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Evangelicals reluctant to support Huckabee
This entry was posted on 1/24/2008 12:19 PM and is filed under Huckabee shameful record.
Evangelicals Reluctant To Support Minister
Thursday, January 24, 2008 9:10 AM CST
By Aaron Sadler
Stephens Washington Bureau • asadler@stephensmedia.com
WASHINGTON
— Evangelical voters appear to be unwilling to unite behind Mike
Huckabee, despite the presidential candidate’s pedigree as an ordained
Southern Baptist minister.
While Huckabee leads Republican
hopefuls in a survey of “born again” voters released Wednesday, it was
by a tenuous margin that suggested dissatisfaction with a candidate who
built his campaign by courting social conservatives.
Several evangelical leaders said Wednesday that like-minded voters see Huckabee as flimsy on foreign policy.
With
terrorism fears still on their minds, evangelicals are looking for more
in a president than harmony on social issues, said the Rev. Joel
Hunter, a Florida pastor.
“Everybody
has a question about his foreign relations experience. How is he going
to be as an international player?” said Hunter, senior pastor of the
12,000-member Northland Church in Orlando, Fla.
A survey of
evangelicals by the Beliefnet Web site indicated 28 percent support
Huckabee, compared to 21 percent for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. A
statistically similar number of born-again voters had favorable views
of both men.
Evangelicals spurred a Huckabee victory in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, but he has not won since.
And
McCain cut into Huckabee’s evangelical base in his narrow victory over
the former Arkansas governor in Saturday’s South Carolina primary.
“John
McCain picked up 25 percent of the evangelicals in South Carolina, and
why did he do it? Because he had more experience,” said Richard Cizik,
spokesman for the National Association of Evangelicals. “That’s the
question about Mike Huckabee out there.”
Cizik and Hunter were among nine evangelical leaders who participated in a panel discussion of the 2008 campaign.
Panelists
were generally complimentary of Huckabee, who was portrayed as a new
type of Christian leader focused on a broad area of policy priorities.
No
longer are evangelicals concerned only about sanctity of life and
marriage issues, the group said. Economic, environmental, social
justice and global health care issues are all priorities of a modern
evangelical.
Beliefnet’s survey showed the economy, government
corruption and poverty were the most important topics of concern to the
980 respondents.
The variety of issues important to evangelicals make it difficult for Huckabee to get a foothold, experts said.
“Huckabee
would have already won everything if it was just going to be, ‘I’m born
again and I’m George Bush No. 3,’” said Bishop Harry Jackson, senior
pastor of Hope Christian Church in Washington.
Bush in his first
term had a 79 percent approval rating among evangelicals. It has since
dropped to 45 percent. Cizik said born-again voters, like much of the
rest of the country, were dissatisfied with the war.
Cizik said
he liked Huckabee’s comments that the Bush administration demonstrated
an “arrogant” foreign policy. But Huckabee’s freshness on international
issues leave him concerned.
“It may be that he is so new to the
scene that he will maybe not make the nomination this year, but is he
going away? No way,” Cizik said.
Hunter, who said he is voting for Huckabee, nevertheless criticized his fellow pastor for his hard line on illegal immigration.
The
new style of evangelical voter is more compassionate about immigration
than Huckabee is in his plan to require illegal immigrants to return to
their native countries before trying to enter the country illegally,
Hunter said.
Huckabee was labeled as soft on immigration just
weeks ago for his support of scholarships and in-state college tuition
rates for children of illegal immigrants.
“I think he got bad
advice from somebody who said ‘You will never win the Republican
nomination unless you take a hard stand on immigration,’” Hunter said.
“He took a hard right, and I think it killed him, personally.”
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