can you look at his site for illegal immangents for me it when i read it it seemed pretty harsh-no foriegn help anmenty, and a big fence….other than that he is pretty good…

God is sandwiched between abortion and the family support for government-backed discrimination against gays in a conservative political trinity.
I want to like Gov. Huckabee, but this “Christian Leader” business, plus the Dumond stuff, plus his apparent ignorance about the Iran NIE, really makes me nervous. He could be Tom DeLay in sheep’s clothing.

um, there’s supposed to be a strikethrough of “the family” in that post.

Perfect essay, David. I agree.

Mike Huckabee is the only man who could make me vote for Hillary.

Apparently Rev. Mike is having a Willie Horton moment now. It seems that while he was Governor, he pressured the Arkansas parole board to grant release to a convicted serial rapist named Wayne Drumond. One of his victims was a young girl named Ashley Stevens who supposedly was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton and the daughter of a Clinton fundraiser. The Clinton-hating right wing in Arkansas said Drumond was innocent and for whatever reason the good Reverend agreed. After Drumond got out he raped again (but that time he did not leave a witness). So Huckabee (the happy warrior) carried water for Clinton-haters and freed a serial rapist who went on to rape again and kill. Actually, worse than Willie Horton.

Dude that ship has sailed, long ago, Rove is the one who married God and the GOP. When Giuliani claims to read the Bible, you know something is afoot. I wish someone had asked him what parts he had been reading.

“He’s pro-life,” – Unless that life happens to be outside of a woman’s uterus.
“he’s pro-God,” – Which means he doesn’t respect people of other religions or persuasions
“pro-family” – He hates gays.
Not saying these are true, just saying how I, an atheist and liberal, perceives the language of the Right wing Evangelical.

It is a shame that Huckabee has already played the religion card and is selling his votes for Jesus. This is so un-American.

Might Mike yet earn the title “The Huckster?”

I’m not sure I ‘get’ the problem. You are saying that “IF” Mike Huckabee is ‘Using’ God to get where he wants to go politically, THAT would be morally despicable.
When I hear Mike Huckabee’s speech, I think he’s saying the opposite. He CLEARLY says God is NOT spelled GOP. To me that means that he’s a Christian first and a Republican second. And that if the Republican party decides to go with Guiliani. Or they continue on the path of corruption and corporate protectionism at the expense of human welfare and life, he WILL leave the GOP.
I don’t think that’s scary or BAD. I think it’s Pro Deo et Patria. For God and Country. With God first. The Republicans aren’t so much ‘Better’ than the Democrats. What differentiates the Republicans is that they recognize and affirm some important Christian Cultural Mores. Some that many Christians find Non-negotiable. And the Democrats have unfortunately rejected all conservative moral values.
Conservative Democrats have been forced to draw a line in the sand and to become Independents or even vote Republican. Because the Republicans will uphold their rights to be Christians in this pluralistic society and the Democrats unfortunately want to PUSH some of their extreme experimental non-christian moral values onto Christian families, Christians slide to the right when voting. Obviously we’re not just going to accept it and say Thank you very much when people try to force ideologies upon us that go against our beliefs. We need to stand up too.
The Democrats don’t want us and the Republicans do. Kind of Simple. But Obviously the Republican’s aren’t God’s party and God is not spelled GOP. Noone ever said it was.

I get the sense that Huckabee genuinely wanted to run as what Rod Dreher would call a “Crunchy Con” candidate — conservative on social issues, but moderate on economic and foreign issues.
But his political advisors are telling him, probably correctly, that the votes up for grabs in the Iowa caucuses (where he must make a mark) are on the far, far right of the political spectrum — the Steve Kings and such.
Because Huck doesn’t want to get too radical right-wing on the other stuff, he’s begun exaggerating his pastoral credentials. And since, even if I think some of his positions (e.g., evolution) are dead wrong, Huckabee temperamentally is not an extremist. So he’s coming across with no little cognitive dissonance at this stage of the campaign.

David you are spot on with your summary and analysis of Huckabee’s recent talk.
Sheilagh, the problem with exalting “God and Country” as an honorable, even Christian dictum, is that it is actually a pagan and pluralistic statement. The statement God and Country (read Kingdom) would have been an abomination to palestinian Jewish Christians under the countryship of the ruling Caesars. It’s no different for the empire that is modern day United States of America.
There is no such Christian thing as “God and Country.” There is something called God and Kingdom and that Kingdom envelops the whole cosmos and of course the whole earth and all their within. God is no respector of nations–even people of God Israel experienced this!

I haven’t read all the other posts, so excuse me if someone else has said this, but it strikes me that while Mitt Romney has to make a “Mormon speech” to somehow assure voters his religion won’t conflict with him prosecuting his duties as president, no one expects Huckabee — who is an actual minister — to explain why his Baptist faith won’t interfere with his capacity to fulfill his presidential obligations. I’m not a Republican, or a Romney supporter, but the emphasis on his Mormonism strikes my as fundamentally unfair and discriminatory. In 2000, some people raised similar concerns about Joe Lieberman being able to separate his Orthodox Judaism from his potential role as Vice-President. George Bush — who has probably made his faith a more prominent issue than any president in recent memory, including Carter — has never had to answer these questions. From my perspective, it’s a double standard, plain and simple.

I get the feeling conservative Biblically-based Christians are always looking backwards to ancient Palestine for their political models, implicitly dreaming of a perfected Temple State, a ‘New Jerusalem’ on these shores. On that score, Romney’s religion would seem to be the most explicit actually. But for Huckabee supporters, the question is: “Where are we now? What is God’s attitude toward America?” Dubyah seemed like Saul-Under-the-Blessing, but now he’s clearly Saul-Under-the-Curse. Is Huckabee David, then? Or are all these politicians just Idumean Herods, corrupt at their core no matter how much like the children of righteousness they claim to be?
Is there a desire to unite the offices of High Priest and King? Surely our pluralistic democracy’s great innovation was a Constitution that dispensed with both King and High Priest, a Constitution that put man in and took God out.
The more conservative voters bicker and examine the each other’s theology, the more they finger point and say so-and-so is not really a Christian and so-and-so’s religion is a cult, the more they sulk and stay home when their religion’s guy isn’t nominated, the more secularism and main line churches will be empowered. What the GOP is doing now is like the bitter fighting over who should be Music Director at some suburban megachurch. The result will be anger, hurt feelings, and alienation.

So yesterday your intrepid Christianity Editor at Beliefnet was flipping through Charisma magazine (research, you know) and saw a full-page ad for Kenneth Copeland’s tele-vangelism show…featuring a whole week of guest co-hosting by one Mike Huckabee.
Kenneth Copeland.
Mike Huckabee.
What’s most curious, perhaps, is that as political bedfellows go, they aren’t all that strange.

Huckabee actively campaigns/preaches in churches and advertises himself as a “Christian” candidate in order to play to his selected “Christian” base. (That appears to be a good short-term strategy in Ohio in light of Huckabee’s less-than-conservative record on taxes, spending, crime, ethics and illegal immigration. But, will a “Christian” candidacy ever get him elected over Hillary?) Democrat candidates also commonly appear in churches to drum up support or to put on a pius facade. You will never find Mitt Romney campaigning in an LDS church because I understand that the LDS Church has strict prohibitions on the use of its facilities for any partisan purpose. The LDS Church stays out of politics and would no more endorse Romney or try to tell Romney how to govern than it would try to control Harry Reed (a liberal Democrat Mormon).
I was deeply impressed and inspired by Mitt Romney’s speech. He is obviously sincere about his faith, including his acceptance of Jesus Christ as his Savior. Are we going to demand that Pastor Mike Huckabee answer such doctrinal questions (and more) when the secular media and Democrats turn their negative attention to him? Don’t you see that political infighting on strictly religious grounds opens the doors to the secular left to completely take control of our country? Mitt Romney is a good man of faith who is also a brilliant manager and leader. He should not be torn down by those who share his best values. I see him as the only candidate with a chance to defeat Hillary Clinton. Not only that, he would be a great president.

David, It is phony for you to tell the everday
follower of Christ, to “fast” from politics
while you write favorably about “the Huckster”,
whose campaign is, by the way, falling apart because,
oh my, he’s lying about influencing the parole board in
Arkansas to release a convicted rapist. I look forward to
hearing you address this really revolting revelation.

If you’ve read the news online or in paper (or even watched cable news like that David has been guesting on), Huck is really starting to get hammered for campaigning as avowedly “Christian,” with the media knowing after Romney’s speech it is a code word for “not Mormon.” (Or at least, that Romney is “not Christian.”)
Ironically, I think Huckabee could make some non-sectarian hay out of his ministerial experience (further leadership and pastoral skills for Americans of all faiths), which would be great IMHO. But again, his political problem is that to win the Iowa caucuses, he has to appeal to the right-wing kook Steve Kings of the world. (Sigh.)