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Values voters love Reverend Mike |
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By Byron York
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Posted: 10/26/07 07:10 PM [ET] |
These days, a lot of Republicans are singing the praises of Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who has recently managed to climb into the top ranks of the GOP presidential race.
Huckabee has been making a good impression for months now, having outperformed most of his rivals in several debates. But it was his speech last weekend at the Values Voters Summit here in Washington that really knocked people out.
Actually, it’s not entirely accurate to call it a speech. It was more like a sermon — by far the most overtly religious message delivered by any presidential candidate to the values voters group.
Speaking as a graduate of Ouachita Baptist University (major in religion) and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, as well as a former aide to televangelist James Robison and a pastor in his own right for many years, Huckabee told the crowd: “I come today as one not who comes to you, but as one who comes from you.”
When he entered politics, he said, his religious background “created a lot of heartburn for people not only in Arkansas, but other parts of the country.”
“Anytime you have been a person who was identified as a pastor and you’ve got a seminary education and theology degree, people tend to worry about you,” Huckabee added.
No one at the summit appeared to be worrying. Instead, they cheered — more loudly than for any other candidate — when Huckabee moved into the heart of his message, which was that values voters must stay true to their faith.
We ought not to see things like the world does because most of you, probably like me, grew up being tutored in Sunday school,” Huckabee said.
“And I don’t know about you, but I never outgrew some of that. I don’t guess I outgrew any of it. You see, I was led to believe that it was a lot better to be with David — that little shepherd boy with five smooth stones — than it was with Goliath with all his heavy armor. I was thought that it was better to be Daniel than it was a whole den full of lions because Daniel would come out better off than those lions … I was taught that it was better to be one of the three Hebrew children than it was to be the fiery flames of the furnace, because with God’s power those flames couldn’t even leave the smell of smoke on the lives and the clothes of those three Hebrew children.”
Huckabee went on, touching on Elijah, the prophets of Ba’al, Lazarus, the loaves and the fishes. At one point he even brought up Billy Sunday, the fiery revival preacher from the early 1900s.
It was an entirely different message than those delivered by the other candidates.
Mitt Romney, who has been accused of pandering to values voters, spoke of our “Judeo-Christian heritage” and made one brief reference to his Mormonism, but stayed away from specifics.
Fred Thompson told the group that the United States was blessed to have “a group of Founding Fathers who knew the scriptures,” but stayed away from specifics.
Rudy Giuliani, who has a boatload of problems with values voters, said he lives by his own faith but stayed away from specifics.
When his turn came, Huckabee sought to capitalize on the differences between himself and those who were less openly religious.
“It’s important that people sing from their hearts and don’t merely lip-sync the lyrics to our songs,” he said. “I think it’s important that the language of Zion is a mother tongue and not a recently acquired second language.”
By the time he finished, the crowd roared its approval in ovations that were louder and longer than those given any other candidate.
Huckabee was the big winner in the straw poll of those people who attended the conference. (In results that included Internet votes, he was just behind first-place finisher Romney.)
But Huckabee himself acknowledged that it was the kind of message that might not play well beyond religious groups.
What about all those voters for whom the language of Zion is not a mother tongue?
Even some voters who want their president to be a person of strong faith might find the Huckabee of the Values Voters Summit a little hot for their taste.
The question now is whether Huckabee can reach those voters who didn’t go to the same Sunday school.
York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week.
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