Tag: presidential

Hillary Supporters, John McCain and Sarah Palin

~ fundyreformed ~ 2 Comments

I’m no great political mind, but I wanted to share a few thoughts, or rather observations.

Like most, it seems a little hard to believe that Hillary supporters are supporting John McCain in large numbers. Both Clinton and McCain do have quite a bit more experience than Obama, and they are much more widely known. Still it seems like the media have created this story out of thin air.

Or have they? In my own neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota (known for being quite independent minded), I have driven past a car  which proudly displays Hillary and McCain bumper stickers side by side. I’d put up a picture, but then people could suspect I staged it (and I don’t feel energized enough to go hunt down that car again, with camera in hand). Perhaps it is a married couple dividing up their political support, but I doubt it. It may be evidence of the existence of at least one Hillary supporting McCain backer.

On another topic, somewhat related, I have to laud John McCain for the political move of the year in picking Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska to be his running mate. No other pick could have so thoroughly stolen the limelight from Obama as did this one. Then again, it wasn’t an 11th hour, last minute choice, either. She survived a long vetting process and was one of McCain’s top picks all along.

I don’t know whether she will be enough to keep some Hillary supporters interested enough in McCain’s campaign to overlook many of the issues where he is radically opposed to Hillary’s stance. But I know firsthand that her selection has energized some of the more conservative among the McCain’s party. I spoke with someone at my church yesterday who claimed he was 95% sure he was not going to vote for McCain until the Palin pick. Now he’s pretty sure he will. A close family member (a conservative female), who is not a political nut or anything, called my wife with all kinds of excitement over Sarah Palin.  

Conservatives love that she is a thorough going social conservative. She hunts, opposes abortion — proven clearly by her choice to raise a Down Syndrome baby — and is economically sound. But why I am most happy with her, is that she is not afraid to do what’s right when needed. She has taken on the Republican establishment in Alaska. She has a reformer’s spirit, and is not afraid to make her own choices. That is what endeared me to Mike Huckabee all along, and its why I’m not overly skeptical of McCain. I disagree with how some of his legislation panned out (the campaing finance reform bill which silences grassroots groups like the NRA but has loopholes for wealthy donors and other organizations, for instance), but I agree with the main motivation behind it. I think we need a proven leader who thinks for himself yet listens to others. One who is willing to work in a bipartisan way to serve America first. McCain has proven himself to be that kind of leader. Obama’s voting record and political stances betray the fact that he is not.

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!

Mitt Romney: A Smooth, Fast-Talking Politician

~ fundyreformed ~ 10 Comments

Okay, I have to vent here about Romney. From the get go, he’s struck me as smooth, fast-talking and the quintessential politician. He says what we want to hear, and he says different things to please different groups of people. I’m sure there is more to him than this, and I’d probably even vote for him if he won the nomination, but my suspicions endure.

Before I air out the dirty laundry here, let me make one thing clear. Huckabee is not my choice because I’m a fundamental Christian. Videos like this one, make me cringe. America is not the Christian land the Bible speaks of. We are wrong to spiritualize politics and I disliked Bush’s many attempts to do just that.

Huckabee, in my view, doesn’t do this. He takes his faith and its morals and applies them to big issues like poverty, health and education. He aims to do what is right, but he isn’t out trying to spiritualize America as the last Christian nation on earth. He may use Biblical tales as metaphors and figures of speech, but he is not trying to win America for the hard Religious right. (They don’t even support him fully.) Sure he is pro-life, and he is a former pastor. But with 10 years of gubernatorial experience, and a record of accomplishing important things in a highly democratic state, Huckabee’s record proves that he aims to bring America up, not into the grips of one particular ideology.

Okay back to Romney. You’re ready to hear me say “flip-flop” right? And Romney supporters roll their eyes.

But wait, let me stress, I welcome conversions to pro-life views and other conservative positions. I genuinely give Romney some benefit of the doubt. But upon looking more closely at other issues, it becomes clear that this conversion may well be a little too politically motivated.

Convenient Exaggerations

In the news recently, Romney has taken flack for claiming to have seen his father march with Martin Luther King, when in fact the evidence strongly points to the contrary. Worse, Romney then tried to spin his former clear statements into literary devices quibbling over the definition of the word “saw” (in Clintonesque fashion).

This reminds us of Romney’s past statements that he was a lifelong hunter, which turned out to be false. And his more recent claim that the NRA endorsed him as a candidate for Governor, when in fact they didn’t.

Converted to the Pro-Life Cause, Or Not?

In light of these convenient mistakes — convenient in that the statements scored points for him at the time, even though they were doubtful in veracity — this excerpt from a Washington Post blog entitled “Mitt Romney’s Flip Flop Flip” should alarm you.

Romney announced his conversion to “pro-life” views in an editorial in the Boston Globe on July 25, 2005, the day after vetoing a bill expanding access to the so-called “morning after” pill, which required that it be made available to rape victims….

That was not the end of the story, however. The controversy over “emergency contraception” continued to haunt Romney. In October 2005, another bill came to his desk, seeking a federal waiver to expand the number of Massachusetts citizens eligible for family planning services, including the “morning after” pill. Romney signed that bill over the objections of his new anti-abortion allies. On this occasion, he was applauded by “pro-choice” advocates.

The issue came up yet again in December 2005. After weeks of agonizing, Romney instructed all hospitals in the state to comply with the terms of the emergency contraception law, and make the morning-after pill available to rape victims. He acted on the advice of his legal counsel, over the objections of half a dozen Catholic hospitals, which had previously refused to provide emergency contraception on the grounds that it conflicted with their religious views.

“Flip,flop,flip,” editorialized the Boston Herald, on December 9, 2005. “Yes, Gov. Mitt Romney has now executed an Olympic-caliber double flip-flop with a gold medal-performance twist-and-a-half on the issue of emergency contraception.”

This raised my eyebrows because it shows that Romney was flip-flopping on the pro-life issue even before he was seriously running for president. And it should cause even more concern in light of his recent and repeated claims that on every bill that came across his desk concerning abortion, he came down firmly on the side of life. “Abortion” maybe, but “pro life issues” not necessarily, or so it seems.

Yet even on abortion, there is cause for concern. On the campaign trail, Romney has repeatedly traced his conversion to a November 2004 meeting with a doctor regarding stem cell embryos. But this ABC News article points out that:

Within two months of his epiphany on this issue, Romney appointed to a judgeship a Democrat who was an avowed supporter of abortion rights.

Notice this wasn’t a “bill” so Romney may be technically correct, yet this is not what a genuinely pro-life governor does. And to add another twist to that story, the doctor involved has publicly disputed Romney’s version of the facts.

Other Flip-Flops

Hold onto your seat, because there are even more evidences of flip-flopping for good ol’ Mitt.

On Reagan

  • In 1994, when running for political office in liberal Massachussetts, he said: “I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.” — Boston Herald — 10/27/94
  • Now when running for the Republican presidential nomination, he says: “Ronald Reagan is … my hero. … I believe that our party’s ascendancy began with Ronald Reagan’s brand of visionary and courageous leadership.” — Boston Globe — 1/19/07 [HT: Politics & Christianity, drawing from this source, I believe.]

 

On His Desire to Serve in Vietnam

  • “I was not planning on signing up for the military. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam…” — Boston Herald, 5/2/94
  • “I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam.” — Boston Globe, 6/24/07 [HT: Politics & Christianity, drawing from this source, I believe.]

 

On SCHIP

  • Romney helped expand the federal State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in Massachusetts by signing a state health care plan depending on SCHIP in 2006.
  • In September 2007, Mitt Romney said he would veto expansions to SCHIP, which Congress passed and President Bush promised to veto. [HT: Politics & Christianity. See also this article for documentation.]

 

Other instances could be given, but many of those could properly be credited to legitimate growing and changing his mind. But all in all, when you add all of this up, the picture becomes fairly convincing that Romney is all talk. Especially when you consider his underhanded (our outright dishonest) campaigning.

So, there you have it. Romney’s Mormonism in no way prejudices me against him. The above mentioned history of political pandering does. And his record on judicial nominations seals the deal.

Mike Huckabee, Christianity and Racial Harmony

~ fundyreformed ~ 16 Comments

Everybody knows Mike Huckabee is a Christian. Most know he was a former pastor. And since he is a Southern Baptist and he is white, the assumption might be he doesn’t care about racial issues.

However, what most people don’t know, is that Mike Huckabee won 48% of the black vote in his bid for governor in Arkansas (a highly democratic state) in 1998. While some dispute that number, they agree that Huckabee still had at least 20% or more of the black vote in his state.

Mike Huckabee is actually one of the few Republican candidates for president who really is seeking the black vote. When Guliani, Romney, Thompson & McCain found excuses to miss a nationally televised Republican candidates forum on black issues this September, Huckabee shined. Many pundits legitimately questioned the Republican front-runners absence in the debate. Newt Gingrich said, “I think it is a terrible mistake….I did everything I could to convince them it was the right thing to do, [but] we are in this cycle where Republicans don’t talk to minority groups”. The Boston Globe article linked above went on to say “Gingrich added Republicans cannot afford to ignore black voters during the primaries because the GOP will need their support if they hope to win the general election.”

Now, Huckabee’s presence in the debate aimed at black voters certainly helped him politically. He was the only top-tier candidate in the debate. BlackRepublican at RedState even wonders if that debate was the next step (after his 2nd place finish in the Ames Straw Poll) up in his surge to the front of the polls.

So the charge could certainly be made that Huckabee is just playing politics in pandering to the black vote, and earning some union endorsements as he has done. But is it just politics? Or do Huckabee’s Christian values impact his view of racial issues?

The charge can legitimately be made, unfortunately, that conservative Christians were instrumental in hindering the civil rights movement. But don’t let our sad history influence your view of the Bible and this issue. In Christ, there is to be no class or racial distinctions. We are all one in Christ. And we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. These truths very practically intersect with the racial debate in this country. Indeed, these truths convinced William Wilberforce, a thoroughly evangelical Christian and member of England’s parliament, to dedicate his life to the abolition of the slave trade in England (see this post for more on this wonderful story). Today, more and more, conservative Christians are beginning to promote racial harmony in their churches and communities.

Huckabee reflects this evangelical movement. Listen to his words in the recent Hispanic presidential debate broadcast on Univision.

MODERATOR: Governor Huckabee, is there a risk standing up here (inaudible)?

HUCKABEE: Well, I think the great risk is not so much that we would come. The far greater risk is if we didn’t. And it’s not just that we would offend or perhaps insult the Hispanic audience of this country. I think it would insult our own party. It would insult every voter in this country.

To act like that somehow we’ve become so arrogant that there’s any segment of our population that we’re either afraid to speak to, hear their questions, or somehow that we don’t think that they’re as important as another group. And it’s why I think whether it’s an African American audience, a Hispanic audience, a union audience, as Republicans, we ought to be more than willing to sit down, even with people with whom we might know there are disagreements. And I think, frankly, it’s important for us to be here. It’s important that you gave us this opportunity. And I want to say thanks for letting us have this audience on Univision.

(APPLAUSE)

He basically is saying it would be wrong if Republicans didn’t interact with Hispanics and other minority groups.

Consider also the following quotes from “A Pastor’s True Calling“, one of the articles on Huckabee in this week’s Newsweek.

Alone among the GOP candidates, he speaks emotionally about the legacy of Jim Crow and the dangers of ignoring lingering racism. It is wrong, he says, that inner-city blacks routinely receive harsher sentences than affluent whites arrested for the same crime. [page 2, online]

The Immanuel Baptist Church was an all-white congregation when Huckabee took over the pulpit. One day he announced that a young black man, who heard his sermon on the radio, had asked to worship with them. Huckabee welcomed him to their pews. Some church elders were furious and refused to let the man sit with them. Huckabee threatened to quit unless his guest was greeted warmly. A few members quit in protest, but the rest of the congregation went along. (The church is now integrated.) [page 4, online]

As a boy in segregated Arkansas, Huckabee says he was deeply ashamed of Jim Crow laws. Caldwell, his friend from Boys State, recalls his friend “cringing” whenever someone told a racist joke. As a pastor, Huckabee sermonized about the failure of Christians to speak out forcefully against racism. In 1997, President Clinton and Governor Huckabee both gave emotional speeches in Little Rock at an event marking the 40th anniversary of Central High School’s desegregation. Clinton, slipping into a preacherly cadence, moved the audience. But Huckabee moved many to tears: “Today we come to renounce … the fact that in many parts of the South, it was the white churches that helped not only ignore the problem of racism, but in many cases actually fostered those feelings and sentiments.” He called on people of all faiths “to say never, never, never, never again will we be silent when people’s rights are at stake.” [page 5, online]

Democrats expected the worst of their new evangelical, Republican governor, who welcomed anti-abortion activists to the mansion and tried to pass a law outlawing gays and lesbians from adopting children. But they discovered that Huckabee’s “do unto others” world view also led him to push for more money for schools and a health-care program for poor children that became a model for other states. When he took office, he found that the state’s roadways were falling apart. Huckabee supported controversial legislation that would raise gas taxes to fix them. Some of his fellow Republicans were furious, but voters went along. Huckabee served out his first term and was re-elected twice by wide margins. Even as a Republican in fractious Democratic Arkansas, he maintained approval ratings in the high 50s. [page 5, online]

I found these quotes helpful and exciting. It is wonderful that Huckabee shares a Scriptural approach to racial issues. For those interested, my church promotes racial harmony, and here is a list of online sermons, articles and resources on that topic addressed from a Biblical perspective.

Oh, and click here for links to all the Huckabee articles in this week’s Newsweek, where he’s on the front cover.

Keep up on the latest Huckabee news by checking out my tumble blog: Go Huckabee!

Mike Huckabee: The Next Howard Dean??

~ fundyreformed ~ 5 Comments

Does anyone remember all the buzz that surrounded 2004 Democratic candidate for president Howard Dean? His support came mostly from blogs and the internet, and at that time blogs were quite new. His campaign fizzled and he never did win the nomination, but he helped redefine politics as we know it. The web had come of age, and politics had a new venue.

The web gives all the candidates an equal playing ground, for the most part, and that helps Huckabee’s shoestrings campaign immensely. Now Huckabee is no Ron Paul, but he is using the web to generate tons of support and momentum. He said recently, “The internet has been the key to our success, the blogosphere and people going to our website.”

Huckabee has been consistently at the top of campaign website traffic (recent data from Hitwise has his website second among all campaign websites for hits, behind Ron Paul). And he has raised 2 million dollars online in just the past month or so. And his web support is translating into real, on-the-ground support as well.

Blogging is a significant element to web-campaigning. More than simply contacting or emailing people you know, blogging brings people of similar interests together. These interested readers will be more likely to respond positively to posts promoting Huckabee.

Chuck Norris is living proof that blogging has dramatically impacted Huckabee’s campaign. Recently he added his support to Huckabee, and helped create some fascinating and unique campaign ads. Right around the time Chuck gave his support, Huckabee’s campaign started surging forward at an incredible pace. In his own words, Chuck Norris said he started thinking of Huckabee largely because of an email from two teenage bloggers, Alex and Brett Harris of The Rebelution. (This video will show you both a Norris ad, and his discussion of blogs and the web influencing him to support Huckabee.)

And if that was a big development, my own blogging has to be considered as well! I speak facetiously here, but let me illustrate the power of blogging. I read Brian McCrorie’s blog where he promoted Huckabee. Then a month or so later (in April), I came out and started supporting Huckabee. Now over the past several months, I’ve had many tell me they are considering Huckabee because of my blog. And recently Rhett Kelly pointed to my blog as the reason he now supports him. And the chain will go on.

All of this is intended to be a shout out to you bloggers out there. Start blogging about Huckabee!! Do 1 post at least. Add a banner in your sidebar. Get yourself linked from Huckabee’s website (it will bring traffic to your blog.) Jump in and lend a hand. Even if you don’t have spare change, your blogging can really help his campaign.

All along people have said they like Huckabee and his message but don’t think he can win. Now that he is near the top of national polls and all the state polls, what are you waiting for? He has a big chance to win the nomination, and an even better chance of winning the presidency. As Jonathan Alter of Newsweek said a while back, “[Huckabee] may be the only Republican candidate with a decent chance to beat the Democrats next November.”

For those still unfamiliar with Huckabee, I came across a great post co-authored by Justin Taylor. In it he, with Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost, details the reasons why Huckabee is both the best candidate ideally and pragmatically. He is consistent conservatively and has a real shot at winning the general election. My thoughts on Huckabee can be seen in my Huckabee category here, and especially in this post. Also, you can keep up with the latest on Huckabee by following my Go Huckabee tumble blog.

One final note: today is Mobilize for Mike Day. Mike Huckabee is asking for people to send emails to friends introducing them to himself and his campaign. You can do this via the Huckabee website and that will help keep track of all the emails today. The goal is 100,000 emails to that many different people. This is one more pain-free way to support Mike Huckabee, now while there’s still time for Huck to win the nomination.

So lets work to make Huckabee more than a Howard Dean has been. Let’s band together and propel him to the presidency!