WASHINGTON (ABP) — If conservative Christian voters want to know why a Baptist preacher is being bested in the GOP primary polls by three candidates who have had rocky relationships with the Religious Right, they need to look at the bottom line, Mike Huckabee said June 6.
“Pure and simple, it's money,” the former Arkansas governor and presidential hopeful said. “But the sad thing is that money is driving the media's perception of it.”
Huckabee — who served as president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention before he delved into secular politics — lamented the fact that his campaign and those of other strong social conservatives has been unable to get traction among primary voters. Meanwhile, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney continue to lead in polls of announced Republican candidates.
All three have well-funded, well-staffed campaigns. But Giuliani is pro-abortion-rights and supports some gay-rights causes. Romney was pro-abortion-rights and pro-gay until recently. Plus, his Mormon faith arouses suspicion in many Christian conservatives. And despite McCain's generally solid conservative voting record, he has had a rocky relationship with several of the Christian conservative movement's elder statesmen.
“Unfortunately … this whole process is being driven solely by money and not by message,” Huckabee said. “If we're not careful, we're moving this country not toward a presidency, but toward a plutocracy. I'm not sure that's where we want to be.”
Huckabee, in a wide-ranging discussion with a group of Washington reporters assembled by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, also had words of warning for some of his ideological cohorts.
“Christian conservatives, I believe, are on the brink of becoming irrelevant in this election cycle if they do not remain active because they really believe something about their faith that drives them into the political arena,” he said. “If they say, 'Well, those issues aren't that important this time,' … then quite frankly, they are just another Republican special-interest group.”
If Christian conservatives back away from stances that have defined their movement — opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage — in order to elect a Republican candidate, Huckabee said, “I think it is not only going to be the beginning of the end of relevancy for them, but I also, I believe, the Republican Party.”
Huckabee added that he has an agenda well beyond the issues most often associated with Christian conservatism.
“I don't think we're a perfect party. I don't think we've captured the marketplace on great ideas,” he said. “I'm a conservative, that's fine. But I'm not mad at anybody about it.”
Huckabee said Republicans should focus more on issues — such as “better stewardship of the environment” and improving education — that have traditionally been associated with Democrats.
“We have allowed politics in the country to become very divisive, and it's almost like it's an all-or-nothing proposition,” he said, noting that he had worked successfully with a heavily Democratic legislature during his time in the Arkansas Governor's Mansion.
“I think people [who opposed his election] thought that I would spend all my time trying to stop abortion and … put Bible readings and prayer in schools, that that would be my focus as a governor,” he said. “Instead, I spent my time improving education.”
Huckabee also offered implicit criticisms of the current administration's performance. He used his experience as governor of a state that took in 75,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees in 2005 to decry the government's handling of that crisis.
“One of the few times in my life when I was absolutely embarrassed and ashamed of my own government was in the response to Katrina,” he said. Speaking of seeing footage of people stranded on freeways in New Orleans days after the storm flooded the city, Huckabee added, “It just was beyond my comprehension that we could get TV cameras to those people, but we couldn't get a boat or a bottle of water to them.”
On foreign affairs, he counseled greater humility for the United States. “We have frankly squandered a lot of our … international prestige” in recent years, he said. “There was a time in this world when America was everybody's hero. And now we're the bully that they resent.”
Despite his disappointing poll numbers, Huckabee has gotten generally high marks from pundits for his performance in the Republican debates so far. Nonetheless, he faulted debate organizers for asking questions about his support for evolution. He and two others out of the field of 10 GOP hopefuls raised their hand in a debate a month ago to say they did not believe in evolution.
He was asked directly about that in the June 5 debate and elaborated on his views. He said he didn't know exactly how Earth was created but that God had done it.
To reporters June 6, he expressed frustation that one's belief in evolution is even a topic for a political debate.
“I had to ask myself how many people sitting around their dinner tables asked themselves, 'I wonder what the next president thinks about evolution?'” Huckabee said. “At one point, I wasn't sure if I was being interviewed to be president of the United States or chaplain of the Senate.”
Questioned following the discussion, Huckabee said he didn't think his criticism about money driving the GOP nominating process vindicated a longstanding criticism of the Religious Right that wealthy fiscal conservatives were simply exploiting religious conservatives to win elections and get tax cuts.
“I think the faith conservatives had a role in the party and a strong voice — because there were certain things they so believed and didn't deliver votes unless they got them — that kept the Republican Party, in essence, pretty pure on those issues,” Huckabee said. “And the fiscal conservatives sort of said, 'Well, those aren't our issues, but you know what, we'll live with that to get what we want.'”
He continued: “Now, that's real pure politics. Everybody gives up something in order to get something. That's not wrong; that's O.K., as long as what you give up you can live with, and as long as what you get is what you want.”
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Read more:
Religion, social issues again prominent in GOP debate (6/6/2007)
Abortion, evolution, faith featured in GOP debate (5/8/2007)
Former governor, Baptist minister Huckabee runs for White House (1/30/2007)