Mike Huckabee often mixes religion with politics. But the former Arkansas governor jumped the shark on the eve of the Michigan primary, when he told a crowd of cheering (and faithful) supporters that the Constitution needs a religious fix:
"I have opponents in this race," he said, "who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do--to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."
Huckabee's proposal to amend the Constitution in order to make it conform with the Bible didn't get all the attention it deserved. Perhaps because it was jumbled in with a mix of other coverage of the six major candidates. Perhaps because metastasized evangelical belief has become acceptable political discourse. Certainly because the media let him get away with it. No serious candidate for the American presidency had ever taken such an extreme position regarding the separation of church and state. Rev. Huckabee is proposing a policy that would render meaningless the "separation clause" in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Huckabee is an ordained minister. He has preached sermons to Baptist congregations during the primary campaign. His position on abortion and homosexual marriage are rooted in Christian scripture. He has claimed that "God . . . created a government structure."
Huckabee is one of two Republican candidates still in the race who reject Darwin's theory of evolution. "It is a theory of evolution, that's why it's called the theory of evolution," he said on a PBS program in 2004 when he was governor of Arkansas--resorting to the canard that confuses the colloquial and scientific use of the word theory.
Now Huckabee becomes the first candidate since the Rev. Pat Robertson in 1988, and the first contending presidential candidate in the nation's history to openly and unapologetically run as a theocrat. Yet it's possible that there's a worldly method to his religious madness, a method informed by polling data and George W. Bush's unprecedented success uniting the evangelical vote.