Okay, slight confession time. I’m something of a closet political junkie. Not so much the “who’s up, who’s down†campaigning politics, but the questions of policy, who supports what, what makes sense kind of thing. If I were involved in politics directly, I suppose that would make me a wonk, not a hack.
Anyway, K and I were having a discussion last week about the presidential primaries. K’s position was that if Huckabee wins the GOP primaries, we’re all in serious danger because the man holds positions that are bad for women, minorities, basically everyone that’s not a middle class white heterosexual male. I, on the other hand, maintained the position that a Huckabee win in the primaries would be hysterical. 🙂
To a large extent, our positions were based on different contexts. K is concerned that the republican would win the general election since, hey, it’s been a while since they haven’t – no matter how bad their candidates and policies are. I was thinking “hysterical†since it would break wide open the GOP coalition of money, guns and religio and I have a hard time picturing any republican winning this time, since they are all so awful.
So, that said, I think K wins this one based on this short article:
“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards,†Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman
I’m more than a little terrified that a presidential candidate would talk about amending the Constitution in order to suite his own religious beliefs. Where do you even start with this? This country was established to intentionally and explicitly keep religion from controlling the government. While the phrase “separation of church and state†is not in the constitution, the concept is one of the founding principles of the constitution as a whole and of the first amendment in particular. The founders saw first hand the damage that could be done when a particular religion dictated to the government. This is why the establishment of religion was explicitly forbidden.
Beyond the 200+ years of tradition, beyond the very heart of our government, there’s the whole other issue of which “word of the living God†to you plan to establish? There are over a dozen major religions represented in this country. Even within the largest, there are literally hundreds of Christian denominations (side note, why are splits among Christian beliefs called denominations and those of non-Christian beliefs called sects?) each of which has there own special interpretation of the god’s word.
Perhaps Huckabee was just pandering to republican christians, many of whom can be counted on to support certain positions. But to make the claim that these republicans speak for all christians, let alone for god or all religions is crazy.
So, yes – K wins: Huckabee winning the GOP primary would not be hysterical, it would in fact be scary.