Huckabee Supporters are not "Religious Bigots"

Huckabee Supporters are not "Religious Bigots"

Politics is not bean bag and there is frequently a temptation to try to demonize your opponents. The successful politicians I admire resisted that impulse.

I don’t like Obama’s ideas but one of the reasons he’s beating Hillary is because he’s nice and nice usually beats nasty.

So please, people, the Christians who have come out in support of Huckabee may be mistaken or misinformed but they are not religious bigots.

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has it right when he quotes someone named Bryan at “Hot Air”

It’s going to be unwise going forward for Huckabee’s opponents and their supporters to keep throwing out the “religious bigots” line against him. That’ll be the quickest way to divide the GOP and turn off voters who were recently being asked and often told that they would have to vote for Giuliani even though he doesn’t represent their issues well. Huckabee’s opponents are going to have to outflank him on issues and be more articulate in expressing them than he is.

He follows up with:

That’s exactly right. It has been a puzzle to us why, with somebody as obviously inept and uninformed like Huckapoo sticking his foot in his mouth every time he opens it, his opponents have been harping on about his self-hyped Christianity instead.
Listen: We know that you Establishment RINOs don’t much like religion, that you’d much rather that all of us religious yokels, all 85% of us or so, just turn up and vote for your candidates and then shut up for another four years so you don’t get the Christian Cooties all over your well-coiffed, beltway noggins, but it really doesn’t play very well with all of those of us who actually believe, and we are a rather significant demographic, you know.
Now, before any newcomers not familiar with our position start thinking that we’re endorsing the Huckamessiah’s tent revival meeting-style campaign or his endless and quite loud implications that he’s the only Christian in the race (he isn’t) and that if you don’t vote for him, the Baby Jesus will cry and Hellfire will be unleashed upon us, let’s make abundantly clear that it sticks in our craw as well. It’s disgusting, it’s not true and it’s about as close as you can get to hubris without having to dodge actual thunderbolts. As a matter of fact, the Huckster had better lay off his insinuations about being G-d’s Anointed Candidate unless he does want to become a walking lightning rod.
That’s not the point here. Our point, and Bryan’s, it seems, is that when you completely ignore the Huckaclown’s obvious, objectively indisputable lack of qualifications and complete ignorance of anything going on anywhere outside his house in Arkansas and instead harp on about his religion, you’re making his point for him. As a matter of fact, you’re being as stupid as he is, only in reverse. He’s saying that we should vote for him because he’s a Christian, you’re saying that we shouldn’t for the same reason.
Now, take a deep breath, put down your cocktails, put on your thinking caps for a second, you can always take a couple of Tylenols afterwards to relieve the headaches, and ask yourselves: “How is that going to look to the eighty-freaking-five or so percent of voters who are Christians?”
Can you say “protest vote?” Can you say “they’ve fucking well had it with the anti-religious bullshit and they aren’t going to take it anymore?”

Rush Limbaugh made the same point (with less robust rhetoric) recently when a caller called Huckabee’s supporters bigots. Rush sighed and said “that’s not helpful” and he’s right. You are not going to change anyone’s mind by calling them names or impugning their motives.

Huckabee is good at connecting with people on a visceral level. He’s personable, he’s funny and he makes no apologies for his Christianity. And Christians who have been put down by Democrats, the drive-by-media and by the country-clubbers in the Republican Party will only get more emotionally attached to Huckabee if they are attacked for sharing his religion.

Huckabee appears to be no more of a statesman than the last president who came out of Arkansas, but his problem is with his political instincts, not his religion. I’m fine with someone putting a cross in his Christmas message and with carrying a Bible into or out of church, as long as it’s not a prop but an expression of genuine faith.

Regarding attacks, I suggest that the best way to the nomination and the election is to show how America and the world would be better if you led it. Leave the attacks to losers.