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As you know, no politician is perfect. This includes the Baptist ones. Apart from the problems with immigration and healthcare, Ann Coulter takes him to task in her latest column for things that he should get right.
Asked on CNN’s “Larry King Live” Monday night about his beliefs on evolution, Huckabee rushed to assure King that he has no interest in altering textbooks that foist this fraud on innocent schoolchildren.
I don’t understand that. Does Huckabee believe Darwinism is a hoax or not? If he knows it’s a fraud, then why does he want it taught to schoolchildren? What other discredited mystery religions — as mathematician David Berlinski calls Darwinism — does Huckabee want to teach children? Sorcery? Phrenology? Alchemy?
Admittedly, the truth about Darwinism would be jarring in textbooks that promote other frauds and hoaxes, such as “man-made global warming.” Why confuse the little tykes with fact-based textbooks?
Although I’m definitely with him when it comes to whether the question of what do you believe about the origins of the world are practically irrelevant for the President of the United States, I also wonder what he truly believes. I get the impression that he doesn’t want to say, not that he does not have a position.
The other place he falls a flat is on sodomy and homosexuality.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a spirited dissent in Lawrence, joined by Justices William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas, raising the somewhat embarrassing point that homosexual sodomy is not technically mentioned in the Constitution. Otherwise, our Founding Fathers would have been our “Founding Life Partners.”
Scalia said that inasmuch as the Texas law furthered “the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality and obscenity,” the court’s ruling placed all these laws in jeopardy.
Most important, Scalia said: “Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions.” At least no court has tried to legalize gay marriage since that 2003 ruling, so we can be grateful for — Hey, wait a minute!
Huckabee claims he opposes gay marriage and says Scalia is his favorite justice, but he supports a Supreme Court decision denounced by Scalia for paving the way to a “constitutional right” to gay marriage. I guess Huckabee is one of those pro-sodomy, pro-gay marriage, pro-evolution evangelical Christians.
No wonder Huckabee is the evangelical liberals like.
Ouch.
OK, so Min, it appears that we know who you don’t support- want to write about who you are supporting? I have to admit, I’m growing weary of Huckabee attacks by Christians who then won’t “fess up” to who they’re supporting.
~Jess
I also wanted to add: Huckabee has been asked more about his evolution/creation beliefs than probably any other candidate, ever. If you really are wondering what he believes, there are plenty of ways to find out, rather than simply quoting one of the most negative writers out there: Ann Coulter, and echoing her question about it.
Additionally, she makes a huge leap in saying that because Scalia has done something that she doesn’t agree with, that now that whole issue should be negatively assigned to Huckabee because he likes Scalia. Her logic is fallacious and frustrating, and lends evidence to the elitism Ariana Huffington wrote about in her article today. Here’s that link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/huckabee-the-gops-cynic_b_77165.html
Just because I like different bloggers, for example, does NOT mean that every single post they write can then be ascribed to me. That’s the logic she’s using here, and it’s poor logic.
Obviously, I don’t care for uncited & undocumented hit pieces like the one Coulter wrote. It plays to an emotional side of people, by bringing up important issues that we all care about and trying to tie people that many people don’t know all that well to those positions that we loathe. The only problem is, she’s making false leaps and assertions. We need to give articles like this much more scrutiny. ESPECIALLY when they come from someone who is so bitter and callous and writes with such venom as Ann Coulter. Frankly, if she doesn’t like Huckabee, that makes me like him all the more.
Cheers-
Jess
Jess, I’m not sure who I support. I really want to support Huckabee, and I’m leaning that way. I really like that he answers questions directly. I like his moral stands, though at times I wish he were more solid (i.e. I would like him not to hedge on the evolution question).
If I were a republican and had to vote in the primaries I would either vote Huckabee or Romney, but I think I’d lean Huckabee– to try to be as transparent as possible. Fortunately, for now, I don’t have a vote in the primary because I’m registered Conservative instead of Republican. Both of them worry me about their big government tendencies and the fact that if a candidate now uses the government to back one set of morals, the next one from the other party will go the other way.
As for Coulter, I’m not sure that I presented it right. From what I read, she was saying that there was a contradiction between what he says about his support of Scalia and then differing with him on a foundational ruling. Scalia and the conservatives said that the federal gov’t had no right telling a state that it couldn’t have a anti-sodomy law on the books (and I agree with this side). Huckabee said that the federal gov’t did. This is scary. I already think that gov’t is too big as it is.
I’m not trying to do hit pieces. If you look at the number of posts I’ve done on Huckabee, I’ve asked two questions about him, but my coverage is mostly positive. The last thing we want to do is elect someone like Jimmy Carter who said all the right Baptist things and ended up being a horrible President. I just want to know the whole picture, and for that I have to listen to both sides.
I started off liking Huckabee, not necessarly supporting him. But the thing about him that turns me off is his federal solutions to problems better handled by the states. If he wants to make progress on abortion, let the states decide. If he wants to eliminate the IRS, let the states do the taxing.
And then there’s the confusion about education. I was thrilled to hear he was a supporter of homeschooling. Then he gets the NEW Hampshire NEA endorsement. That’s a major red flag.
It’s hard to know what he really stands for with all this mixture of solid social conservatisma with big government solutions.
He’s not the Republican Jimmy Carter as some have suggested, he’s the Republican William Jennings Bryan.
Chris, I agree about a lot of what you say. I don’t like federal solutions to problems. That being the case, I don’t know how we get around the 16th Amendment (or how state dollars become federal dollars) and I don’t know that it’s “right” to say that in some states it’s ok to kill babies and others there are not (just like how can it be ok to have slavery in some states and some states not).
I’m not a Huckabee apologist, but one of my factors (not the highest, but definitely one) is electability and what would they do in office (how can we get from here to there) and right now he’s one of the couple that would get my vote if I were a republican.
And watch out for mocking WJB– that was the name of my literary society in college. 😉
According to you, I qualify to be labeled as “one of those pro-sodomy, pro-gay marriage, pro-evolution evangelical Christians.”
Yup, I’m in favor of allowing GLBT persons to marry and I believe in evolution. I also believe in the Bible because I find no contradiction between evolution and creation if you understand that Genesis is an allegory not to be read literally.
But I Stumbled your article because I hate wishy-washy people and Huckabee is just that. He needs to just say WHAT he believes and do so proudly. I will be happy to disagree with him peacefully, just as you and I obviously disagree. We can still be friends. 🙂 I just want to KNOW and until he is willing to stand up proudly and voice his opinions, he won’t be getting my vote.
BTW, I have a new weekly blog carnival, The Seventh Day, and invite you and your readers to participate. All types of articles and opinions are welcome because the rule on my site is “radical inclusivity.”
Huckabee is not only the Evangelical liberals love, he is the Republical candidate the Democrats love – because Dems know if he gets the nomination, they will easily win.
Hi Hopeful Spirit, thanks for the comment.
Of Huckabee’s faults, one of the things I appreciate him the most is that he actually attempts to answer the question instead of hijacking the question. He could have dodged the evolution question altogether, but he chose to answer it– even if his answer was a bit cryptic. The fact that he answers every question means that I’m inclined to believe him when he says that he’s up in the air as to whether it’s theistic evolution or young earth creation– even though I suspect he is truly the latter. This poses the dilemma that you voiced, but taken with Huckabee’s comment than whether he believes that the Earth was formed in 6 days or 4.5 billion years matters little for the job he seeks tells he is both a politician and a realist. We shouldn’t be choosing a President based on his belief in how the world began as much as how he will do as a leader.
Character is important. And if he’s saying he doesn’t know, and yet believes that he knows, that’s a problem. If he says he doesn’t know, and he’s personally up in the air, then he’s not inconsistent.
I’m not sure that Huckabee is that easy for the Democrats to beat. Certainly they believe this– otherwise they wouldn’t be holding their fire. I think that the Dems believe that anyone that is a Pastor and believes in God and puts God in his campaign is just silly and they will try to make him into a hypocrite (which, since we all still sin won’t be hard to do).
Whether the Dems are right remains to be seen– or whether we will get the chance to see it. One of the biggest challenges Huckabee will have should he get the nomination won’t be the Dems, it’ll be the libertarian and secular side of the Republican party that have already turned their backs on him. For them, it will become “don’t vote for the Democrat” rather than “vote for Huckabee.” That’s not as strong a reason to vote.