Huckabee for Chancellor

The more Mike Huckabee says these days less viable he seems as the Republican candidate. Since his recent surge in the polls he’s slammed the free market Club for Growth, defended anti-gay and profoundly stupid comments about AIDS patients he made as a 1992 Senate candidate, and insulted the Mormon faith with an ignorance that, for a Baptist minister, is baffling. Then again, with his support for illegal alien amnesty, denial of evolution, sacred commitment to solving global warming, and across the board embrace of “compassionate conservatism,” he’s starting to look more like Germany’s Christian Democratic candidate for Chancellor. So it’s not hard to see why other big-government Christians in the Republican base are flocking to Huckabee just in time for primary season to begin.

The story of the Republican primary thus far has been the lack of a “Christian” candidate that can please the religious base. In all fairness to the field, folks like Rudy Giuliani and John McCain may not wear their faith on their sleeve as Pat Robertson did when he sought the ’88 nomination, but they’re far from the godless heathens some on the right-wing message boards are portraying them as. On the contrary, candidates like Huckabee (or anyone else who raised their hand denying evolution) can learn from those able to separate their everyday and religious lives. Faith and religion are just as important to Catholic Rudy Giuliani, Baptist John McCain, and yes, even Mormon Mitt Romney.

Huckabee’s surge may only represent the latest flavor in the base’s “none of the above” disillusionment. The religious right never connected with any of the major candidates and flocked to noted actor and one-time Senator Fred Thompson, who initially was a mere speculative candidate. After taking forever and a day to declare for the race, his campaign got off to a rocky start when he chose talk show appearances over debates. Once he was firmly established in the race, his poll numbers sank, making him more popular as a private citizen and Law & Order guest star than an actual candidate for higher office. If on the other hand the Huckabee freight train continues, it signifies a serious problem within the Republican Party- one that could keep them in the minority of Congress and on the outside of the White House for years to come.

The GOP’s embrace of Christian Democracy is hardly anything new. The Moral Majority folks who claimed credit for Ronald Reagan’s election had no problem extending the state where it ought not to go. Unlike liberalism, they viewed their actions as “Christian” when they sought to impose morality and decency standards on society. “What would Jesus do,” they asked. Re-write the Constitution, mandate religious instruction in schools, sanction government discrimination against gays, create new faith-based (or secular) welfare programs, grant amnesty to illegal (but Christian!) aliens, and militantly oppose abortion, apparently. In terms of cultural and social policy, the sky was and is the limit as to where the state can go. In short, there seems to be no difference between this form of phony American conservatism and the manifestos of the Christian Democratic parties across Europe which are perfectly content with operating in a socialist system where the state lives peoples’ lives for them.

Huckabee’s rise in the polls this time of year makes the perfect present for ambitious Democrats itching to take back the White House (and make gains in both houses of Congress). Huckabee’s public denial of evolution illustrates him as being an anti-science flat world nut. His defense of profoundly stupid comments regarding AIDS and gays fifteen years ago shows him as intolerant towards those people and the very caricature of today’s conservatives. Furthermore, his rebuke of the Club for Growth and his tax-raising, government-expanding, amnesty-granting record as Governor of Arkansas shows him as incompatible with even fundamental small government conservatism. And his lack of knowledge and experience in foreign policy would give even Barack Obama the upper hand in debates next year.

His support is only skin-deep as well in a race in which practically every segment of the political spectrum to the right of Hugo Chavez is needed. One in seven non-evangelicals support Huckabee in Iowa and a meager one in twenty non-evangelicals are for him in New Hampshire. This translates to a Republican candidate who would struggle to win states north of his native Arkansas and west of Nebraska. It’s not hard to see then why Democrats- and the media- are going easy on Huckabee and letting him do all the destruction. It’s easy for someone like Huckabee to say that he’d rather be right than be President, and it’s also easy for the Christian Democrats in the GOP base to say they’d rather have someone who believed exactly the same things they did rather than someone who could best win the election. But it’s also very easy to see that with Candidate Huckabee Republicans may be “right” instead of “elected” for a long time.