Huckabee may be new face of the religious right

With the race for the Republican presidential nomination now behind him, former candidate Mike Huckabee has many possibilities ahead: Potential vice president to John McCain? GOP adviser? Another run for the White House? Any way, observers say, one thing seems clear: Huckabee is now a kinder, gentler fresh face of the evangelical movement.

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Mike would be a great choice to lead the evangelical movement and could do much to erase the negative connotation in the minds of the public from earlier, more dogmatic leaders.

From the NY Times

Huckabee Splits Young Evangelicals and Old Guard

What this article fails to point out is that evangelicals have been getting more and more frustrated with national evangelical leaders who continue to support national candidates whose actions directly contradict evangelical values. We are not trying to establish a theocracy, as liberals accuse, but we can no longer turn a blind eye to the pragmatism of evangelical leaders who chose to support someone they feel is more electable regardless of their values. We hope they will get the message from the groundswell of support for Mike Huckabee.

Dichotomy

I continually struggle with the dichotomy I see in politics. I have seen politicians of all stripes going after the evangelical vote. Most of them have many reasons why evangelicals should vote for them, but it usually comes down to two ... "family values" and abortion. I put family values in quotes because thats what the politicians did ... or so it seemed to me. I never really knew what they meant by family values, unless they were going to dictate to me what those should be. I became pretty cynical about politicians as a group.

I have a hard time understanding how we elect some of the people we do. We need to be holding their feet to the fire of their own rhetoric. We need to demand answers from them. To take a line from Franken ... "We're worth it and we deserve it."

All this to say I am puzzled why evangelicals would even flirt with Mitt Romney when they could support Mike Huckabee. I have a real struggle with that. In fact, I think it is totally to their shame.

In my reading of Huckabee blogs, I found an interesting post on this subject: The Shame of Evangelicals. Give it a read.