The more it looks at last night’s entrance polls, the more God-o-Meter is stunned by the extraordinary degree to which Mike Huckabee’s Iowa win was due to evangelical support. Check out these lines from The New York Times:
A poll of people entering the Republican caucuses on Thursday showed more than 8 in 10 of his supporters identified themselves as evangelicals.
The same surveys showed extraordinary turnout among evangelicals, who represented some 60 percent of Republican caucusgoers. In years past, Republican Party leaders in Iowa put evangelical turnout at about 40 percent.
Mr. Romney’s advisers had been saying that if evangelical turnout rose to more than 50 percent, victory would be impossible for Mr. Romney, whose Mormon faith is regarded as heretical by many evangelicals. Mr. Romney’s past support for abortion rights also troubled many Christian conservatives.
That’s right. Eight in ten of Huck’s votes came from self-described evangelicals. Until last night, God-o-Meter had thought George W. Bush’s 2004 success in winning evangelicals would stay in the record books for at least a few cycles.
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posted January 4, 2008 at 10:00 pm
There seems to be a bit of suprise in this article about how high the evangelical turnout was for big Huck. Yet I’ve read on this site about the transcript from evan preachers who would stop at nothing to get their congregation “from the pulpit to the poles.” And about how they deserve to have one of their own in the white house..
What a disgrace for our country. I have been bothered all day.. With all the issues going on in this country it is more important where one worships than ones record, business experience, and again.. record…. I have stated many times that faith needs to stay out of politics. If you feel that it’s important that a president have some semblance of a value system, I get that.. But to vote solely because your preacher told you to is sad sad sad.
To see how many evangelicals have endorsed Romney is telling. At least they see what most of the country sees already and that is that Huckabee is a scary proposition for this country..His record is frightening. But apparently as long as he’s been saved and accepted Jesus as his personal savior, it’s all good.
posted January 5, 2008 at 2:57 pm
“Bogus”???
Pardon me?
So Huck DID.
And he’d quarantine people with AIDS. There was no “Christian bashing” in the above post.
What? Isn’t Romney “Christian” enough 4 U? Thot there wasn’t supposed to BE any religious test. Is there an exception for the State of Iowa?
posted January 5, 2008 at 9:41 pm
I suppose HackHuck pardoning 12 murderers and who knows how many brutal rapists is not a frightening record–if you’re a sociopath.
It’s funny that the evangelical voters repeat the same patterns over and over again. Support someone on the basis of being duped by a media campaign framing him in the right way. He’ll never win the nomination and is a total partisan hack.
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Religiarchy
posted January 6, 2008 at 3:19 pm
This kind of politicking at churches is pretty common. They did the same thing every election time at my former church, The Church on the Way. Jack Hayford was usually careful, but many of the other pastors on staff there weren’t. I was there when one of them actually publicly stated from the platform during a service that he didn’t see how anyone could call themself a Christian and be a Democrat! People were upset and some even got up and left the service. Wednesday Night prayer meetings were more of a political campaign than a spiritual gathering. Prayers were invoked for certain politicians in the running but not for others. I was there the night we were all told to hold hands across the aisles to pray for all those in the running, but when we did the pastor asked God to let so-in-so win. That was the night I walked out. I was disgusted at being manipulated and lied to to make me pray for a certain candidate to win! It was pretty obvious the Powers in charge were Republican and felt we all should be too.
posted January 6, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Pardon me?
NO, pardon ME!
No, I want to be pardoned.