President Huckabee or Pastor Huckabee?
Posted: Monday, November 26, 2007
So Mike Huckabee is making a move up the presidential polls in Iowa, second place as of late last week. Well, this certainly shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the race on the Republican side, especially if they attended last month’s candidate’s forum at the Orpheum.
The former Arkansas governor is a smooth talker. He wowed the audience with his sincerity on issues like health care as he talked about how the government needs to create incentives for people to get healthy, thus lowering costs. He cited as an example of how people can turn their lives around, the day he stepped on the scale and tipped 300. He has since lost weight and says he has changed his diet and exercises regularly. He also wants to lower taxes and, perhaps one day, to eliminate the IRS.
“I honestly feel that he is the one candidate who sincerely believes what he says,” gushed retired state legislator and veteran anti-abortion activist Teresa Garman of Ames to the Associated Press. “There is no finger in the wind there.” In fact, Huckabee’s fingers can often be found plucking the strings of a bass guitar as he did on a recent visit to Sioux City when he wowed a group of high school students here. Iowans also seem to like his corny sense of humor.
Okay, so Uncle Mikey would be a fun guy to have around and he wears his heart on his sleeve but before you Republicans decide to make him your nominee for president, there are some tough questions you need to ask about Huckabee and his intentions. For one thing, Huckabee is not just a staunch conservative, which no doubt appeals to many of you, he is a Southern Baptist minister, as religiously rigid as they come. Not surprisingly he opposes abortion rights, the theory of evolution and says he favors the teaching of intelligent design in the public schools, a religious theory that has no basis in science.
This all sounds frighteningly like something out of televangelist Pat Robertson’s Bible thumping playbook. Remember when Iowa nearly fell for Robertson, who shocked people with his second-place showing in 1988? I’m sure many of you would agree that that was a little too close for comfort, especially when you consider that two days after the attacks of 9/11, Robertson sat with Jerry Falwell on the 700 Club and agreed that God was punishing the sinful United States. Can you imagine if a statement like that had come out of the White House?
Which brings me to precisely what should scare you about the idea of ordained Baptist minister Mike Huckabee being elected president. Ol’ Huckster may not be as much of a wacko as Pat Robertson is and on the surface seems like a fine fellow. But while being a man of the cloth shouldn’t necessarily disqualify someone from holding the highest office in the land, do you really want someone in the White House whose religious convictions are so intense they are capable of clouding his judgement?
The United States has too many pressing problems right now with the war, the economy, energy and health care to waste one moment on some narrow minded religious agenda that involves replacing social progressiveness with a Dark Ages purge of abortion rights, gay rights and the teaching of Darwin. Besides, George W. Bush has already spent the last eight years trying just that and you can see where it’s gotten us.
Who knows, maybe Mike Huckabee would check his religious convictions at the White House door were he to be elected president. After all, religion is supposed to be irrelevant at this or any level of government. But that doesn’t seem likely. Huckabee’s Web site says that he does not distinguish between his faith and his politics. “I don’t separate my faith from my personal and professional lives,” he says.
But as Richard Cohen pointed out in his November 21st column in the Journal; “A president should do exactly that. And when any issue, any question, becomes a matter of faith, it means it cannot be argued. That’s not what we do in a democracy.”
Faith is one thing, but whoever the next president is should give that old time religion a rest.
Paul Guggenheimer is a free lance writer and radio and television personality from Sioux City. You can write to him in care of The Journal or at lvrcomments@hotmail.com
The former Arkansas governor is a smooth talker. He wowed the audience with his sincerity on issues like health care as he talked about how the government needs to create incentives for people to get healthy, thus lowering costs. He cited as an example of how people can turn their lives around, the day he stepped on the scale and tipped 300. He has since lost weight and says he has changed his diet and exercises regularly. He also wants to lower taxes and, perhaps one day, to eliminate the IRS.
“I honestly feel that he is the one candidate who sincerely believes what he says,” gushed retired state legislator and veteran anti-abortion activist Teresa Garman of Ames to the Associated Press. “There is no finger in the wind there.” In fact, Huckabee’s fingers can often be found plucking the strings of a bass guitar as he did on a recent visit to Sioux City when he wowed a group of high school students here. Iowans also seem to like his corny sense of humor.
Okay, so Uncle Mikey would be a fun guy to have around and he wears his heart on his sleeve but before you Republicans decide to make him your nominee for president, there are some tough questions you need to ask about Huckabee and his intentions. For one thing, Huckabee is not just a staunch conservative, which no doubt appeals to many of you, he is a Southern Baptist minister, as religiously rigid as they come. Not surprisingly he opposes abortion rights, the theory of evolution and says he favors the teaching of intelligent design in the public schools, a religious theory that has no basis in science.
This all sounds frighteningly like something out of televangelist Pat Robertson’s Bible thumping playbook. Remember when Iowa nearly fell for Robertson, who shocked people with his second-place showing in 1988? I’m sure many of you would agree that that was a little too close for comfort, especially when you consider that two days after the attacks of 9/11, Robertson sat with Jerry Falwell on the 700 Club and agreed that God was punishing the sinful United States. Can you imagine if a statement like that had come out of the White House?
Which brings me to precisely what should scare you about the idea of ordained Baptist minister Mike Huckabee being elected president. Ol’ Huckster may not be as much of a wacko as Pat Robertson is and on the surface seems like a fine fellow. But while being a man of the cloth shouldn’t necessarily disqualify someone from holding the highest office in the land, do you really want someone in the White House whose religious convictions are so intense they are capable of clouding his judgement?
The United States has too many pressing problems right now with the war, the economy, energy and health care to waste one moment on some narrow minded religious agenda that involves replacing social progressiveness with a Dark Ages purge of abortion rights, gay rights and the teaching of Darwin. Besides, George W. Bush has already spent the last eight years trying just that and you can see where it’s gotten us.
Who knows, maybe Mike Huckabee would check his religious convictions at the White House door were he to be elected president. After all, religion is supposed to be irrelevant at this or any level of government. But that doesn’t seem likely. Huckabee’s Web site says that he does not distinguish between his faith and his politics. “I don’t separate my faith from my personal and professional lives,” he says.
But as Richard Cohen pointed out in his November 21st column in the Journal; “A president should do exactly that. And when any issue, any question, becomes a matter of faith, it means it cannot be argued. That’s not what we do in a democracy.”
Faith is one thing, but whoever the next president is should give that old time religion a rest.
Paul Guggenheimer is a free lance writer and radio and television personality from Sioux City. You can write to him in care of The Journal or at lvrcomments@hotmail.com
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Ashley wrote on Jan 3, 2008 10:55 PM:
Shouldn't the issue be about morality?
I for one would prefer a moral president who happens to be religious than an immoral pastor who happens to be president. "
Dick wrote on Nov 30, 2007 11:05 PM:
annie wrote on Nov 29, 2007 11:39 AM:
Connie wrote on Nov 29, 2007 10:40 AM:
michael litzau wrote on Nov 27, 2007 9:34 PM: