Posted on 12/13/2007 5:43:42 AM PST by Kaslin
When Mike Huckabee asked a New York Times' reporter, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers," he crossed a line he cannot uncross.
Previous to this he had played a game of teasing the anti-Mormon vote, and had been called on it by Charles Krauthammer and others.
But Huckabee had maintained deniability.
No more. Huckabee's obvious attempt to salt the mine and get the reporter to carry antt-Mormon rhetoric into the paper without Huckabee's fingerprints on it backfired, and the transparent attempt to use the MSM to further the anti-Mormon message was repulsive.
Until he crossed that line, Huckabee remained a viable protest vote for conservative evangelicals who distrusted Romney's conversion on life issues. The hard core anti-Mormon fanatics are actually few in number and many of them are on the left --like Larry O'Donnell-- and Romney had successfully put the issue of his faith behind him with his speech at the Bush Library.
But Romney still needed to connect with movement social conservatives leery of his embrace of the cause of the unborn. Until he unfurled the banner of Christian identity politics, Huckabee provided these voters with a place to park their vote, even though the effect would be to elevate Rudy Guiliani. Some of these values voters were going to vote their conscience, regardless of the result.
But there are millions and millions of evangelicals who will want no part of the appeal to "vote against the Mormon."
With his recent rise in the polls, Huckabee began to experience a scrutiny of his record that was already eroding his appeal to social conservatives. The Committee for Growth blasted Huckabee for his record of hiking taxes in Arkansas. The former Arkansas governor looked not ready for prime time when he was caught flat-footed on the NIE. Huckabee's advocacy for Wayne DuMond could not be fast-talked away, and the argument for isolating victims of the AIDs virus set off alarms as beyond any reasonable position even though Huckabee made the proposal in 1992. Suddenly Huckabee began to appear as a light-weight, and the charming,,joking second-tier fun guy took on a distinctively different look.
Then comes the below the belt hit on Mormons, so profoundly off-putting to Republicans who believe in the big tent as well as to evangelicals and Catholics who know the gulf between their theology and that of the LDS Church but who would no more verbally assault their Mormons friends, neighbors and business colleagues than they would any other American different from them on matters of faith. It just itsn't done. "Republican voters will not tolerate attacks on faith," pollster Frank Luntz declared on my program yesterday. I think he is right, and I hope he is right.
Such attacks on different religious beliefs have been part of American history, but aren't part of the American future. The common creed of moral convictions that Romney referred to his his College Station speech on faith now includes as one of its tenets that you do not mock or insult another person's religion.
Buck Mike Huckabee did. To the world's most influential newspaper.
Huckabee ought to have apologized during the Des Moines Register debate, but he didn't, perhaps waiting for the moderator to provide a moment to show some feigned regret.
So he went to CNN immediately thereafter and asked for forgiveness.
Will that put Huckabee's anti-Mormon genie back in its bottle. I don't think so. "That which is said while drunk has been thought out beforehand," goes the old saying. In the modern media world, candidates for the presidency don't say careless things to the New York Times. It was a premeditated aside, an attempt to get a virus into circulation. It didn't work, but it did tell us a lot about Mike Huckabee.
Sorry to be unclear; Hewitt. I think Hewitt’s claim that evangelicals are loathe to criticize Mormonism isn’t true. Unlike a lot of people, I think Romney’s religion is a discussion worth having.
You are right!
Personally, I would like my president to be a born again practicing Evangelical, but I am not a one issue voter, and will look at all of them, even if I have to hold my nose. That is a lie, I will not vote for Rudy!
We can bring them together; that’s fine, whatever. In fact, people today are falling all over themselves to “accept” others’ beliefs. But it’s worth remembering that we can’t all be right. Someone needs to remind us of that from time to time.
Good article.
It might be useful to review how we got here. This fall Romney was touring the south saying “Vote for Me! I’m a Christian too!”, stupidly, or at least ill advisedly thinking that that would make the people there like him better. The people down there saw it as a challenge. No, you’re not a Christian and here’s why.
This was followed by moaning and hand wringing about anti-Mormon bigotry and a race by the PC-e-or than thou crowd to be the first to brag that a person’s religion means nothing to me. Which is nonsense that people tell pollsters but forget once they’re in the privacy of the voting booth.
As usual the main victim is the language. The word Christian has now become fuzzy and over broad. We will now have to use the modifier Trinitarian when precision is needed to represent what 99.99% of Christians believe.
Well you can add being a member of a cult to Romney’s illegal-embracing treachery.
The irony is Huckabee is displaying the same Clintonian characteristics he claims he can defeat, because of his experience with Clintonian politics.
Thats ridiculous, and wrong on two counts.
First, the Clintonites left Arkansas - the talented ones at any rate - in 1992. He never ‘ran against the Clinton machine’.
Second, Bill Clinton was much better at the ‘smear that doesn’t sound like a smear’.
“Either Huckabee is really that dumb to bring that up to a NY Times writer instead of getting the answer to the question himself or he did it on purpose to appear innocent while planting a hateful seed.”
I would have asked the question out of amazement that the American “Evangelicals” would be willing to vote for a Mormon, who’s book teaches that Satan and Jesus are brothers.
:-)
“What’s more telling is that Romney supposedly accepted Huckabees apology where he explained that he was taken out of context but Romeny then proceeded to perpetuate what the Christian hating slimes started by insinuating that Huckabee had fallen into the usual smearing of all Mormons.”
Typical Romney flip flop. I just can’t understand it. let’s say Romney is a Baptist but still just as much of a liberal-turned-neocon-overnight. No freeper would vote for him. I think we have a case of reverse bigotry. In order to not look like an anti-mormon kook, you blindly support a liberal Mormon.
Huckabee, from Hope Ark. as is Clinton, leaves a lot to be desired. He’s quick with the one liners. If Rip Van Winlkle woke up during the middle of Huck’s term as governor, he’d swear Huck was a RAT; high taxes, benefits for illegals, parole and pardons for lifers, soft on terrorists, soft on Cuba and on and on.
I would have asked the question out of amazement that the American “Evangelicals” would be willing to vote for a Mormon, who’s book teaches that Satan and Jesus are brothers.
Like I said "Either Huckabe and his supporters are that dumb...
What’s the problem? Romney and Huckabee supporters just need to coalesce around the real conservative in the campaign - Fred Dalton Thompson. Dump the RINOs and go for the real deal, y’all.
Actually, Huckabee preceded the comment by saying to the reporter in a PRIVATE interview. “I don’t know much about mormonism.” And that was immediately followed by...
“Don’t they believe Jesus and Satan are brothers?” (or something like that)
Now, the truth has come out that Mormons DO believe that BOTH were procreated by the same FATHER.
I'll take door number 2.
This isn't the first time he's done it. It's just the most glaringly obvious. Prior to Huckabee's entry to the race, I knew very little of him and had formed no opinion. If anything, I was predisposed to like him, as a Governor brings stronger cred to a campaign than mayor or rep. Yet every time I heard him, there was that honey-coated, manipulative thing going on--recognizable to anyone who's ever spent any time in the company of someone who has perfected the art form.
Yeah, I think it was deliberate too. On the other hand a lot of the anti-Mormon mischief may or may not be coming from evangelicals and Huckabee supporters but from people who want to smear Romney and blame it on evangelicals. I understand that. It all seems silly too. So many people on this site have sent me all sorts of links trying to prove one thing or another about what Mormons REALLY believe but no one has bothered to send me a link to the LDS site which actually states what Mormons believe today. And the bottom line for me is I really don’t give a rat’s behind so don’t even bother ye sowers of disunity. ;-)
Amen!! Take that you NY slimes!
Unlike a lot of people, I think Romney’s religion is a discussion worth having.
__________
OK. But in the context of a presidential campaign?
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