Posted on 12/11/2007 11:11:02 PM PST by Tlaloc
Huckabee's campaign won't talk much about the home-schooling contingent, which is largely made up of conservative Christians. The staff is weary -- and wary -- of stories that make it seem as though their candidate, an ordained Southern Baptist preacher, relies exclusively on votes and volunteers from the religious right.
"All I've heard the last week is pastors, pastors, pastors, evangelicals, evangelicals, evangelicals," said Eric Woolson, who runs the Iowa campaign.
But the buzz in political circles is that a quarter of Huckabee's Iowa volunteers are home-schoolers. "It might even be higher than that," said Danny Carroll, a campaign co-chairman for the state.
Huckabee, always ready with a quip, explained the phenomenon this way: "They're very smart people. They know a good candidate when they see one."
About 9,000 of Iowa's students are home-educated. Nationwide, the number is 2 million and rising steadily, according to Michael P. Ferris, who runs the national home-schooling association. Home-schoolers are distributed fairly evenly among the states. Though an increasing number are ethnic or racial minorities, the majority of families are evangelical Christians.
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"People appreciate that I recognize that ultimately, education is a decision for moms and dads, not governments to make," Huckabee said at a news conference this week.
His faith also resonates with conservative Christian home-schoolers, who often use texts that dispute evolution and teach the Book of Genesis. Campaigning last month, Huckabee called for public school students to learn the biblical creation story as well as evolution.
"I want schools to be honest and say, 'There are many points of view. Here's the evidence, dig through and see what you think,' " he said. "You'd be surprised. Students aren't going to fall on their face and say, 'Oh no! I've been indoctrinated into religious thought!' "
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I don’t necessarily buy the spin but it’s plausible after seeing Huck’s rise in the polls. Huck can make a very strong case for social conservatism and if that’s what voters are focusing on, they will rationalize away the other problems.
The 70% you speak of includes me. I want our troops home and safe, but I also lived during the Viet Nam war, and I WON"T accept what was done to those vets and America again. If the troops come home without victory, all those vets died and were maimed for NOTHING. A year from now, we will be bombing them again, or they will be a safehouse for AQ or a puppet of Iran. No matter what government stands up in Iraq, it should be friendly to America and hostile to it's enemies or we have lost the war and will be attacked again. Ron P thinks all this is our fault. He's a nut.
An insult to home schoolers everywhere.
The Bible clearly tells us to "test the spirits." Remember, the Lord did say that not all who came in His name would be His. Just because Huckabee is a pastor doesn't exlude him from that group Jesus was talking about. Jesus KNEW that many were going to come after Him professing to be Christians to further their own personal gain. THAT is one of the biggest reasons that America is in the mess it's in now. Just because someone 'says' they're a Christian, doesn't make it so. Gullible Christians are a dime a dozen these days!
I concur. I think we’ve seen this phenomenon before...see my post 50.
Thanks for your service and BRAVO ZULU for a great post!
Well, you’ve shown you can spam, but not that you can reason. Why should a conservative back Huckabee for anything other than his religious beliefs? Being pro-life and pro-gun is nice, but I think we can do better than two issues.
Good post. I don’t believe this story (see post 50) but I do think that if American evangelicals have one consistent failing these days, it’s that they don’t test the spirits. If they did we wouldn’t be seeing evangelicals fall all over themselves to embrace global warming hucksterism.
BTW, when I asked for a citation, I guess I should have said “citations.” I expect a cite for “receive[s] more money from active military than any other candidate” and another cite for “70% of the American people want out of the war,” and make sure it’s data that indicates they want to pull out quickly, not some poll where people are basically saying war sucks. Yeah, no kidding.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/2007/10/ron_paul_leads_military_donations_race/
There was a recent poll on Fox news that stated that in Iowa, 50% wanted to immediately withdraw troops and 31% wanted to stay. 19% were undecided.
This was among Registered (basically hard-core) Republicans. Since the party has lost a lot of people, many are independent now.
A large majority of Dems want out of the war, so 70% of the American People seems accurate to me.
But, hey, you can always search in Google and do the research yourself.
There is so much wrong with Huckabee, where to begin?
Start here:
http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2007/12/huckabees-arkansas-betrayal.html
Once you cross Huckabee of your list for good, then rethink the best candidates.
Hmmm...you should have looked further down the page when you googled that. It is thoroughly debunked here:
The Fantasy of Ron Paul's Military Support
A large majority of Dems want out of the war, so 70% of the American People seems accurate to me. But, hey, you can always search in Google and do the research yourself.
People who make claims are the ones who back up the claims, not the guy they make the claim to. Your personal estimate means exactly zip. It probably means less than zip when you're basically saying that the vast majority of Americans want to lose a war we're winning.
This war has been going on since March 2003 and the surge has been going on since February 10 (when Petraeus took command) or June, depending on how you count. If you can't find data from all that time to back your assertion up, then I figure it doesn't exist. Feel free to offer actual proof otherwise.
KP, I’m not sure what you’re are going for here overall, but being an author of some rather long rambly posts myself, I’m willing to make a guess that you just want to discuss some of this stuff with some conservatives. So I hope you don’t mind if I try to respond to a bunch of what you wrote.
“I will say he is an excellent campaigner, fun to be around, quick witted and good on his feet.”
This is a nice thing and I wouldn’t discount it. After all it really does take people skills to be a great leader and to get a lot done. However I also think that there are many other issues that matter just as much or more.
“Being a Baptist minister would make many Christians feel instantly comfortable with him.”
This one I’m not so sure about. I think it is all just in which “Christians” you talk to and how seriously they take their faith, not to mention how seriously they take their politics. And then once you get past their seriousness you have all their individual beliefs and philosophies. There is all sorts of room for all sort of views that can’t be pigeon-holed.
“I am an agnostic homeschooling Mom. I was raised Baptist and Evangelical(church about 3 times a week) and Congregationalist(once a year or so)as a teen. I have struggled with faith and such issues for a long time now.”
I was raised with a 3-times a week church habit up until my Dad sort of temporarily lost his marbles and started not really living up to any particular belief or belief system. I continued to go to church and try to come up with real beliefs for myself. By the time I’d had a year or so of college under my belt I was pretty well set on what were my own beliefs, although of course there have always been new things to think about and more studies to be done. I’d be happy to correspond with you about religious matters if you’d like.
“I saw Romney speak at alocal coffee shop last week just before his speech on religion. I asked him about Mass/NH tax issues, the Olympics in NH and Communism/most favored nation trade status with China. He was evasive on all those questions and did not answer them like I had asked. I thought i was going to vote for him when I walked into that coffee shop but left a bit more undecided.”
I say good for you. I hate it that it is so hard to get real answers out of candidates.
“Then that speech on religion..absolutely beautiful.”
Was very nice in a lot of ways.
“It didn’t address Mormonism at all and I know some think it’s a cult. That’s a worry of mine, how will he do nationally?
So I continued thinking about what’s a cult, what’s a religion and how can we tell the difference?”
Um…well let me go with looking at specific definitions of the word and see if I can relate it to Mormonism or not.
1) formal religious veneration
2) a system of religious belief and ritual
3) a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious
4) a: a great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or a book); especially: such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad b: a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion
Well with the first two definitions you can obviously say that people who make that accusation about any old “church” are right even if they don’t know it. With the third the definition is pretty open to being able to say, ‘Well I see it as spurious. It is a cult.’ But the fourth is the one that gets at the connotation that people are talking about when they warn about this group or that group being a cult in the modern day. I think a lot of us are working from a similar standpoint in seeing the word cult as a bad thing in that we would apply it to certain groups that have all shared certain similarities such as getting the members to break off or damage the personal relationships that they have with their families and to give all of their money and resources to the cult. These are the groups that truly do brainwash people in a way that is different and more serious than the other million ways that the word brainwashing gets thrown around. I’d have to say that as far as I know the modern day “mormon church” is not a cult in that sense, although a study of their history reveals some disturbing things that lend maybe a little credence to that concern making it make a little more sense as to why some people are used to knowing that they are viewed that way.
“I would have asked Romney that question at the coffee shop because he was a Bishop in his Temple or something like a lay minister, and probably has a great answer for me but I knew the assembled press would make it out like I was calling Mormonism a cult and I would not want it spun that way because that is not how I mean it at all.”
You may well be right. You were wise to not take the risk, imo.
“All of this stuff I am saying leads up to what Huckabee is doing now. He has an impending editorial about Mormonism and their doctrine implying Romney believes some crazy things.”
Can’t comment. Don’t know what will be in it and have no idea whether Romney believes the things that I’ve seen in trying to study with Mormons.
“Huckabee has also been slow in the past to say Romney is even a Christian, not answering if he believed if Romney was one.
Huckabee should have at least just said “God will decide that-about each of us-even me, I’m not the authority that matters on that question”. Not saying yes was saying no.”
You may be right to a point. From the viewpoint of a politician, many people may see it as saying no. And your answer would have been very politic. But I don’t tend to hold politicians to having to be perfectly polished and always giving the safest political answer that people would want to hear.
Also, I think that either the question is spurious in that it shouldn’t matter or that Huckabee should be allowed his own personal viewpoint on it. Either we are all allowed our beliefs or we are not. I certainly don’t want leaders who can’t be bothered to come up with a real viewpoint or can easily cast it aside to give a politic answer to reporters, and then the rest of us are supposed to have confidence in them, to believe that they are wise and capable to make more hard decisions about every possible thing under the sun (more than I could ever handle…would not want to be President)
“Well, I’m now thinking the difference between a cult and a religion is a numbers and time thing. If you examine the stories of the new testament you can interpret them as strange and full of hard to believe oddities too. Also recall that few people were at one time Judeo-Christian-and that they were persecuted at the time as if they were cult members. Their leader who, I believe, has a birthday coming up soon, was even put to death by people who assumed he and his followers were all nutcases.”
You are right. It is all in your point of view.
“I think what Huckabee is doing is terribly arrogant and self righteous. I first noticed how holier than though he was at the utube debate where he asked Guiliani if he needed help on a religion question. If I am to judge a person on how he has lived his life and if they have worked hard to do no evil, then Romney passes that test with flying colors. I respect that deeply even if I do not quite understand his religion. By contrast Huckabee looks like an opportunist.”
I really have to disagree with you on this. As I said, Huckabee is by all means allowed his beliefs, just as much as Romney is allowed his and if it is a political problem for him to say that he does not see Mormonism as a Christian religion then any “right” that Romney supposedly has to his beliefs ought to not exist either. You can’t have it both ways. (And the quip about helping out another candidate can easily be overlooked in my mind, just as most people make quips from there own viewpoint, only more and more in our society Christians aren’t supposed to, which is rediculous. He may very well have meant it in a perfectly innocent fashion if he, as a minister or whatever has had people tease that it was up to him to help them understand when they were tired of wrestling with an issue or if other politicians have teased him about being the religious one.)
There is something wrong in our society when we have more respect for people who either can’t make up their mind or who are evasive about admitting that they have made up their minds than we have for those who really believe what they believe and are willing to stand up for it.
“Why are so many home schoolers going for him?”
I really don’t believe that that many of them are. I’ve heard homeschooler go for Hunter, Thompson and even a few for Ron Paul. But I only know one person who has expressed an interest in Huckabee, someone who raised children in the public schools in the past.
“I can tell you that home schoolers are like the elderly but even more so. What that means is: they get out to vote and then some, they don’t just find a candidate to vote for they look for one to work for as well when they have made their choice.”
You are SO right about that. It is a very well written characterization of homeschoolers.
“About the NH NEA endorsement, they just give one to a republican also to look even handed but it dosn’t really mean they endorse him.”
Good point. You may have hit the nail on the head.
Well enough with the quoting. I also totally agree with you on being creeped out by the NEA and also on them not being bright enough to get the irony of having a non-professional right an essay saying that it ought to be up to the professionals.” And some people still let those folks have their kids for 8 hours a day!
About Huckabee and Romney: I don’t like either one, lol. I don’t believe either of them would really be good enough for the job. I’m in Thompson camp and have been for some time. I’ve branched out and explored several other candidates when I’ve heard individual good things about them. But I keep coming back to Thompson as my number one pick and I think I’ve put Hunter in the number two position.
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