TPM wants to know what's up with Huck's use of the word "vertical".
Can anyone explain what the hell that means? Vertical? I guess if you're main opponent was Fred Thompson you might push the fact that you spend most of your time standing up. But seriously, is there something I'm missing here? Or is this the weirdest campaign I've ever heard?
Is it religious?
Later Update: A few other readers suggest there's some crypto-evangelical code wording going on with it too. And it seems like they're definitely on to something here. Here's one example, another and another.The more I look at this I don't think there's any question this is a clever dog whistle call out to Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals that his politics are God's politics.
Well, I'm sitting here in my office with two other evangelicals and we are racking our evangelicals brains and consulting our evangelical dictionary and playing our Amy Grant music backwards and we have no idea how "vertical" could be a call out to evangelicals.
Vertical? Huh?
Heaven is a shout out. Faith is good. Rapture works. City on a hill. Get saved. Born again. But vertical?
Nope.
It really is Huckabee trying to define a new way of talking about politics.
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Donny, where is your proof that Hillary was a "swinger spouse"?
For a Christian, you really are fast and loose with truth...
Donny, at some point your mind was brainwashed with the negatives about Mrs. Clinton. People lied a good deal about her and you bought it. Such untruths are the result of hearing the Accusor. You should be ashamed of yourself. She is not my candidate, but the constant demonization of her by such God-fearing Christians around the country is not worthy of the name of Christ.
This is definitely evangelical-speak David. It may not be in your neck of the woods, but it definitely is in the southwest and the west where I have been, and it has been for at least a decade. I recognized the term immediately. Thinking "vertical" is about thinking from "God's perspective", through God's eyes so-to-speak, about not being influenced by the culture (horizontal thinking). You even see diagrams in bible study/small group programs with horizontal arrows and vertical arrows, emphasizing that, by thinking vertical, we are "above the noise", and seeing clearly, etc., etc.
David,
You get too excited about Republicans framing political phenomena in Evangelical terms. Remember that Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world.
For all the Evangelical-Republican rants about homosexuals and secular humanists, it's Evangelicals themselves that are turning off people to their cause.
The Evangelicals christened and crowned Bush king of their cause. He's a national disaster.
Evangelicals like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell said we deserved 911.
The very politicians Evangelicals overwhelmingly support denied more kids health care under the S-Chip program.
Basically Evangelicals wed to Supply-Side Economics have rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus had a preference for the poor not the rich.
Donny can rant all he wants about abortion. I've yet to meet an anti-choice person that has adopted. In fact it seems Evangelicals care about the fetus more than the baby.
Every administration in the history of this country has been led by men who "believed in God," and yet look at the state of this "union." Beseeching the hands-off deity sure hasn't seemed to help much.
I wish we'd have one - just ONE - candidate stop playing to the mythological delusions of the populace. It's time to face facts. Even if there is a God somewhere out there in the cosmos, (or even down here in the heart of every child and fluffy bunny) it does us, here and now, little good.
If God exists, he cares little for what goes on here. He's a non-interventionist, so why spend SO much time and energy fighting over whether or not candidates for a secular office have had their cards punched at the Godshop?
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