Monday, November 19, 2007

Huckabee Trying to Dispel Nice Guy Image

I'm having a lot of second thoughts about what I said recently about Mike Huckabee ("Meanness Counts," October 25 post). My take then was that Huckabee came across as just too nice a guy to attract much fundagelical support. I may have been right, but Huckabee is doing all he can to undo that image. It now looks as if he has a real chance in Iowa, and he's doing all he can to look as mean and tough as Guiliani. Now he has the personal endorsement of Don Wildmon, Homophobe-In-Chief at the American Family Association. His first Iowa TV ad, featured on his website, employs one of America's most famous tough guys, Chuck Norris.

Not only that, he's inching toward a campaign theme which basically says, "I'm the only ordained minister in the entire field of candidates, and that makes me best suited to fight a religious war (meaning the war against 'Islamo-Fascism,' including Iraq." I say inching in that direction because he first brought it up in an interview with the Associated Press in February of this year. At that time he said the war was about an "ill-interpreted theology," characterizing Muslim terrorism as a perversion of Islam. In October, on the respectable PBS program "Religion and Ethics Newsweekly," he again talked about our being in a "theological war," but also made it very clear that he had been real nice and welcoming to Muslim leaders while he was governor of Arkansas.

Then, lo and behold, after Pat Robertson endorsed Guiliani, he does an interview with David Brody of Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, and says that we are in a theocratic war (emphasis mine) and that "I'm the only guy on that stage with a theology degree."

Now, what's Huckabee really saying here? "Theological" has become "theocratic," and his Baptist ordination renders him best qualified to fight a theocratic war.

That sounds an awful lot like "It takes one to know one."

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