{"id":183,"date":"2011-03-02T08:26:37","date_gmt":"2011-03-02T08:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/03\/huckabee-then-and-now.html"},"modified":"2011-03-02T08:26:37","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T08:26:37","slug":"huckabee-then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/03\/huckabee-then-and-now.html","title":{"rendered":"Huckabee then and now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is it possible that Mike Huckabee, currently testing the presidential waters by way of a book tour, just made a mistake when he suggested<\/a> to a radio audience that President Obama was not to be trusted because he grew up in Kenya?<\/p>\n

If you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a
\nKenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in
\nKenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing
\nthat the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his
\ngrandfather.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obama,
\nof course, did not grow up in Kenya with his father and grandfather but
\nspent some of youth with his mother and stepfather in Indonesia, where their view of the Year of Living Dangerously<\/a>…oh, never mind. When the error was pointed out, Huckabee’s PAC director retracted thusly<\/a> to ABC:<\/p>\n

“Governor Huckabee simply misspoke when he alluded to President Obama
\ngrowing up in ‘Kenya.’ The Governor meant to say the President grew up
\nin Indonesia,” Gidley told ABC News. “When the Governor mentioned he
\nwanted to know more about the President, he wasn’t talking about the
\nPresident’s place of birth — the Governor believes the President was
\nborn in Hawaii. The Governor would however like to know more about where
\nPresident Obama’s liberal policies come from and what else the
\nPresident plans to do to this country — as do most Americans.”  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Over at Swampland, Amy Sullivan isn’t buying it<\/a>.
\nThat stuff about the Mau Maus and the persecution of Obama’s
\ngrandfather sounds way too premeditated for her. Linking to David
\nGibson’s report<\/a>
\non a similar Gingrichian swipe at supposed Kenyan influences on Obama,
\nshe asks whether this might not be the GOP playbook for 2012.<\/p>\n


\nWe’ll see about that. Meanwhile, there can be little doubt that Huckabee has the m.o. down pat. In a NYT Magazine profile<\/a> that appeared a month before the 2008 Iowa primary, Zev Chafets reported the following exchange:<\/p>\n

The name of
\nhis principal rival in Iowa, Mitt Romney, went unmentioned. Romney,
\na Mormon, had promised that he would be addressing the subject of his
\nreligion a few days later. I asked Huckabee, who describes himself as the
\nonly Republican candidate with a degree in theology, if he considered
\nMormonism a cult or a religion. ”I think it’s a religion,” he
\nsaid. ”I really
\ndon’t know much about it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

I was about to jot down this piece of boilerplate when Huckabee surprised
\nme with a question of his own: ”Don’t Mormons,” he
\nasked in an
\ninnocent voice, ”believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course <\/i>Mormonism is a religion (I’m not one of those nutty fundamentalists) = Of course <\/i>Obama
\nwas born in Hawaii (I’m not one of those nutty birthers). And then the
\nshiv–the devil, Mau Mau–goes in…followed by a spokesman’s
\ndisclaimer, which four years ago went as follows<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

A report released tonight cites an upcoming article in
\nthe Sunday edition of The New York Times Magazine which quotes former
\nArkansas Governor and Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee asking a
\nquestion about the content of the Mormon faith. In fact, the full
\ncontext of the exchange makes it clear that Governor Huckabee was
\nillustrating his unwillingness to answer questions about Mormonism and
\nto avoid addressing theological questions during this campaign.’<\/p>\n

‘Governor Huckabee has said consistently that he believes this
\ncampaign should center on a discussion of the important issues
\nconfronting our nation,’ said Senior Advisor, Dr. Charmaine Yoest, ‘and
\nnot focus on questions of religious belief. He wants to assure persons
\nof all faith traditions of his firm commitment to religious tolerance
\nand freedom of worship. Governor Huckabee believes that one of the great
\nstrengths of our nation lies in its diversity of thought, opinion and
\nfaith.’<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, sure. Huckabee was a Southern Baptist pastor in the 1980s, when
\nthe evangelical world was awash with anti-Mormon propaganda like The God Makers<\/a>. The claim that Mormons believe Jesus to be the brother of the devil (Lucifer) is boilerplate anti-Mormonism–a hostile rendering of Mormon christology<\/a>, Huckabee knew exactly what he was doing then…and now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is it possible that Mike Huckabee, currently testing the presidential waters by way of a book tour, just made a mistake when he suggested to a radio audience that President Obama was not to be trusted because he grew up in Kenya? 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}