New York Times: From Heaven, Saint Ronnie looks down approvingly on President Huckabee

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Pulpit was springboard for Huckabee’s rise
Campaign shaped by his experience as evangelical pastor, broadcaster



By Jodi Kantor and David D. Kirkpatrick
The New York Times
updated 2 hours, 59 minutes ago

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22122547/

In August 1980, as the conservative Christian movement was first transforming American politics, Ronald Reagan stood before a Dallas stadium full of 15,000 foot-stomping, hand-clapping evangelicals and pledged his fealty to the Bible. “All the complex and horrendous questions confronting us at home and worldwide have their answer in that single book,” said Mr. Reagan, the Republican presidential nominee.

Assisting with logistics for the event was a young seminary dropout named Mike Huckabee. “It was the genesis for the whole movement,” Mr. Huckabee recalled of those early days.

Now Mr. Huckabee is running for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, his campaign shaped by his two decades as an evangelical pastor and broadcaster. While he says he is running based on his career in the Arkansas governor’s mansion, not the pulpit, he has grounded his views on issues like abortion and immigration in Scripture, rallied members of the clergy for support, benefited from the anti-Mormon sentiment dogging a political rival and relied on the down-to-earth style he honed in the pulpit to help catapult him in the polls.

Mr. Huckabee risks scorn from secular voters for defending the biblical creation story against Darwin, but faces accusations from some fellow Christians that he is soft on a range of issues, including liberal thinking in his own denomination. His candidacy has renewed the debate over the place of religion in public life, an issue Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is also a Republican presidential contender, will take on in a speech on Thursday about his Mormonism. As a preacher and a politician, Mr. Huckabee said in an interview, he has pursued the same goal: improving lives. “For me it was never an either or,” he said of his dual careers. “The realm you do it in is less important than that you do it.”

[bigscott]

1. excellent

Nominate him - then we can show these bible-thumpers what a mean spirited wing-nut whack job this lunatic is

[gratuitous]

2. Goodness, this is a long article

But they were probably too busy giving us breathless details such as this:

Today, in the closing weeks before the Iowa caucus, Mr. Huckabee is energetically selling his religious credentials, saying voters should pick a candidate who speaks “the language of Zion” as a “mother tongue,” and running television commercials flashing the words “Christian Leader.” He talks eagerly about theology issues in political debates (displaying his TV-trained ability to speak in exact 45-second segments) and cites Scripture on the trail.

They couldn't spare one single sentence about Mr. Huckabee's involvement in the Wayne Dumond release, subsequent crimes by Mr. Dumond, and Huck's ever-shifting stories about the level of his involvement. I'm guessing when Huck cites scripture, he doesn't quote Exodus 20 and those niggling words about not lying.