The rocketlike rise of a once-obscure former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist minister to the front ranks of the Republican presidential campaign owes much to the likes of Don Swisher.Chatting between Sunday services about the campaign in the foyer of First Assembly of God Church, Swisher said he plans to vote for Huckabee Thursday night at the Iowa precinct caucuses, the first official nomination contest of the 2008 presidential campaign.
“I like Huckabee,” the semiretired West Des Moines resident said yesterday. “He’s pro-life, a Baptist minister, so he’s Bible-based.”
Evangelical Christians are a formidable force in the Iowa caucuses: They are believed to make up more than 40 percent of the Republican electorate.
Religious issues have dominated the campaign to an uncommon degree even in a state where televangelist Pat Robertson placed first in the GOP caucuses in 1988.
The debate hasn’t centered just on issues such as abortion and gay rights that are important to religious conservatives. Much of the discussion has involved the personal religious faiths of the two leading Republicans – Huckabee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Mormon.
“I’m really surprised how much religion has been an issue in the campaign,” said Bruce Nesmith, a professor of political science at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who studies religion in politics.
Throughout most of 2007, evangelicals were deeply split, with pockets of support for Romney, former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and even former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, despite his support for abortion rights and a turbulent personal life that includes three marriages.
But many evangelicals stayed on the sidelines in the hope that a candidate they found acceptable would emerge.
For many of them, that person – Huckabee – was there all along. It just took people a long time to notice.
“They were deeply split until about a month or so ago. There is no one particular candidate who seemed like the obvious candidate to them,” said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Des Moines.
“They liked what Romney said about social issues but didn’t trust how sincere he was. They wanted to like Thompson, but Thompson entered with such a splat. What happened, of course, was Huckabee slowly but surely made an impact.”
Huckabee won supporters thanks to his amiable campaign style, a succession of well-received debate performances and unflinching views on abortion and gay rights – in contrast to other Republican contenders whose social-conservative credentials are suspect to evangelicals.
For Huckabee, being a former minister who often wears his religious values on his sleeve closes the sale with some evangelical voters.
“I’m a born-again Christian,” said Eleanor Bauer, a retired graphic artist in Ankeny, Iowa. “And if I see something in life that I have a question about, I ask God about it. I feel like we are being led by God.
“Where someone else tries to go by their own wisdom instead of God’s, we just get in trouble. Huckabee would turn to God.”
But others, such as retired pastor Phil Carroll, a McCain supporter, thinks that when it comes to religion, Huckabee lays it on too thick.
“He’s a good man, but pastors get called to the ministry by God,” Carroll said. “Did God call him to be president? I don’t think so.
“John McCain, being a Christian, does not play the God card. He thinks that’s unethical, and I agree with him.”
Huckabee, interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday, said he had no religious tests as governor of Arkansas when it came to public policy issues and would not as president.
“I never proposed a bill to remove the Capitol dome and replace it with a steeple,” he said. “We didn’t do tent revivals on the grounds of the Capitol.”
But critics question whether religion influenced Huckabee as governor to push for the early parole of a convicted rapist who went on to rape and kill two other women. They suggest Huckabee was swayed by a friend who was also a pastor who befriended the prisoner, Wayne DuMond, along with the rapist’s contention that he had been “born again.” Huckabee says he did not pressure the parole board to act. (Source)
Americans seem determined to blindly set course for a theocracy without the slightest qualm. They don’t seem to consider the fact that should we become a “Christian nation”, all our future wars will be similar to those fought in the Middle ages. Once again it will be god against the heathens.
They also don’t seem to realize that religion is not tolerant of dissent. At some point our rights will be suppressed to the “glory of god”. And which god is destined to become our national savior? The Baptist concept of god, the Lutheran, The Catholic, the Mormon? If they all worshiped the same god, there wouldn’t be so many denominations across the nation. If you’re a theist but worship the wrong god (i.e. not the national god) you’ll be no better off than those who don’t believe at all.
I’d like to think that this religious sturm und drang is simply the dying cry of an outdated philosophy, religion’s disparate, dying breath. Those who support Huckabee or Romney out of sympathetic religious views had best consider what will become of the United States should religion become a primary criteria for the next president.
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