We don't need Mike Huckabee
If trends continue, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee will be the winner in the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses on Jan. 5. That isn't a guarantee he will win the Republican nomination; others have won those caucuses and ultimately gone down to defeat. But his apparent ascendancy forces all Americans, whether Democratic or Republican, to take him seriously.
My own conclusion: We don't need another creature of the religious right occupying the White House. You think George W. Bush was bad? Just wait.
Behind the affable, joke-cracking facade lies a thin-skinned religious fundamentalist, a Southern Baptist preacher who renounces none of his church's core beliefs. Indeed, Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr., son of the late Bible thumper, has given Huckabee his morality seal of approval. Why?
Huckabee doesn't believe in Darwin's Theory of Evolution and favors teaching so-called "Intelligent Design" in the public schools. In 1992, he favored locking up AIDS patients. He believes gays and lesbians are sinners of the worst order. He is against abortion in all circumstances and would make that belief a litmus test for appointment to "relevant" jobs in his administration.
Or how about on the issue of marriage? Huckabee would work for a Constitutional Amendment barring gay marriage, and would bar divorce by heterosexuals if he had his 'druthers. That isn't likely: more fundamentalists get divorced than moderate or liberal Christians do. Huckabee pushed hard for "covenant marriage" as governor of Arkansas.
And on and on. Most of this, apart from the AIDs quarantine and gays-as-sinners bit, can be found on Huckabee's website. He doesn't hide it, because that's who he is. Any moderate or liberal from either party who think he'd "be okay" as President is engaging in the same self-delusion that brought us George W. Bush and the eight lost years.
Postscript: The Drudge Report today linked to a 1998 article from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about an address by Huckabee to the Southern Baptist Pastors Conference in Salt Lake City. This article should remove any doubt that Huckabee is as much a Bible thumper as the late Rev. Falwell. Among other things, he attributes school shootings, including the one that year in Jonesboro, Ark., to "a nation that has forgotten God." None of what he said in the speech was particularly surprising for a Southern Baptist minister speaking to other Southern Baptist ministers, but since he says on his website that his faith and life are inseparable, we can expect he would make his entire administration into one big faith-based initiative.
If you have the same fundamentalist Protestant beliefs he does, you'll probably be happy. If you don't, you won't.