There was a high drama right wing fringe debate with some Republican presidental candidates in Florida yesterday.
Right Wing Watch has good details of this circus. The top runners stayed away, Mitt Romney decided to speak to the kissing cousing Family Research Council on his terms, which means he got to talk and not have to subject himself to these kinds of questions. Fred Thompson said no thanks the tail didn’t need to wag the dog and Guiliani didn’t even make nice, he just said no.
The fringe groups straw poll and leaders decided:
…praying for God to reveal “the David among Jesse’s sons.” And David turns out to be Mike – former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
This choir sang God Bless America with Religious Right words, not the real ones.
Good singing, that’s why I’m putting it up.
There is a theologically correct line: “God have mercy on America Forgive her sin and heal our land.” The rest is out there.
It’ll do, they are asking for the usual wierd things.
Repentence (not cherry picking pet issues) would be appropriate and healthy for all believers in the US. But repentence is a God thing, we allow Him to show us our sin, not the other way around.
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“Fringe Right Wing Republicans.” The Country-and-God (should be God-and-Country, but they get confused at times) Baptist-style US conservatives have a high and special spot on your [insert barnyard expletive] list.
However, I’d like to make a case for Huckabee as an alternative to some of the front-runners on the GOP side from your vantage point as a centrist, non-neocon Canadian.
1) He’s far less of an alpha-male than the lead pack (Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain). There’s where the David part may kick in nicely. If you’re looking for humility, he’s got more than that bunch easily.
2) He’s less of an economic conservative than the lead pack with the possible exception of McCain. He’s gotten flak from the economically hard-right Club for Growth for governing in a center-right manner, occasionally going along with tax increases as Arkansas governor.
3) He has a heart for the little guy that is rare among Republicans. At least one union gave him an endorsement in the GOP primary, for he was the only Republican who dared to show up at their convention.
4) He’s no “worse” on the neocon side of things that the rest of the pack. He seems to be pro-surge and went mano-a-mano with Ron Paul on Iraq and the last GOP debate, but his take is largely humanitarian; “you broke it, you fix it.”
5) He’s not out-of-bounds to the right on the moral issues of the day. Your FRC crowd might get your hackles up, but Huckabee doesn’t seem to be out of mainstream Republican norms on issues like abortion or church-state issues.
Huckabee may well be the favorite of the religious conservatives in the GOP, myself included, since none of the big four have been great on those issues over the long haul. Romney has moved right as of late (seemingly from the heart) on “Life issues” but the too-strategic timing of the move (just as he moved out of wooing the center-left MA electorate and into wooing a conservative national GOP presidential primary electorate) makes many folks on the right a bit skeptical.
However, Huckabee should also be the favorite of the moderates watching from the sidelines in this fight; you’re double on the sidelines as a Canadian centrist. I may doom his chances in the primary, but his more humble, more populist and more centrist leanings should give outsiders something to root for, unless Ron Paul’s staunch anti-war stands or Rudy’s center-left views on social issues hit your hot buttons more.
Good case Mark.
I just logged on read (insert barnyard expletive) and thought huh? Took a sec for the brain cells to kick in, and I’m still laughing.
I’m grateful I’m not in a perpetual election and while I find the case people make for different candidates as interesting as I do with Canadians, (think a nine month Liberal leader race) I think this kind of debate really (insert noise of something going down the drain here).
It’s less about the party a candidate runs for, it’s about the amount of money and attention they need to get, and the level of pandering the religious right demands.
“The David among Jesse’s sons?”
I’m ashamed typing that.
The hijacking and blending is mind boggling.
Since when have special interest groups ultimately helped sustain good governance?
Look at what Janet Folger (Faith2Action) and others said about the ones that didn’t show up to their little show.
The mere fact good candidates have to show up for this kind of debate cheapens everyone. The religious right is a term for a big group of people and ideas. This is the fringe, all things in moderation doesn’t play with these leaders. I think many of the people that support these groups are what Chesterton called unconscious dogmatists, but I don’t think we can pretend organizers are.
Comeon Mark, the questioners were (are) essentially single issue, single focus rich people with bully pulpits. Satellite bully pulpits. Captive audience bully pulpits. Direct mailing bully pulpits. Fear based bully pulpits.
I’m not upset with the candidates and it wouldn’t matter if I was.
This is politics of self-interest, politics of bullying, politics of demand, politics of fear, and I don’t care which party thinks they have to subject themselves to it, I wish every Republican and Democrat candidate had the guts to stand up and say no thank you.
The very fact religious sub-language is imposed irritates me.
Why would citizens permit this kind of dummying down of such an important process?
This is an electoral process for a future president, not a revival meeting, or membership process to a church.
And candidates have to participate in 3 hours of religious questions on SkyAngel?
Get smeared if they don’t?
It has nothing and I mean nothing at all to do with faith or Christianity, it is not what Christ called us to, and pretending it doesn’t makes it all the more slimy.
Farah, Wildemon, Paschal etc are handed power they don’t need to be having.
Why doesn’t this unholy stew grieve people…
When I look at the power the Catholic Church had (and to some extent still has) in Quebec, I don’t need a political degree to understand that is a place Canada does not need to go back to. I don’t see how parachurch groups in the US making demands and putting on their separate side show is any different.
On repentence, I believe that God Does show all sin and this choir points it out as well. God reveals sin in multiple ways from His Word and from His Holy Spirit which operates consistently with God’s Word. It seems to me the choir is consistent with that. To nitpick the choir by saying it is outside of Christ doesn’t seem to be theolgically correct in light of Scripture. Many people read Scripture, are convicted of sin and repent. Others God reveals sin by the Holy Spirit but that revelation is not outside of Scripture. It isn’t “pet issues” but all issues that Scripture points out as sin which include some which you don’t believe are sin when in fact they are.