Mike Huckabee is confused. He was one of the three candidates who confidently raised his hand at the GOP "debate" to be counted on the anti-evolution team. But he doesn't understand why we care.
Perhaps in an effort to scrape off the wingnut patty he stepped in on national television Thursday night, he said Friday that if he'd had the chance to elaborate on the evolution question, he would have told Chris Matthews:
"If you want to believe that you and your family came from apes, I'll accept that....I believe there was a creative process."
He also said he has no problem teaching evolution as a theory.
But then he said "I'm not sure what in the world that has to do with being President of the United States."
Maybe we can help.
You see, Governor, it was you and your fundamentalist buddies who dragged your religion into everybody's government. From evolution to abortion to stem cell research to abstinence-only sex education to HIV prevention to global warming to the Middle East, Republican policy follows the religious doctrine of right wing Christian extremists. It dictates policy on every single social issue.
As Governor of Arkansas, Huckabee (a former Baptist minister) pushed through a "covenant marriage" law, which virtually prohibits divorce. He toured the state with the head of the FamilyLife ministry, urging pastors to refuse to perform noncovenant ceremonies. On Valentine's Day in 2005, Huckabee and his wife Janet invited all (straight) couples to join them at a Little Rock stadium to bump up their own marriage vows to covenant marriages. Thousands of people watched Janet Huckabee pledge to "submit to her husband" and when the Huckabees were finished, the couples in the crowd re-did their own vows, too.
As a candidate for president, Huckabee's politics are just as infused with religion.
In an online q/a at Time magazine in April, he was asked why he was so
"progressive on issues like fitness and proactive national health yet so fixated on relatively unimportant topics such as gay marriage and abortion?"
His reply:
"I would disagree that protection of innocent life is insignificant. It is what separates us as a civilization from the very jihadists we are fighting."
So...if you're pro choice you are with the jihadists, Governor? Or is there another way to interpret that comment?
When Karen Hughes said basically the same thing a few years ago she was lambasted and ultimately backed down. But Huckabee probably won't understand "what in the world" that statement has to do with being President, either.
On the stage Thursday night we saw the bleak state of the Republican party--there were candidates who pander to the rightwing Christian base, candidates who resent them, and candidates who represent them, like Huckabee and and Sam "Snowflake" Brownback. And not one of them electable. No wonder the place reeked of desperation.
Governor, in case you're still confused, your faith-based views on matters like evolution have everything to do with being President, because you won't stop trying to impose them on the rest of us. Your faith puts you on the wrong side of a lot of social issues; luckily, it looks like Darwin's theory is about to be proven again.