By Bob Allen
Once and likely future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee described “disconnect” between the cultural elite and the values of middle America Sunday morning from a prominent Southern Baptist pulpit in Jacksonville, Fla.
“There is what I would simply call a big difference — I call it a disconnect — between the areas of New York, Washington and Hollywood, which I call the bubbles of cultural influence in America,” and the rest of the country, Huckabee said in a sermon Feb. 2 at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla.
Huckabee, who recently stepped down as host of his television program on Fox News to explore a potential White House bid in 2016, stopped by the North Florida megachurch on a whirlwind tour promoting his latest book, God, Guns, Grits and Gravy.
Huckabee, who was a Southern Baptist pastor prior to being elected governor of Arkansas, said commuting in and out of New York for six years drove home to the reality that values commonly emanating from the “bubbles” are not necessarily the ones embraced by people in places like Jacksonville.
“There is a difference between what I call life in Bubbleville and what I call the life in the flyover country, or as I have been calling it for years, the land of God, guns, grits and gravy,” Huckabee said.
For example, Huckabee cited differing reactions to American Sniper, “a movie that really celebrates patriotism” which is currently setting box-office records.
“There are people from the bubbles that say: ‘We don’t understand this. We can’t figure this out. This shouldn’t be something we celebrate.’” Huckabee said. “And they are totally disconnected from many of us who every day say to the people in uniform: ‘You are the real heroes of this country, because you are the ones who stand between us and tyranny. You are the ones who stand in front of bullets and bombs for us.’”
On Tuesday Huckabee told reporters in Huntsville, Ala., that a Feb. 3 federal court order that the state of Alabama must issue marriage licenses to gay couples is the latest example of judges usurping the will of the people.
“Those in black robes believe that their authority exceeds that of the two other branches combined plus the authority of the people,” Huckabee said in comments aired Tuesday night on WAAF television.
Alabama’s top judicial official, Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, known as the Ten Commandments judge for installing a plaque of the Ten Commandments in 2001, issued a memo advising probate judges they are not required to abide by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refusal to suspend a lower court’s decision ruling the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
Huckabee has said openly he is leaning toward running for president but he won’t formally decide until later this spring.
Wednesday in Fort Worth, Texas, he reminisced about living there as a student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in the 1970s.
“When my wife and I came here, we were so stinking poor,” Huckabee told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “We looked forward to 25-cent taco day. There was a taco place on Seminary Drive we would eat at. That was our splurge.”
“It was good times,” said Huckabee, who studied at the seminary from 1976 to 1977 before taking a communications job with evangelist James Robison. “The memories are strong and fond.”
As a pastor in Arkansas, Huckabee served as president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention from 1989 to 1991. He told the New York Times in 2007 that his race against current Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd was “far more political than anything else I’ve ever been involved in.”
He left the ministry in 1992 to run for Senate. He lost but went on to win election as lieutenant governor before ascending to governor in 1996.
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