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.
My daughter’s church, Episcopal, was shilling for Huckabee this past Sunday. She lives in Washington State on the east, conservative side.
That’s fine. But that’s not to say we shouldn’t have the debate. Would you vote for someone that pointed out ugly truths of other religions?
so where someone is from dictates their value to you?
how is that not bigotry?
*not that I care but I see this all the time here....folks decry bigotry and then make a stereotyupical comment about people...usually white male southern or rural folks
i don't like Huckster much but I think ya'll are hypocrites...with all due respect
OK.
First, I agree the Slimes and secularist organs will play divide and conquer on people of faith. Divisive arguments help them, not us. I am against what they try to do too.
Second, I think Romney helped enormously in laying out a unifying stand that conservatives can rally around with respect to religious liberty, faith in our culture, and religion in the public square:
http://www.mittromney.com/News/Speeches/Faith_In_America
Even if he’s not your candidate, I think we should agree that his statement on how he will act in office and the principles he expressed regarding the role of faith and religious liberty in America are the right ones. Any candidate could and should have similar stand on those points.
Romney spoke of the dangers of secularism and the dangers of theocracy, placing our heritage of religious liberty and a faith-filled society as a better contrast to those alternatives. He’s going to have the secularists after him on this, and they will use every weapon in the book to undercut his message. We need to be careful not to hand them any.
Third, if we don’t want liberals to beat us around the head on these issues, we are going to have to stop playing into the stereotypes that the liberals want to peg us with. That means that evangelicals are going to have to be discerning about the character of candidates and not just knee-jerk respond based on affiliations and labels.
I think the main point of Huckabee's comments were that, unlike Southern Baptists and Catholics, say, Mormons and Christians don't share the same fundamental beliefs; that is, Mormons do not believe in the Trinity.
There are lots of legitimate reasons not to vote for Huckabee. I'm just not sure that this is one of them.
This is exactly the goal of this whole hit piece by the slimes. They know The US is not ever going to elect a minster for the office of the Presidency...they are just following their usual agenda and Romney is helping them, even after the speech he gave the other day. It's despicable.
It’s amazing to me that people so blindly want to ignore the anti-Christian beliefs of Mormonism, as if they consider it a more evil thing to do to expose their beliefs than cover them up...
If the fake “gospel” of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith had been around in the days of Saints Peter and Paul they would have soundly excoriated them for being anti-Christian heretics, yet in today’s America some Christians cringe for fear of telling those truths.
That being said, I would definitely vote for Romney if he were a conservative, but he’s not...he’s a quick-change artist who governed as a anti-gun and pro-abortion governor, and to this day still wants a ban on semi-auto weapons.
I would never vote for him, for that reason...I couldn’t care less about his religion.
Ed
It is just one more reason why I think he is wearing sheepskin.
If we don’t want liberals to beat us around the head on these issues, we are going to have to stop playing into the stereotypes that the liberals want to peg us with. That means thatevangelicalsall of us are going to have to be discerning about the character of candidates and not just knee-jerk respond based on affiliations and labels.
It has nothing to with ignoring but rather we dont want a President teaching us whats wrong with mormon theology.
We are at war with Islam “again” and I dont want to hear catholics or mormons or evangelicals beaten up or attacked on the campaign trail.
There are some Mormons in my family (converted sister-in-law) and I have read the book of the Mormon(can't say that I buy that one). I wouldn't say they aren't Christians, like some Catholics say that Protestants are not Christians because they don't follow Catholic traditions. They can be Christians if they believe what is written in the New Testament..at least that is my understanding.
I'm not sure how you come up with the facts to back up that they are not Christians.
And no...I am not a Romney supporter.
Yes.
If they were, in fact, truths, and not merely beliefs.
I should have added to my posting, that I don’t have a problem with people making comparisons of the various beliefs and practices of religions. For example, we should seek clarification of the concept of Jihad in Islam.
Last time I looked around...my top three reasons to vote in a guy for president...was immigration control, taxes, and Iraq. I really can’t think of a good reason to escalate Jesus, Satan or some Baptist theology into the top three. I think Huckabee is getting himself into a position where if its a choice of Obama and Huckabee...three quarters of the nation will vote Obama. Baptist ministers would the least of my favorites to be president.
Methinks I know who was behind that Iowa push-poll a few weeks back...
“....my top three reasons to vote in a guy for president...was immigration control, taxes, and Iraq.”
None of that matters if Jesus isn’t on our side.
Ok, let’s have this discussion.
Here are the facts we can all agree on:
1. Satan is the creation of God.
To discuss:
Is Jesus the physical Son of God or simply a symbolic son, an aspect of the same person? The Trinity makes no philosophical sense and is not mentioned in the Bible.
If the Trinity is a false concept, then Jesus is God’s creation, just like Adam and Eve and all the angels were God’s creation.
In this respect, it is much more plausible that Lucifer and Jesus were brothers, especially given the story of Lucifer. Lucifer was the most high angel, correct? He rebelled and a good portion of the angels joined him.
The more I write it out, the more goofy it all sounds. We don’t have proof of any of this stuff.
Nevermind...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.