Huckabee Campaign Divided on Environment and Evangelicalism

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The only policy issue Mike Huckabee singles out on a page devoted to “Faith and Politics” isn’t abortion or marriage. “My faith doesn’t influence my decisions, it drives them,” writes the GOP presidential hopeful. “For example, when it comes to the environment, I believe in being a good steward of the earth.”

But the prominence given to the environment on this webpage is unmatched in Iowa. He does not even mention the issue in his stump speech, and he is seldom asked about it by the largely conservative audiences that turn out to appraise whether he deserves their support in the state’s January 3rd caucus. This is undoubtedly a prudent judgment of the concerns of the voters he is courting. He is unlikely to win points for having bucked conservative orthodoxy with his endorsement of a cap-and-trade system to control carbon emissions. But he also likely avoids talking about the environment because there is deep division within the evangelical community that has fueled his rise to the front of the GOP pack.

“I’ve heard reporters talking about global warming as an evangelical issue, and that’s just poppycock,” said Iowa Christian Alliance President Steve Scheffler, reached by phone earlier this month.

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Will the Real Mike Huckabee Please Stand Up?

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Des Moines – Mike Huckabee began a bold denunciation of gay marriage in Ames, Iowa, Wednesday night, but quickly checked himself with stuttering caveats:

“We have to also realize that the strength of our nation really does come down to our families, and that’s why, without apology — I’m, I’m not mad at anybody and I’m, I’m not against anybody — but folks, we have an obligation to preserve the integrity of, of what family, what marriage means. Again, not to, not to try to put others down, but to lift that institution up.”

The former Arkansas governor returned to Iowa this week as the new frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination. He has been selling himself as a kinder-and-gentler conservative, one who’s “just not angry about it.” How different is the aw-shucks Huck who spoke in this Iowa college town than the culture warrior who wrote in 1998: “It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations — from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia.” This quote turned up by David Korn at Mother Jones is one of the many Ghosts of an Angry Huckabee Past that haunted him the week before Christmas.

One of Huckabee’s main challenges during the final stretch to the Iowa caucuses is preserving his sunny image under intensifying scrutiny.

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Huckabee Changes Faith & Politics Webpage

Mike Huckabee, and ordained Southern Baptist minister who is now the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, has raised concerns about blurring the separation of church and state. In an apparent response to address these concerns, the Huckabee campaign has added new text to a webpage devoted to “Faith and Politics.” It begins with new language that states that “The First Ammendment requires that expressions of faith be neither prohibited nor preferred,” along with a checklist of other  principles meant to encapsulate the preacher-politicians beliefs. The page used to begin at paragraph 2, which begins “Faith is my life–it defines me.”

Iowa Cuisine

“Bacon Pancakes.” That was this morning’s special this morning at Cedar Rapid’s Diner on First. I had to ask if there was a missing combo, but the waitress assured me that they actually put bits of bacon in the batter. I had to quell a certain structural objection (you can’t put a savory ingredient like bacon in a confection like a pancake), but once I thought about it, it made some sense. The yummy bacon fat would be absorbed by the batter, and I always did like when my syrup strayed onto my bacon’s salty goodness. Sadly, I had already ordered an omelette with a side of bacon. I thought about changing my order, but I’d been pushing my wheat allergy to the limit ever since arriving in the breadbasket of America.

Building the Choir to Preach to

“I even have a choir,” said former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee while marveling at the turnout at a 7:30 AM event at the Best Western Hotel in Marshalltown, Iowa. The crowd of mostly seniors and middle-aged white folks sat on all sides of a small stage.

“Looks familiar,” Huckabee said of the layout. “For a long time I was a pastor, I’d get up, the congregation would be here [in front of me], the choir would be here [behind me].” He enjoys playfully riffing on an off-hand joke in his speeches. He turned to his ersatz choir: “You ready?” Turning back to the chuckling crowd, he added, “The only thing we need now are ushers and we’ll be ready to receive the offering!”

These opening comments from the new front runner for the GOP presidential nomination may feed the caricature that Huckabee is a Christian fundamentalist who’s grown too big for his pulpit. Indeed, his Christmas ad now airing in Iowa—in which he describes “what really matters” during the holiday “is the celebration of the birth of Christ” along with being with friends and family—has been reported as evidence of his bible-thumping ways. And his surge among Iowa Republican caucus goers, 40% of whom self-identify as evangelical Christians, may give the impression that the GOP base is still looking for the second coming of Pat Robertson, the preacher embraced by Iowans in 1988 for his political crusade for Christian values.

But this perception doesn’t account for his appeal to every room of Iowa voters.

The United State’s View of New York

Inverting the mindset captured by the iconic New Yorker cover, “A New Yorker’s View of the United States,” Des Moines has christened a newly revitalized neighborhood in the shadow of the state capitol the “East Village.” I’m sitting in a coffee shop in the “Soho” building, which houses a sprinkling of small stores. The form part of a few-block island of attempted cuteness in what looks like an area that’s still pretty industrial.

Des Moines commitment to the New York theme is limited, however–the Machine Shed is a farm-themed restaurant, not the leather bar a New Yorker might expect. (They do, however, serve a yummy apple-stuffed pork chop.)

Red Iowaves

My rental car knew why I was in Iowa–to talk to evangelical Christians about the environment. When I turned the key in the ignition, the radio turned on to a Christian station, Family Radio (91.3 FM), playing a segment called “Creation Moment,” dedicated to explicating how the natural world “proves” the truth of biblical creation. This episode claimed that animals in any given place communicate in different pitch levels, keeping out of each others’ frequencies in the same way radio stations do not broadcast on the same bandwith as their competitors. If radio stations need the FCC to get along, the host’s reasoning seemed to go, then animals must need God to work out such an orderly arrangement.

When Family Radio switched to irritating, organ-backed classical devotional music, I searched for Christian radio in its usual haunts on the AM dial. Rush Limbaugh was coming out of my speakers as soon as I switched bands. The next station my seek button landed on had Bill O’Reilly and his “Radio Factor.” I finally found a Christian station–a broadcast by Endtime Ministries–but could only listen for a few minutes of the host’s interpretation of the Israel-Palestinian peace talks as a prelude to the coming of the Anti-Christ for only a few minutes before I retreated to the comfort of National Public Radio.

This tour through the far right of Christian conservatism was jarringly different from what I’d been reading on the plane, Joel Hunter’s Right Wing, Wrong Bird.