Huckabee ends presidential run

DALLAS — Mike Huckabee, the bass-playing Baptist preacher and former governor of Arkansas, dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday night and endorsed Senator John McCain as the party’s candidate in November.

Though Mr. Huckabee has known for some time that he could not win the nomination, he had pledged to stay in the race until Mr. McCain accumulated the 1,191 delegates he needed to cinch the candidacy, remaining as one of two Republican challengers to Mr. McCain; the other is Representative Ron Paul of Texas, who is still in the race.

His wife, Janet, standing by his side, Mr. Huckabee spoke shortly after the polls closed, addressing a bank of television cameras and a crowd of about 150 supporters, including families, ministers and a few people who wandered in from a business convention down the hall.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I called Senator McCain a few moments ago. It looks pretty apparent tonight that he will, in fact, achieve 1,191 delegates to become the Republican nominee for our party.

“I extended to him not only my congratulations, but my commitment to him and to the party to do everything possible to unite our party, but more importantly to unite our country, so that we can be the best nation we can be,” he said.

He praised Mr. McCain as an honorable man who ran an honorable campaign. But he also said he was proud of his own campaign, which started out with little attention and few resources and ended with some attention though still bare-bones — just 30 aides, he said — and still underfinanced.

Quoting from the Apostle Paul, Mr. Huckabee said: “We’ve kept the faith. And that for me has been the most important goal of all. I’d rather lose an election than lose the principles that got me into politics in the first place.”

Huckabee took a cue from that "Saturday Night Live" appearance in ceding the floor. Evangelicals now will have to decide between a Republican nominee they're not thrilled about, though one who is a social conservative in many ways, and either a liberal Christian who is accused of being a Muslim or a Methodist believed to be the Antichrist.

An online poll today at ChristianityToday.com showed 31 percent of the 1,900 participants supporting Huckabee while McCain and Obama each received 26 percent support and Hillary Clinton got 8 percent. The real question, though, is who will she vote for?

Huckabee campaigns on SNL

"I'm not a math guy. I'm more of a miracle guy."

The words of Mike Huckabee a few minutes ago on "Saturday Night Live's" mock news show "Weekend Update." The former Arkansas governor was there to explain, in self-deprecating form, why he remains in the race for the Republican presidential nomination even though he'd still be trailing John McCain if he swept each and every remaining delegate.

"Mike Huckabee does not overstay his welcome," he said. "When it's time for me to go, I'll know. And I'll exit out with class and grace."

He then remained behind the anchors' desk, even after anchor Seth Meyers made it clear it was time to go.

More than a bad feeling

AP, via the Bible Belt Blogger:

CONCORD, N.H. - The chief songwriter and founder of the band Boston has more than a feeling that he's being ripped off by Mike Huckabee.

In a letter to the Republican presidential hopeful, Tom Scholz complains that Huckabee is using his 1970s smash hit song "More Than a Feeling" without his permission. A former member of the band, Barry Goudreau, has appeared with Huckabee at campaign events, and they have played the song with Huckabee's band, Capitol Offense.

Scholz, who said Goudreau left the band more than 25 years ago after a three-year stint, objects to the implication that the band and one of its members has endorsed Huckabee's candidacy.

"Boston has never endorsed a political candidate, and with all due respect, would not start by endorsing a candidate who is the polar opposite of most everything Boston stands for," wrote Scholz, adding that he is supporting Democratic Sen. Barack Obama. "By using my song, and my band's name Boston, you have taken something of mine and used it to promote ideas to which I am opposed. In other words, I think I've been ripped off, dude!"

Pastor prays for foes demise

Sometimes Americans United for Separation of Church and State is misguided in its zeal. But, in this case, the one lacking wisdom was Pastor Wiley S. Drake, who last week used First Baptist Church of Buena Park letterhead and an affiliated radio program to endorse Mike Huckabee for president. That's a violation of tax laws for nonprofits, and Americans United filed a complaint. Drake response was a bit vengeful.

In an e-mail Thursday, Drake urged action against Americans United and the American Civil Liberties Union.

As he had in August, Drake quoted Psalm 109, which speaks of wicked and deceitful people and asks God to let such a person's days be few and let his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.

"In light of the recent attack from the enemies of God, I ask the children of God to go into action with imprecatory prayer," he wrote.

Imprecatory prayers have been defined as praying for someone's misfortune or as appeals to God for justice.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, called Drake's appeal to his supporters "reckless and repugnant."

"Introducing this kind of religious extremism into American life is reprehensible," he said.

Dobson won't vote for McCain 'as a matter of conscience'

Early Super Tuesday results are in, and Sen. John McCain is a getting a little more competition from fellow Republican Mike Huckabee then expected. McCain will likely still receive the lion share of delegates because he's got the edge in the delegate-rich states of the Northeast, Illinois and California. And true conservatives like James Dobson aren't happy about that. Here's what the founder of Focus on the Family said today on the Laura Ingraham Show:

I’m deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, who voted for embryonic stem cell research to kill nascent human beings, who opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, and who has little regard for freedom of speech, who organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language.

I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are. He has sounded at times more like a member of the other party. McCain actually considered leaving the GOP caucus in 2001, and approached John Kerry about being Kerry's running mate in 2004. McCain also said publicly that Hillary Clinton would make a good president. Given these and many other concerns, a spoonful of sugar does NOT make the medicine go down. I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience.

But what a sad and melancholy decision this is for me and many other conservatives. Should Sen. McCain capture the nomination as many assume, I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for president in my lifetime.

He went on a little longer, but you get the gist. I'm not sure which evangelicals Dobson speaks for, but that group doesn't include me. Two weeks ago, Time pondered whether the political clout of "the ultimate evangelical alpha male," as GetReligion called him this evening, has faded.

She loves Huckabee

From the Department of Uncomfortably Hilarious Satire:




Previously in God Blog videos:

The Chronic(whats?)cles of Narnia

A Love Song for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Borats Anonymous

Obama Girl's Coulter Crush

A New York Jew who does heart Huckabee

My earlier post about why Mike Huckabee will bomb in big cities has aroused quite a bit of commenting at the CT Liveblog, one of which directed me to an interesting post from the New York Times' City Room blog. It's about Alice Lemos, a Jew from Queens who is campaigning to be a Huckabee delegate.

“I’m pro-life and I’m socially conservative,” said Ms. Lemos, a 53-year-old legal secretary at a firm in Manhattan and a frequent contributor to a Web site called “Jews for Life.”

“The fact of the matter is that I don’t like establishment Republicans in New York — I don’t like the track record of Joe Bruno or George Pataki,” she said, referring to the State Senate majority leader and the former governor. “Also, I think Rudy Giuliani did nothing to really build up the party at the grass-roots level. I believe in grass-roots politics.”

Regarding Huckabee, she said:

“He reminds me a lot of Ronald Reagan,” Ms. Lemos said. “He is positive and upbeat and comes from a humble background. I hope that I can help others get to know him.”

I guess Siena College missed her in its random survey.

Why Huckabee will bomb in big cities

He might be a favorite of evangelicals, but former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has said some things that scare other Americans, particularly those oh-so-coveted swing voters.

Zero percent -- that's a bagel -- of New York Jews favored Huckabee over the other Republican front-runners in a mid-January poll by Siena College. And a completely unscientific search here in Los Angeles didn't yield better results. (Huckabee's press office did not respond to a request for info on any Jewish volunteers in California; Greenfield also was unaware of any supporters.)

Here's how Jacques Berlinerblau, the author of "Thumpin' It," explained that phenomenon to me:

"Jews have been conditioned to play it close to the vest and keep their religious sentiments to themselves," said Berlinerblau, an associate professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University. "It is so viscerally in our cultural DNA, I don't think we are very comfortable with public faith-and-values talk. Especially when it is coming from a Christian spokesperson."

I know what you are thinking: Jews aren't typically considered swing voters. True, but if the Republican nominee is John McCain, we will most certainly see more Jews vote Republican than if the nominee is Huckabee or Mitt Romney or, heaven help us, Ron Paul. The same can be said for those who consider themselves an amalgam of liberal and conservative political opinions.

The question then becomes: What happens to the evangelical vote if the nominee is not Huckabee?

Huckabee's southern sympathies

You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole; that's what we'd do.

Mike Huckabee, who's been saying a lot of controversial things lately, said that to a South Carolina crowd last week, and the flag he was alluding to was the stars and bars rebel flag of the Confederacy. In an article on Slate, Christopher Hitchens ponders why the media hasn't much mentioned the racist root of Huckabee's statement.

But when real political racism rears its head, our easily upset media fall oddly silent. Can you guess why? Of course you can. Gov. Huckabee is the self-anointed candidate of the simple and traditional Christian folk who hate smart-ass, educated, big-city types, and if you dare to attack him for his vulgarity and stupidity and bigotry, he will accuse you of prejudice in return. What he hopes is that his neo-Confederate sickness will become subsumed into easy chatter about his recipes for fried squirrel and his other folksy populist themes. (By the way, you owe it to yourselves to watch the exciting revelations about his squirrel-grilling past; and do examine his family Christmas card while you're at it.) But this drivel, it turns out, is all a slick cover for racist incitement, and it ought not to be given a free pass.

After paying tribute to MLK Monday, it seemed all was quickly forgiven when Huckabee was endorsed by three dozen African Americans, most connected to conservative religious groups.

In other Huck news, one of my colleagues at the CT Liveblog has a post today explaining what the man from Hope not named Bill Clinton means when he calls himself a "cosmopolitan evangelical." (I didn't realize Arkansas had such a big-city mentality.)

Huckabee, though quite comfortable with speaking publicly about his personal relationship with Christ, his conservative views on religious hot-button issues like gay marriage and abortion, and even God's providential role in his Iowa win, nonetheless differs from many conservative evangelicals before him, especially those in the Religious Right.

"I'm a conservative, but I'm not mad at anybody," Huckabee often says, and when once asked whether the Christian life was the best way of life, he answered, "Well it is for me..." but that he didn't want to come off as "judgmental, caustic or pushy." As David Brooks of The New York Times recently noted, "Huckabee is the first ironic evangelical on the national stage. He's funny, campy (see his Chuck Norris fixation) and he's not at war with modern culture." In other words, you won't hear Huckabee talking about his push to "take back America" anytime soon.

Frankly, I'll be surprised if he survives Super Duper Tuesday, which is two weeks away. Then again, this presidential campaign has been nothing if not full of surprises.

(Photo: El Nuko)

Huckabee: 'Change the Constitution' for God

I have no idea why Mike Huckabee thinks the Constitution is un-Christian, a statement he made last night that only makes me more wary of his candidacy.

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

This is really ridiculous. And it is exactly the kind of politicking the Constitution sought to prevent. Huckabee keeps selling his conservative Christian creds like a used-car salesman, but this time it might backfire.

I can see how support for a human life amendment and a federal marriage amendment can win votes among some politically conservative evangelicals. But honestly, I'm thinking that this quote probably cost Huckabee more evangelical votes than it won him. The strongest supporters of those amendments have made the case on pragmatic grounds, not theological ones. James Dobson, for example, doesn't say the federal marriage amendment is necessary to bring the Constitution in line with God's standards. He says it's necessary to keep marriage from being redefined legally and culturally.

Huckabee is Kristol's man

New New York Times columnist Bill Kristol -- liberals didn't exactly role out the welcome mat -- used his first paid column to pom-pom Mike Huckabee. This surprised me because, aside from the clear religious and social differences between the two, Huckabee seems to be among the least globally aware of the Republican presidential candidates, and I always thought foreign policy was what neocons prided themselves on.

Then again, with statements like this, maybe Kristol and Huckabee have the same knowledge of what's going on in the Middle East.

Some of us would much prefer a non-liberal and non-Democratic administration. We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.

Who knew we were winning the war in Iraq? At this point, is it accurate to even call the situation over there a "war?" Or is it better to refer to it as a colossal screw-up in reconstruction (though, yes, some progress has been measurable)?

Evangelical vote buries Romney, buoys Huckabee

About 80 percent of those who helped Mike Huckabee trounce Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses last night described themselves as evangelicals. More from The New York Times.

Despite some major stumbles in the final stretch of his Iowa campaign as he endured a ferocious assault on his record from Mr. Romney, Mr. Huckabee struck a chord among Iowa Republicans with a distinctive mixture of humor, Christian conservatism and economic populism.

His stump speeches evoked comparisons to the prairie populism of William Jennings Bryan. And he charmed audiences with a witty and extemporaneous speaking style honed over 10 years in the pulpit as a preacher and local televangelist before he entered politics; he is a former governor of Arkansas. He told voters to pick a candidate who was “consistent” and “authentic,” an unstated contrast to Mr. Romney’s recent conversion to opposing abortion rights.

What most distinguished Mr. Huckabee from the rest of the Republican field, though, were his escalating appeals to the economic anxieties of lower-income voters. He emphasized his own roots as “the son of a fireman who worked a second job,” denounced stagnant wages and rising inequality, and portrayed his underfinanced fight with Mr. Romney as “the people” against “the Wall Street-to-Washington axis of power”

“People would rather elect a president who reminds them of the guy they work with, not that guy who laid them off,” Mr. Huckabee said at a campaign stop Thursday morning, invoking an implicit contrast with Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts.

Catholic League to Huckabee: Stop selling your Christian creds like a used-car salesman

The snickering and sniping over the supposed subliminal message in Mike Huckabee's Christmas ad is just silly. But, I can't say I've ever agreed more with a statement from the Catholic League's Bill Donahue.

"Every other word out of [Huckabee's] mouth is that 'I'm Christian.' He's calling into question Romney's Mormonism...let people talk about there faith, but don't sell it on your sleeve."

Added Donahue, "Yeah, I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but don't become a salesman. Don't hawk it like that on the street."

Hitchens' right to oppose 'a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee'

Christopher Hitchens invokes Article VI of the Constitution in a rather virulent attack on Mike Huckabee, the Bible Belt former governor, minister and weight-loss extraordinaire, not to mention surging presidential candidate:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

As so often, the framers and founding fathers meant what they said, said what they meant, and risked no waste of words. A candidate for election, or an applicant for a post in the bureaucracy, could not be disqualified on the grounds of his personal faith in any god (or his disbelief in any god, for that matter). This stipulation was designed to put an end to the hideous practice of European monarchies—and the pre-existing practice of various American colonies—whereby if a man did not affirm the trinity, or deny the pope, or abjure Judaism (depending on the jurisdiction), he could be forbidden to hold office or even to run for it. Along with the establishment clause of the First Amendment, and the predecessor-language of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, it forms part of the chief glory of the first-ever constitution that guaranteed religious liberty, religious pluralism, and the freedom to be left alone by priests and rabbis and mullahs and other characters.

However, what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is.

Sibling spat: Mormons believe Jesus and Satan are brothers

Get ready for an uproar, folks. Mike Huckabee apparently told a New York Times reporter that Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan were brothers. The story isn't going to run until Sunday, but somebody leaked details to the Associated Press. AP has now moved a story suggesting that Huckabee's a nut and an ignoramus for making such a crazy intolerant statement. There's only problem -- Huckabee is right...

That's from my man in Arkansas, the Bible Belt Blogger. Read the rest here.

(Image: FrenBlog)

Jesus' pick: Huckabee

From a talk at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University:

STUDENT: Recent polls show you surging... What do you attribute this surge to?

HUCKABEE: There's only one explanation for it, and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people. (Applause) That's the only way that our campaign can be doing what it's doing. And I'm not being facetious nor am I trying to be trite. There literally are thousands of people across this country who are praying that a little will become much, and it has. And it defies all explanation, it has confounded the pundits. And I'm enjoying every minute of them trying to figure it out, and until they look at it, from a, just experience beyond human, they'll never figure it out. And it's probably just as well. That's honestly why it's happening.

The Campaign Spot at NRO found this explanation in want:

Readers can draw their own conclusions on Huckabee’s meaning. As you probably can guess, this rubs me the wrong way. If Huckabee’s rise in the polls is the result of a factor that is not human, how about the declining poll numbers of his rivals?

It reminds me of a comedian’s joke about football players who point to the sky and thank God and/or Jesus when they score a touchdown. Nobody ever hears a defender say, “well, I thought I had him covered pretty well, but then Jesus got in my way.”

You probably expect me to agree with that. But I'm not sure I do. Praying to win in sports is silly. But sometimes the right person rises to be a leader at the right time, and if we begin with belief in an all-knowing God, isn't it possible that candidate had His endorsement?

That being said, there is a difference between the divine rule of kings and the God-ordained democracy of someone whom God has decided to use. And I'm not offering any credence to Huckabee's claim -- though, it may not be a claim and actually be a public praise. It's difficult to say. As I told a friend last night: I am wary to take at face value a politician's public expressions of something as naturally personal and private as faith and spirituality.

'Huckabee: "A different kind of Jesus juice"'

An odd headline, right? But you know religion has become a central theme of the presidential election when the Republican candidate making a late run for the nomination goes out of his way to tell a reporter that his brand of "Jesus juice" is different than the others. (OK, but what is he going to do about Iraq?)

Mike Huckabee wants you to know that while everyone else is Pepsi and Coke, he is Jones Soda -- maybe the Christmas Ham flavor I just received in the Jones Christmas Pack.

He is the Southern preacher who favors droll wit over brimstone sermonizing, a rock 'n' roll bass player who believes in creationism, with an Oprah-ready story about a 110-pound weight loss that probably saved his life.

Here in Arkansas, where Huckabee ruled as governor for 10 1/2 years, voters grew accustomed to a different brand of Republican -- a governor with an idiosyncratic agenda that was sometimes difficult to categorize, but always driven, Huckabee insists, by his Southern Baptist faith. That faith influenced major policy decisions that could be deemed moderate, if not liberal, including a significant environmental initiative and a vastly expanded healthcare plan for low-income children.

Though Huckabee took strong stands against abortion and same-sex marriage, his record on taxes -- a key pillar of Republican orthodoxy -- was distinctly heterodox. He supported tax hikes on cigarettes, gasoline, groceries, sales and income. A video circulating on YouTube -- and played, in part, on the CNN-YouTube Republican debate Wednesday -- shows Huckabee addressing the Arkansas Legislature in 2003 and suggesting that he would be open to raising a broad range of taxes.

Still, Mark Stricherz, the new contributer to GetReligion thinks the LA Times reporter on this story forgot to ask a pretty basic question:

The only real omission in Fausset’s story is the origins of Huckabee’s worldview. Did Huckabee manufacture it himself after years in office? Or is there a deeper, moral and philosophical grounding for it?

(skip)

Is it possible that this former Baptist minister embraces the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, or has, at the very least, been influenced by it? Talk about another good story.