranch: purportedly a faith-based mental health treatment facility for children. With Huckabee's active assistance, Suhl's Lord's Ranch enterprise received $8.5 million from the state in 2005, up from $140,000 just five years earlier! Only Huckabee, Suhl and , of course God one presumes, seem to know what ' tit-for-tats' the Right Reverend/ Public Servant Huckabee received..

[jtxyzzy]

What the Huck???

[Qbear]

McBush = LAST EXIT to Hucker-Ville

[BadChristian]

Aristocracy vs theocracy.

When the elephants battle...

Happening all over the world.

[WilliePilgrim]

The GOP's relationship with evangelicals is very reminiscent of the Democratic Party's relationship with social movements that later prove to be problematic; The adoption of sweeping social programs and the backing of foreign intrigues aimed at delivering democracy proved so profitable for the DEMS that the GOP has embraced it despite the betrayal it represents to the fiscal conservative and constitutionalists.
This to me is why the two party system,for all the hype it generates and then installs into our civics text books, is simply a more devious game of "monkey in the middle". Of course the monkeys on the end are having a great time keeping the ball away from us, the poor monkey in the middle.
I of course will vote with my nose closed again this time...unless Ron Paul can create a coalition of the "sick and tired of the political status quo".
Hope springs eternal.

[gobble]

Exactly.

And perhaps this will be a good cleansing of the Republican Base. Time for it to determine its priorities.

[DasBoot]

Great post. How can one not LOVE watching the right wing establishment's consternation. It's right out of Goethe's Sorcerer's Apprentice: Die Geister die ich rief, werd ich nun nicht los: The spirits that I summoned I can't rid myself of.

I agree that this is class war. What strikes me about Huckabee is not so much his religious fundamentalism, but his economic populism. My guess is that this is what really resonates with rural white America after 15 years of NAFTA, outsourcing, and tax cuts for the upper 2%.

As Democrats, we should simply step back, get out of the way, and enjoy the show.

[cuthbertallgood]

Can you imagine any Democratic candidate linging up with Evangelical preachers to proclaim other Americans are evil? Would a Democrat hold political events in religious stlye and invite virulent members of the ex-gay movement to speak in order to court the bigoted vote of the christianist right by alligning with a group of professional hate speakers/singers?
Unfortunately the answer is yes. As of this election cycle. Those castigating Huck need to think very hard indeed about supporting the same tactics on our side. Before hitching to a cart like that, do a full inspection. If attacking minority groups for religious reasons is bad politics, then don't vote for it in either Party, and speak out against it who ever is using such tactics. Is that a road this Party wants to tread?

[PerryLogan]

It's fun to watch the Republican Party oversee its own destruction. But this isn't over till we drive the right out of our country.

[larryfishkorn]

Have you ever noticed that you never see Huckabee's hands in photographs or on video? That's because he has "love" tattooed across the fingers of one hand and "hate" across the other.
Crap, am I mixing up movies and reality again?

[Pete Ross]

See what the Arkansas Times says about Huckabee:

Huckabee released a rapist
Dumond case revisited
http://www.arktimes.com/Articles/ArticleViewer.aspx?ArticleID=154e1aad-fd18-4efd-8d80-b5dab8559419
A reminder of Huckabee's role in his freedom
Arkansas Times Staff

[barkingdog]

This is the most profound post I've read here in a long time. Bookmark it, save it, read it again in two years, and it will still be trenchant, long after "Huckabee" has become (a) a punchline, (b) a trivia question, (c) our president.

[Fernando]

This column did a Jedi Mind Trick on me. While no LIKELY candidate could pander to religious conservatives as Bush has, he has been in that sense more talk than action. He's remained faithful to his true base: the rich.

Huckabee seems more sincere in his faith and he also looks like a true Christian, in the sense that he actually seems to care about the poor. But then again, so did Bush at this stage in his candidacy! Remember "Compassionate Conservatism"? I can see Huckabee pushing harder on some social issues, but his record is clearly that of a moderate, right-of-center conservative. This is not Pat Robertson or some roadshow religious nut or even someone with a simplistic faith as Bush's.

I'd be less concerned of president Huckabee than I am of Bush. Where Huckabee will lose the moderates is not on religion, it's on the fair tax nonsense that no responsible politician has any business advocating when our deficit is so CRITICAL. In that sense he is following the good works of George Bush: favor the rich. So how would they be THAT different as presidents?