Mike Huckabee: Playing Both Sides of the Pulpit (David Corn in MoJo)

[struggle4progress]

By David Corn
December 17, 2007

... In the days before this debate, Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, was hit with questions regarding his past remarks and positions on religion (in 1998 he said, "I hope we...take this nation back for Christ"), on AIDS (in 1992 he proposed that people with the disease be quarantined), and on the role of women in society (in 1998 he endorsed an ad affirming the Baptist teaching that a "wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband"). And Huckabee was obviously trying to come across as a friendly and reasonable fundamentalist who eschewed the politics of division. But not too long ago, Huckabee was quite willing to be divisive. In a 1998 book decrying American culture, Huckabee was no seeker of common ground. He drew stark lines, equating environmentalists with pornographers and homosexuality with pedophilia and necrophilia. He also declared that people who do not believe in God tend to be immoral and to engage in "destructive behavior." He drew a rather harsh picture of an American society starkly split between people of faith and those of a secular bent, with the latter being a direct and immediate threat to the nation ...

Throughout the book, Huckabee warned of going soft on immorality. He slammed those Christians who accept a "misguided version of 'tolerance'" and do not voice outrage at cultural deterioration. Mocking such Christians, he huffed, "We don't want to offend anyone." He denounced what he termed "radical ideological secularism," and he declared, "in the name of civil liberties, cultural diversity, and political correctness, a radical agenda of willy-nilly moral corruption and ethical degeneration has pressed forward." Without identifying any secularists by name, he wailed, The legal commitment of ideological secularism to any and all of the fanatically twisted fringes of American culture—pornographers, gay activists, abortionists, and other professional liberationists—is a pathetically self-defeating crusade that has confused liberty with license. This is not the rhetoric of a fellow looking to heal divisions within American society. And Huckabee approvingly quoted a "pastor-patriot" of the early 1800s who said, "Every considerate friend of civil liberty, in order to be consistent with himself, must be the friend of the Bible." That's a rather fundamentalist definition of a civil libertarian ...

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2007/12/huckabee-homosexuality-environmentalism-book.html

[C_U_L8R]

1. And lead us not into temptation....

of the super-sized bucket of extra crispy.

[madeline_con]

2. Ew! No more pics, PLEASE!

:puke:

[comradebillyboy]

3. Huckabee has the Republican establishment

shitting bricks right now. They have benefited from exploiting the evangelicals, they don't want them to have any real power. Besides the guy is really a dumbass hick (even compared to Bush) who won't play well outside the bible belt.

[struggle4progress]

4. The Republican establishment is quite content to put a dull pencil in office

as long as they can package him appropriately in media, as long as he will entrust most governmental functions to the folk they pick for him, and as long as they can manipulate his compliance for their agenda: that's why we got Reagan and the current Vacancy.

If Huckleberry doesn't play well outside the Beltway in genuine settings, they might just continue the current tight control of access that has worked so well for them in recent years: after all, they control the instruments of mass communication.