Category: Mike Huckabee

Don't Give Up on Huckabee!

~ fundyreformed ~ 5 Comments

McCain is not a foregone conclusion. And it certainly isn’t a 2 man race. While the polling numbers aren’t great for Huckabee, he’s quite close to Romney, statistically sharing the number 2 slot. He’s come from behind in the past, so don’t count him out.

Vote for the candidate with the best message, not the most pragmatic choice available. When its the general election, then we might have to settle for who the party has nominated, but let’s not back down now!

All Huckabee needs is the conservative base of the party to coalesce around him in the sourthern states up for grabs on Tuesday. He may need your vote!

With this in mind, read Kevin Tracy’s excellent post using California’s recent special gubernatorial race as an example of why we should not waver on supporting Huckabee as the race comes down to the wire.

Huckabee's Victory Speech

~ fundyreformed ~ 12 Comments

Congratulations to Huckabee! He won Iowa by 9 points, 34% to 25% over Romney (with 95% reporting).

You will want to listen to his victory speech. It’s good, and only about 5 minutes long.

Plus this is a good bonus 5 minute interview clip from FoxNews.

Way to go, Huckabee! May the momentum continue.

Before I go, let me provide an excerpt from David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times and regular commenter for PBS’ The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. In a column entitled The Two Earthquakes, Brooks has this to say of Huckabee’s win.

On the Republican side, my message is: Be not afraid. Some people are going to tell you that Mike Huckabee’s victory last night in Iowa represents a triumph for the creationist crusaders. Wrong.

Huckabee won because he tapped into realities that other Republicans have been slow to recognize. First, evangelicals have changed. Huckabee is the first ironic evangelical on the national stage. He’s funny, campy (see his Chuck Norris fixation) and he’s not at war with modern culture.

Second, Huckabee understands much better than Mitt Romney that we have a crisis of authority in this country. People have lost faith in their leaders’ ability to respond to problems. While Romney embodies the leadership class, Huckabee went after it. He criticized Wall Street and K Street. Most importantly, he sensed that conservatives do not believe their own movement is well led. He took on Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth and even President Bush. The old guard threw everything they had at him, and their diminished power is now exposed.

Third, Huckabee understands how middle-class anxiety is really lived. Democrats talk about wages. But real middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person’s lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has.

In that sense, Huckabee’s victory is not a step into the past. It opens up the way for a new coalition.

A conservatism that recognizes stable families as the foundation of economic growth is not hard to imagine. A conservatism that loves capitalism but distrusts capitalists is not hard to imagine either. Adam Smith felt this way. A conservatism that pays attention to people making less than $50,000 a year is the only conservatism worth defending.

Will Huckabee move on and lead this new conservatism? Highly doubtful. The past few weeks have exposed his serious flaws as a presidential candidate….

…
Huckabee probably won’t be the nominee, but starting last night in Iowa, an evangelical began the Republican Reformation.

Read the full article.

One other worthy link is Michael Medved’s “Told You So” at Townhall.com.

Again, congratulations to Huckabee and his many supporters. We can pull this off! Go Huckabee!

Jay Leno, Jon Stewart — Why Mike Huckabee Can Win It All

~ fundyreformed ~ 8 Comments

Mike Huckabee has an outside chance of winning the Republican nomination. It all starts today with the Iowa Caucus. Perhaps his biggest negative is a common assumption that he can’t win it all. He’s too conservative and too Baptist.

In a brilliant move, Huckabee landed an appearance on the Tonight show with Jay Leno last night — the night before the Iowa caucus. What thousands of Iowans saw last night is a charming personable guy. His humor and wit disarms you, and he lives up to his billing as a conservative who isn’t mad at everyone.

Huckabee was wonderfully received by both Leno and his crowd. And it is this ability to portray himself positively and amiably in venues typically unfriendly to Republicans which sets Huckabee apart. In early 2007, he made an appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart where he impressed Stewart and his crowd as well.

Jay Leno and Jon Stewart treat Huckabee with respect and give him the time of day. Their audiences give him their ear. One can’t imagine the typical Republican being so well received on these shows. So it stands to reason, that Huckabee really can win it all. He really has crossover appeal.

If the video clips below don’t convince you, check out my list of reasons why Huckabee can win the general election. And better yet read a joint endorsement from Joe Carter (Evangelical Outpost), Justin Taylor (Between Two Worlds) and Matthew Anderson (Mere Orthodoxy) which really lays out the case for Huckabee.

See the Daily Show with Jon Stewart interview here.

Religious Bigotry? Mike Huckabee, Mormonism and The New York Times

~ fundyreformed ~ 43 Comments

I hope most Republicans have learned by now that the New York Times and fair journalism are polar opposites. So when the Times takes one short statement out of an 8000 word interview, ignores the context and makes it into a big issue, you’d think Republicans (at least) would know enough to pass this off as leftist bias. Unfortunately that isn’t the case.

Okay then, here’s the scoop. Huckabee was being primed by a reporter to give his judgments on Mormonism and Romney. Huckabee (as he has consistently done in the past), was loathe to comment. He doesn’t think Romney’s Mormonism disqualifies him from the presidency, or that it should be an issue at all. So the reporter, who is also an expert in comparative religion, was pressing the issue. Huckabee at one point thought the reporter knew more about Mormonism than he did, and he innocently asked a clarifying question: “Don’t Mormons believe Jesus and the Devil are brothers?” The original reporter, in the context of his story, explained the question was neutral.

Not so the New York Times. They have read into that statement all kinds of malice. And this is yet another Huckabee attack in the media.

For what it’s worth, Huckabee apologized to Romney, and explained the situation at length in this video, this one, and this one. But perhaps the best response to this uproar is an excellent post by Steven Nielson entitled “I’m no expert on Hinduism, but Don’t Hindus worship cows?” His post is well worth the read, even if you (like me), could care less about yet another New York Times hack job.