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Mark Steyn: It's the secular Left vs. the Christian Left

The incomparable Mark Steyn weighs in on Huckabee:

Confronted by Preacher Huckabee standing astride the Iowa caucuses, smirking, "Are you feelin' Hucky, punk?", many of my conservative pals are inclined to respond, "Shoot me now."

But, if that seems a little dramatic, let's try and rustle up an alternative.

In response to the evangelical tide from the west, New Hampshire primary voters have figured, "Any old crusty, cranky, craggy coot in a storm," and re-embraced John McCain. After all, Granite State conservatism is not known for its religious fervor: it prefers small government, low taxes, minimal regulation, the freedom to be left alone by the state. So they're voting for a guy who opposed the Bush tax cuts, and imposed on the nation the most explicit restriction in political speech in years. Better yet, after a freezing first week of January and the snowiest December in a century, New Hampshire conservatives are goo-goo for a fellow who also believes the scariest of global-warming scenarios and all the big-government solutions necessary to avert them.

Well, OK, maybe we can rustle up an alternative to the alternative.

Rudy Giuliani's team is betting that, after a Huck/McCain seesaw through the early states, Florida voters by Jan. 29 will be ready to unite their party behind a less-divisive figure, if by "less divisive figure" you mean a pro-abortion gun-grabbing cross-dresser.

I can't see things playing out quite like that. The principal rationale for Rudy's candidacy is that he's the national-security toughie who can beat Hillary. But it's hard to conclude after Iowa that this is shaping up as a Code Orange election. And, as for Sen. Clinton, her Thursday night third-place was the nearest Bill and Hill have come to a Ceausescu balcony moment. In a world where even John Edwards can beat Hillary, who needs Rudy?
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As for Huckabee, the thinking on the right is that the mainstream media are boosting him up because he's the Republican who'll be easiest to beat. It's undoubtedly true that they see him as the designated pushover, but in that they're wrong. If Iowa's choice becomes the nation's, and it's Huckabee vs. Obama this November, I'd bet on Huck.

As governor, as preacher and even as disc jockey, he's spent his life in professions that depend on connecting with an audience, and he's very good at it. His gag on "The Tonight Show" – "People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off" – had a kind of brilliance: True, it is cornball at one level (imagine John Edwards doing it with all his smarmy sanctimoniousness) but it also devastatingly cuts to the core of the difference between him and Mitt Romney. It's a disc-jockey line: the morning man on the radio is a guy doing a tricky job – he's a celebrity trying to pass himself off as a regular joe – which is pretty much what the presidential candidate has to do, too. Huckabee's good at that.
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Peggy Noonan observed of Huck that "his great power, the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture."

She's right. It's not the economy, stupid. The economy's fine. It's gangbusters. Indeed, despite John Edwards' dinner-theater Dickens routine about coatless girls shivering through the night because daddy's been laid off at the mill, the subtext of both Democrat and Republican messages is essentially that this country is so rich it can afford to be stupid – it can afford to pork up the federal budget; it can afford to put middle-class families on government health care; it can afford to surrender its borders.

There is a potentially huge segment of the population that thinks homo economicusis missing the point. They're tired of the artificial and, indeed, creepily coercive secular multiculti pseudo-religion imposed on American grade schools. I'm sympathetic to this pitch myself. Unlike Miss Noonan, I think it's actually connected to the jihad, in the sense that radical Islamism is an opportunist enemy that has arisen in the wake of the Western world's one-way multiculturalism.

In the long run, the relativist mush peddled in our grade schools is a national security threat. But, even in the short term, it's a form of child abuse that cuts off America's next generation from the glories of their inheritance.

Where I part company with Huck's supporters is in believing he's any kind of solution. He's friendlier to the teachers' unions than any other so-called "cultural conservative" – which is why in New Hampshire he's the first Republican to be endorsed by the NEA. His health care pitch is Attack Of The Fifty Foot Nanny, beginning with his nationwide smoking ban. This is, as Jonah Goldberg put it, compassionate conservatism on steroids – big paternalistic government that can only enervate even further "our culture."

So, Iowa chose to reward, on the Democrat side, a proponent of the conventional secular left, and, on the Republican side, a proponent of a new Christian left. If that's the choice, this is going to be a long election year.

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.