'Is Mike Huckabee Running for President or Pastor?'
By JB Williams (12/19/07)
Republican candidate Mike Huckabee's special Christmas campaign message is a brilliant attempt at reminding voters which candidate would make the best Pastor-in-Chief. But is it likely to make him Commander-in-Chief?
As a life long devoted Christian conservative myself, I’m hardly offended by Huckabee’s Christian references, other than his recent ad is an obvious attempt to use the Birth of Christ in a commercial effort to win over voters, which I do find troublesome.
But in a country which is wrongly convinced that some unwritten separation of church and state exists in our Constitution, how will this campaign ploy play out with voters at large? I suspect not well…
The ploy is getting lots of press. But is it going to be positive press at the end of the saga? Such a ploy might indeed work in Iowa, but what about the rest of the country?
Huckabee is definitely resonating with social conservatives in the heartland. Republicans who think social conservatives are going to line up behind any of the socially liberal Republicans had better be paying close attention to what is driving the recent surge in the Huckabee campaign. It’s the unapologetic moral backbone, stupid!
However, when even Christian conservative voters begin to realize that Huckabee’s current popularity is limited only to his laid back preachy style of reminding Americans about our founding moral heritage, which for Huckabee, translates into a willingness to use the power of the federal government to legislate Christian doctrines, his current popularity may fade, even among evangelical Christians.
Huckabee clearly thinks he has hit on the moral conscience nerve and is planning on riding that train all the way to the Republican convention. Yet he runs a great risk of being not only seen as one-dimensional, but also confused with someone running for pastor of the local church, instead of President of the United States.
While most Christians would indeed love to see our nation move towards more traditional family values and fundamental American principles, I’m not sure they want their local Pastor in the White House using tax-payer funds to legislate morality from on high in Washington DC. This seems to be Huckabee’s primary campaign promise though…
Yes, the Huckabee Christmas campaign ad is a clever ploy.
But he might have just out-clevered himself at the worst possible time in his campaign.
Is he running for Commander-in-Chief or Pastor-in-Chief?
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