[R-G] Dark Horse Surges with Religious Right Backing

[Anthony Fenton]

POLITICS-US:
Dark Horse Surges with Religious Right Backing
Bill Berkowitz*
http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=1199

OAKLAND, California, 7 Dec (IPS) - Although several of the leading  
Republican Party presidential candidates have won endorsements from  
Religious Right leaders and organisations, no one has brought more  
Christian conservative leaders into their camp than former Arkansas  
governor Mike Huckabee.

'Mike Huckabee has worked hard to get the Religious Right's backing  
and it seems to be paying off,' the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive  
director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told  
IPS.

Huckabee's campaign advertisements open with the words 'Christian  
Leader' in large white capitals. 'Faith doesn't just influence me. It  
really defines me. I don't have to wake up every day wondering, what  
do I need to believe?' he says in the ad.

'At the Values Voter Summit in Washington last October, he gave a  
very well-received speech hitting on all the themes that are  
important to the Religious Right,' Lynn pointed out. 'It clearly  
energised the crowd, and in fact he later won a straw poll of  
attendees by a wide margin.

Just a few weeks ago, Huckabee was viewed as just another third-tier  
candidate who hadn't made much headway. Now, however, with the Iowa  
caucuses and the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries a little  
over a month away, he has been creating buzz.

In addition to being available for numerous media ops, he has  
performed well in various Republican debates, and he has received an  
increasing number of endorsements from important conservative  
Christian evangelical leaders.

While Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani secured an unexpected  
endorsement from Rev. Pat Robertson (stirring up a hornet's nest in  
the Religious Right), Huckabee -- who is closest politically and  
ideologically to the Religious Right -- has received a series of  
endorsements from such lesser known but nevertheless significant  
Christian right leaders as Janet Folger, president of Faith2Action,  
Rick Scarborough, founder and president of Vision America, the Rev.  
Don Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association.

Jerry Falwell, Jr., the chancellor of Liberty University and the son  
of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, has also come on board, as have Jerry  
Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, authors of the best-selling 'Left Behind'  
series of apocalyptic novels. LaHaye's wife, Beverly, is the founder  
and chairman of the board of Concerned Women of America, which claims  
to be the largest women's political organisation in the U.S.

'During the 25 years I have known Mike Huckabee, he has proven  
himself to be a Christian conservative who stands without apology for  
the pro-life, pro-marriage platform that is so important in this time  
of moral collapse,' Tim LaHaye said during an early December  
appearance with the candidate in Iowa.

An ordained Southern Baptist pastor, Huckabee has charted a course  
that not only includes orthodox conservative Christian positions --  
anti-abortion, anti-same-sex marriage -- but one that also appears to  
reveal a certain level of compassion.

The former Arkansas governor's rise in the Iowa polls is largely due  
to his courting a statewide network of evangelical pastors and to  
emphasising his own faith.

Lynn noted that Huckabee has been 'speaking in a lot of  
fundamentalist churches around the country, which, while it doesn't  
always receive media attention, has moved his candidacy forward.'

On Wednesday, Huckabee announced the formation of the Iowa Pastors  
Coalition and the endorsement of Iowa family values leader Chuck  
Hurley, the president of the Iowa Family Policy Centre.

Although he raised his hand at a debate last May when asked which  
candidates disbelieved the theory of evolution, he has lately  
bristled at being asked over and over again about evolution. At a  
recent Iowa press conference he pointed out that while he 'believe[d]  
God created the heavens and the Earth,' he (Huckabee) 'wasn't there  
when he did it, so how he did it, I don't know.'

He added that it was 'an irrelevant question to ask me -- I'm happy  
to answer what I believe, but what I believe is not what's going to  
be taught in 50 different states. Education is a state function. The  
more state it is, and the less federal it is, the better off we are.'

The compassionate Huckabee surfaced during CNN's recent YouTube  
Republican debate during a question about immigration. Although  
generally supporting a hard line on immigration, Huckabee clearly  
separated himself from the field by saying that it was wrong to  
punish the children of uindocumented workers for the illegal actions  
of their parents. That kind of stance didn't sit well with his  
opponents, particularly former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney,  
who slammed him for seeking to 'giv[e] scholarships to illegal aliens'.

Huckabee's so-called populism has riled the right. In a recent column  
entitled 'The False Conservative,' Robert Novak maintained that while  
'Huckabee is campaigning as a conservative ... serious Republicans  
know that he is a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of  
a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans.'

Recently, Huckabee surprised the punditocracy by pulling ahead of  
Romney to take the lead in Iowa.

While Huckabee still has a number of formidable hurdles to leap over  
-- he needs to raise lots more money, and he still has a relatively  
small staff -- the fact that the field is so divided is clearly to  
his advantage.

As Huckabee moves up in the polls, he will be scrutinised more  
closely. In Iowa this week, he was asked for a comment on the just- 
released National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that found that it  
had given up its nuclear weapons program four years ago. Appearing  
befuddled, Huckabee said that he was not familiar with the NIE,  
hadn't read it, been briefed on it, or even heard of it.

Still, an Associated Press/Ipsos nationwide poll released Friday  
indicates that he has vaulted into second place after Giuliani. While  
the former New York City mayor has 26 percent among Republican and  
Republican-leaning voters, about where he has been since spring,  
Huckabee is at 18 percent, up from 10 percent in an AP-Ipsos survey a  
month ago and three percent in July.

Arizona Sen. John McCain has 13 percent, Mitt Romney 12 percent and  
Thompson 11 percent.

'Huckabee's rise should dispel claims that the Religious Right is  
dead,' Americans United's Barry Lynn added. 'This movement remains a  
huge bloc in the GOP [Republican Party] and, under the right  
circumstances it is quite capable of handing him the nomination.'

*Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement.  
His column 'Conservative Watch' documents the strategies, players,  
institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right.



(END/2007)