Let The "Race" Begin

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Huckabee got a lot of support last election, and unlike Romney, he's openly religious. Look, if 1 in 5 people thought Obama was a Muslim, and 1 in 5 said that race was an issue in their vote who voted for McCain (and I admit that there very well could be a lot of overlap in those two groups), and yet Obama still won a convincing victory, then I cannot imagine being a Mormon is something impossible to overcome.

EDIT: In fact, while I'm not overly excited about any of the three main candidates, if I had to have one of them be president, I'd take Romney in a heartbeat.

 

Uhh, what do you mean by "openly religious"? Romney's never made his religion a secret. Do you mean that Huckabee is more vocal about his religious beliefs, or that he injects them into the public sphere more?

I am unconvinced -- Romney can write off any support from those who dislike religion -- as can Huckabee.

But Huckabee can pretty well count on the support of most major Christian denominations (Baptists, Anabaptists, Unitarians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Episcopalians, Evangelicals, Orthodox, and Catholic*) whereas there's a good number of people amongst the groups I mentioned who would rather castrate themselves with a rusty saw than listen to a Mormon, much less vote for one.

So Romney's got a lot less going for him, assuming that people vote along religious lines.

*apologies to anyone whose Christian denomination was left out, I just pulled those out of the air.

 

@ LKD - I admit that might be a point against him, but I wouldn't write Romney off. Was it any easier for a Catholic to win in the 60s?

 

I don't think so. The problem is that many of these are regional denominations. Catholics, particularly in the large urban centers will vote Democratic, so will Methodists and Presbyterians. In the South, Huckabee will get the Baptists, Pentecostals, etc. Of course, in the South where there are many black churches, they will more than likely vote Democratic. You get the picture. Huckabee will have to draw on rank-and-file Republicans, many of whom are not that religious if he wants to win.

 

Romney has a very good chance of getting the nomination, as he's seen - for reasons that defy everything he's done the last 4 years - as the "sane conservative." His Mormonism may do him in with some evangelicals, but that's not his Acilles heel.

In order to convince conservatives that he's really one of them, he'll have to do the one thing he's so far been unwilling to: completely and unequivocally repudiate his own health care legislation. It's the single greatest achievement of his career, but as it's practically identical to Obamacare (aside from a few trivial differences), he'll have no choice but to declare it his greatest mistake. It will be the mother of all flip-flops (one in a long string for the man who's come to be nicknamed "Multiple-choice Mitt"), and he'll lose a ton of moderate voters, but I don't see how he gets the conservative vote any other way.

 

As far as I know Romneycare has been fairly successful in MA. It would be amusing to see a politican run away from a program that actually works, just to appease the nay-sayers.

 

Romney's weakness is really only those that don't like Mormons. Those that don't like Christians, or religions, in general are likely to be voting Dem anyway. Romney and Huckabee could really split the religious right vote, at least in a primary. Personally, I'm liking the look of Rubio, but we'll see. I wouldn't mind Huckabee, either. His fiscal record may actually be a plus come 2012. He's not against raising taxes as a principle, and he has a record of turning deficits into surplusses. Still, I'm not sure he'll survive the primaries, even if he decides to run (has he said anything definitive).

And anyway, Huckabee looks kinda like Nixon. Wait... That's not a good thing, is it?

 

Don't go there. Religion and politics are only tied together for the misguided or uninformed.

 

I'd have repped that if I could. For the vast majority of the electorate, religion simply isn't an issue.

 

I also think T2 gets it right. There is an interesting comment on the same subject by John C. Danforth, former Republican Senator from Missouri, and 24th US Ambassador to the UN, with which I pretty much agree:

That's a grown-up Republican for you and one who is less than thrilled with the current breed of Republican upstarts. He said this while discussing a possible tea party challenge to Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a long-serving moderate whose stances against some major GOP positions have reportedly made him the target of Republican ideologues:

He is right. It is lunacy to kick out an old hand only because Republican firebrands feel he doesn't pass their new purity tests any more, and his experience probably arouses their suspicious anyway. If they succeed they're damaging the party too, since with his departure institutional knowledge and experience will get lost. They don't care.

In the first quote Danforth is describing a very real problem with the GOP that leads to absurdities as the party retaining someone like Michelle Bachmann as a congresswomen, despite her utter nuttiness and general lack of redeeming qualities, or of course, people seriously considering Sarah Palin as presidential material. They're both incompetent, but they're one heck of a Christian and starkly ideological (or, in Palin's case, perhaps just starkly opportunistic).

It has gone so far that as long as you check the list on all litmus tests items — vocally believe in Jesus, question separation of church and state as a 'myth', declare America a 'Christian Nation', love guns, love defence, embrace Creationism as science and oppose Abortion, Darwinism, all taxes and BIG (FEDERAL) GOVERNMENT etc pp — voilà — you're GOP candidate material. The irony here is that a democratic process co-opted by ideologues is producing Kremlinesque ideological conformity. We witness the Sovietisation of the Republican party. The primary process is making all this much worse, as the nuts will flock there and push their nut candidate. That's how duds like O'Donnell or Miller in Alaska got on the Republican ballot in the first place. In face of that the mindless extremism Danford objects to is not surprising at all. Such a process can only produce apparatchiks. The next Republican presidential candidate will probably look a lot like this guy:

(the medals are for Conservative Credentials ™
earned in the skirmishes of the Culture War ™)​

Which pretty much predetermines what we are about to hear from Republicans the next two years, which is: нэт!

 

Oh, I'm not saying the Dems are anti-religion, or anti-Christian, just that the Religious Right has done a pretty good job of driving anyone who hates them away from the Reps in general.

As for Dick Lugar, there's one problem: no one much has heard of him. Of course, with two years to campaign, that's not insurmountable, but it does put him behind Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney on that count. The other thing to remember is that, at the moment at least, foreign policy isn't a huge issue. THE issue right now is the economy, with national debt coming close behind, and health care tied to them both. Foreign policy experience is a nice add to the resume (especially considering Obama and W Bush will have been the last two presidents), but not a good foundation for a resume. Of course, that all may change by 2012.

 

Question: Just how have they done that?

 

By becoming the driving force and symbol of everything Republican and Conservative. The Religious Right effectively took over the party some time ago, and this is part of that fallout.

 

That they have I do know. How did they do it?

 

Others have already commented on Romney's electability. What I'm saying by being openly religious, is that while Romney has never made his religion a secret, he has also not made it a special part of his campain either. Huckabee repeatedly mentions that he's a former minister, and that experience shapes his views on a wide array of subjects. Huckabee is the far more "religiousy" candidate.

Dick Lugar isn't running for president. In fact, his voting reocrd and moderate views doom him from even being competitive in the primary. Ragusa's point was not about his presidential qualifications, but rather how moderate republicans have been marginalized within their own party.

 

I'm confused. Do you mean how did they drive anti-christian people (specifically or in general) away, or how did they become the driving force and symbol of everything Republican and Conservative?

I think the first is kind of self-explanatory, though maybe the anti-christain people driving themselves away is a better way to put it. People who don't like Christianity in specific, or religion in general, will pretty much automatically not like any organization or group who is being controlled by Christianity.

As for how the Religious Right took power in the first place, well, that has to do with Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority, Barry Goldwater, and Richard Nixon, going back to the '60s and '70s. It's a complex bit of socio-politico-economic history which has largely informed the American political theater ever since. Wikipedia does a decent job of chronicling it.

 

Leave Barry out of that list -- he was against the notion of joining religion with the party.

 

I have a book about it that I am currently reading: Kevin Phillips' 'American Theocracy'. Very worth reading.

Phillips is a former Nixon strategist and is credited with popularising the term Southern Strategy. His book 'The Emerging Republican Majority' essentially predicted the next 20 years, with the exception of Carter, right. Point is tghe man knows what he is writing about, and he doesn't like what he sees.

And T2 has it right about Goldwater, a couple quotes by him:

 

It's All About Sarah

What a surprise....

Is this woman for real?

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/18/6079091-first-thoughts-upside-down

 

Newt is ready to announce he wants to be prez:

He'll be pandering big time to the Tea Cronies, so expect him, much like Huckabee is, to paint Obama as the "Marxist Kenyan" that he isn't [as if he hasn't been doing enough of that already].

Palin may wait until the fall to announce:

Does the word "lazy" come to your mind too?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41904077/ns/politics-more_politics/