Explaining McCain’s Success Among Evangelicals

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As South Carolina Republicans headed to the polls Saturday, an all too-simple storyline emerged in the press. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister who won the Iowa caucus, would have the evangelical vote, while Arizona Senator John McCain, a Vietnam War hero, would win defense conservatives. “It’s the Christian soldiers vs. the retired soldiers,” one observer summed up for the Wall Street Journal.

But McCain captured a quarter of evangelical voters when he won yesterday’s GOP primary according to exit polls, while Huckabee won only 40%. A recent conversation with Rich Cizik, who heads up governmental affairs for the 30-million member National Association of Evangelicals, reveals that Christian voters are a more complicated voting block than the media seems to realize. Cizik speaks unhappily about the GOP under the Bush administration. “This has been an unholy alliance in which the evangelicals have given everything and gotten nothing in return.” But, he says, “It’s quite obvious that the next Republican in the White House will likely be someone with a very different attitude… John McCain or Mike Huckabee, at least in the case of those two, would be much more sympathetic.” (Cizik was speaking for himself, not for the NAE, which does not endorse candidates.)

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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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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.