{"id":336,"date":"2008-02-10T23:04:18","date_gmt":"2008-02-10T23:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html"},"modified":"2008-02-10T23:04:18","modified_gmt":"2008-02-10T23:04:18","slug":"stuck-with-huck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html","title":{"rendered":"Stuck With Huck"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hcuakebee20.jpg\"As the founder of the blog Evangelicals for Mitt<\/a>, Nancy French has spent the better part of the last two years trying to convince fellow born-again Christians to back a Mormon for president. A published author<\/a> who spends most of her time raising her two kids in rural Tennessee, the 33-year-old French got close enough to the Romney campaign to be hired as a consultant last year and to have ghostwritten Ann Romney\u2019s memoirs, a project that was put on indefinite hold last week when Mitt Romney withdrew from the presidential race.
\nIn interview on Friday, French was understandably upset, especially because Romney\u2019s exit was provoked largely by his defeat to Mike Huckabee in five evangelical-rich Southern states on Super Tuesday. A big reason for those defeats, French argues, is that Christian Right leaders never engaged in a conversation about whether or not evangelicals ought to let their faith prevent them from voting for a Mormon who shares their political positions.
\n\u201cI would have loved for some Christian leaders to have said, \u2018We have a Mormon running for president and we have a Baptist preacher\u2026 but who really reflects your values?\u2019\u201d French says. \u201c\u2018Should you vote only for a Christian?\u2019\u201d
\nIt\u2019s impossible to know for sure, but that kind of conversation, especially were it led by Christian Right leaders supportive of Romney, probably would have made it harder for Huckabee to ride evangelical support to so many early victories. And Mitt Romney might have garnered enough evangelical support to still be challenging McCain today.
\nInstead, evangelicals are stuck with Huck, who\u2019s got less than a third of John McCain\u2019s delegates and who needs more delegates than are currently available to close the gap and take the nomination. So instead of Romney, who opposes federally funded embryonic stem cell research and supports a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, socially conservative evangelicals will now have to endure McCain\u2014who supports federally-funded stem cell research and opposes a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage\u2014as the GOP nominee.
\nFrench grew so distraught about the failure of evangelicals leaders to discuss how to handle a Mormon candidate that she called Focus on the Family\u2019s 800-number last year to request that the group\u2019s founder, James Dobson, step up to the plate.
\nBut Dobson refused. He did publicly hint that he liked both Romney and Huckabee\u2014and said he loathed McCain in no uncertain terms\u2014but he never openly discussed Romney\u2019s Mormonism or how evangelicals might deal with it. Neither did a host of other high-profile evangelical figures. So it\u2019s little surprise that evangelicals have wound up voting for one of their own\u2014Huckabee. \u201cWe got used to having one of our own in the White House for eight years, when in reality, that\u2019s not the way the Christian Right usually operates,\u201d says French. \u201cThat\u2019s why we haven\u2019t had Alan Keyes in the White House.\u201d
\nOr Pat Robertson or Gary Bauer, for that matter. As presidential candidates, preachers and religious leaders have always found it difficult to break out of their sectarian bases. If Romney winds up running in four years, French may again try to make that case, and to convince evangelical leaders to tackle the Mormon issue head-on. In the meantime, she\u2019s thinking of changing the name of her blog to \u201cEvangelicals in Exile.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the founder of the blog Evangelicals for Mitt, Nancy French has spent the better part of the last two years trying to convince fellow born-again Christians to back a Mormon for president. A published author who spends most of her time raising her two kids in rural Tennessee, the 33-year-old French got close enough…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mike-huckabee"],"yoast_head":"\nStuck With Huck - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stuck With Huck - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As the founder of the blog Evangelicals for Mitt, Nancy French has spent the better part of the last two years trying to convince fellow born-again Christians to back a Mormon for president. A published author who spends most of her time raising her two kids in rural Tennessee, the 33-year-old French got close enough…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-02-10T23:04:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/hcuakebee20.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dgilgoff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Stuck With Huck - God-O-Meter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Stuck With Huck - God-O-Meter","og_description":"As the founder of the blog Evangelicals for Mitt, Nancy French has spent the better part of the last two years trying to convince fellow born-again Christians to back a Mormon for president. A published author who spends most of her time raising her two kids in rural Tennessee, the 33-year-old French got close enough…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html","og_site_name":"God-O-Meter","article_published_time":"2008-02-10T23:04:18+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/hcuakebee20.jpg"}],"author":"dgilgoff","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html","name":"Stuck With Huck - God-O-Meter","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/hcuakebee20.jpg","datePublished":"2008-02-10T23:04:18+00:00","dateModified":"2008-02-10T23:04:18+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/hcuakebee20.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/hcuakebee20.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/02\/stuck-with-huck.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Stuck With Huck"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/","name":"God-O-Meter","description":"A scientific measure of God-talk in the elections","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4","name":"dgilgoff","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","caption":"dgilgoff"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/author\/dgilgoff"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}