January 2008 Archives

My colleague Ron Kiener has an excellent analysis on his blog of Obama's "Jewish problem," making use of the Florida exit polls. There does seem to be a widespread impression that Obama is soft on support for Israel, fueled in no small part by ugly emails circulating around the Internet. The organized Jewish community clearly denounced these emails two weeks ago. Among the latest to address the anti-Obama campaign is Martin Peretz, editor in chief of the New Republic and as staunch a supporter of Israel as one is likely to find this side of the loony bin. The headline of his piece is "Can Friends of Israel--and Jews--Trust Obama?" and the answer is an unequivocal yes, with the implication that he can be trusted more than a Clinton. My guess is that such efforts to alleviate Jewish suspicions will have some success, but that, come Super Tuesday, Jews will still tip towards Hillary. In New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, and Massachusetts, that could make a difference.

New York City is an ethno-religious wonderland, and for a little look into what's going on there in the run-up to Super Tuesday, take a look at this, from Daily News blogger Elizabeth Benjamin.

Vanity Fair's James Wolcott has this dispeptic assessment of the Huckabee failure:

The zombie march of Giuliani's and Fred Thompson's maladroit campaigns will entrance political dissecters for seasons to come but less remarked is the misguided direction the Huckabee campaign took after its win in Iowa. Despite his financial disadvantages, Huckabee had a real opportunity to bust open and make himself a real player and what does he do?--instead of broadening his appeal and message and opening up his passing game, he escorts himself down a narrow lane to the frayed, far-right fringe by crudely pandering on the tired old Confederate flag controversy ("If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole"--this from a preacher man) and proposing a pet list of fatuous, unpassable Constitutional amendments. He became Duncan Hunter with a grin, a most unappetizing combination day or night.

God made one fleeting appearance at the Republican debate last night, when (surprise!) Mike Huckabee said, "[P]eople in this country I think are grateful to God they're in a land that people are trying to break into and not one they're trying to break out of." Now that caucus and primary results have come in from states around the country, the main religious questions in the GOP race--how does the white evangelical base of the party respond to Romney and to Huckabee?--have become empirical rather than speculative, answerable via the exit polls. It would be a nice irony next Tuesday if evangelicals, streaming away from Huck as an also-ran, were the ones to keep the Romney candidacy alive.

For anyone interested in the author's secular reflections on the social construction of candidates' biographies.

Hugh Hewitt, fighting for Romney till the last dog dies, puts the best face he can on the Florida results and argues that a stop McCain effort will require Huckabee's people to look down the road and switch to the Mittster.

The shadow of the '96 Dole campaign will fall on McCain now, and the prospect of an Obama-McCain fall campaign will be the key consideration for Huckabee voters over the next seven days. Huck's voters are conservative or very conservative, and if they stay with Huck because they like him better than Romney, they hand the nomination to McCain.

OK, according to the Florida exit poll, Huckabee got 32 percent of the white born-again/evangelical vote, Romney 31 percent, McCain 26 percent, and Giuliani 6 percent. In a word, Huck did worse among white evangelicals than he's done in any state thus far; and white evangelicals showed that they are increasingly prepared to vote for Romney. Meanwhile, Huckabee got only 4 percent of the Catholic vote (McCain 38 percent, Romney 28 percent, Giuliani 24 percent), demonstrating even more powerfully than before his inability to break out of the evangelical box. All told, a good day for the Article 6 (no religious test for office) crowd, and a lousy day for Huck. The thin silver lining for him, I suppose, is that McCain continues to struggle with his folks, making the case for giving him the VP nod stronger.

That's Reed. Bottom line: Religious Right bigs prefer Romney to McCain.

Here's a Florida pastor's cri de coeur for Huckabee: Where have all the evangelicals gone? The polls show Huck struggling in fourth place. If there are as many evangelicals in Florida as John Green thinks there is, then a smaller proportion of them are voting for Huckabee than elsewhere. Of course, there are various possible explanations for the numbers. Maybe there was not enough time or money to get the word out in so big and complex a state. Or maybe evangelical voters have decided that Huckabee has turned into an also-ran, and want to determine the winner. Or maybe the pollsters have failed to estimate the turnout of evangelicals properly. They've certainly been wrong before this primary season. We'll see soon enough.

David Kuo and John J. DiIulio Jr, former directors of the White House office of Faith Based Initiatives, criticized the Bush administration’s leadership of their department in today’s NYT. Kuo and Dilulio defended the positive effects of religious giving like providing social services to low income citizens, daycare, and assistance for the homeless. Yet, they also highlighted the President’s shortfalls in implementing such programs, i.e. the modest increase in government grants to faith based groups.

The duo did not shy away from preaching the proper role of faith based initiatives with their closing paragraph: "On Jan. 19, 2005, Mrs. Clinton, speaking before clergy members in Boston, captured the spirit that is likely to prevail in the White House, no matter who is elected: 'But I ask you, who is more likely to go out onto a street to save some poor, at-risk child than someone from the community, someone who believes in the divinity of every person, who sees God at work in the lives of even the most hopeless and left-behind of our children? And that’s why we need to not have a false division or debate about the role of faith-based institutions, we need to just do it and provide the support that is needed on an ongoing basis.' Amen.”

President Bush said today that his faith helped beat his alcohol problem. Bush speaking to a faith based program aimed at reforming inmates said, "I understand faith-based programs. I understand that sometimes you can find the inspiration from a higher power to solve an addiction problem."

Here is Obama at Harvest Cathedral Church in Macon, Georgia. He uses the story of Luke 10, the good samaritan, to demostrate his public service background.

As this American Anglican website shows, religious conservatives continue to be drawn to Obama. Obviously they know that he's pro-choice and in favor of civil unions (if not same-sex marriage). But they sense in him a moral seriousness and a spiritual authenticity that's hard for them to resist--or perhaps, that they don't want to resist.

To bring things up to date (see earlier post) on that Focus on the Family video in which Tom Minnery expresses his appreciation for Romney's "acknowledging" that "Mormonism is not a Christian faith": The AP's Rachel Zoll got on the story right away, and learned from Minnery that he had come to that conclusion based on Romney's December speech on faith and public life, in which the presidential aspirant stated, "There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church's beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history."

For its part, the Romney campaign initially turned the other cheek. Wrote Zoll:

Minnery said that he spoke with the campaign after the video was posted this week and they did not contest his view or ask him to retract the statement.

"We've got a good relationship with them," he said.

Kevin Madden, a Romney spokesman, said in an e-mail that "campaign guides by advocacy groups consist of their viewpoints." Madden referred to Romney's faith speech when asked if the former Massachusetts governor considers himself Christian.

"Now some people define 'Christianity' differently," Fehrnstrom continued. "Some people believe that 'Christianity' is a group of evangelical churches. Others believe that 'Christianity' is any church that follows the teaching of Jesus Christ, and that is what the LDS church believes." I asked Fehrnstrom if that was also what Romney believed. He said yes.

Yesterday, CBN's David Brody reviewed the situation on his blog, expressing the belief (wish?) that the whole Mormon story has had its day and the hope that everybody could just move on, if not get along.

OK, so the Washington Post's Joel Aschenbach doesn't deal in profundities, but how do you do a little profile on the Hope, Ark. that both Billy Clinton and Mike Huckabee came from, and write a sentence like this--"Anyone on the Huckabee trail in Hope has to pay a visit to a local dentist, Lester Sitzes III.--and not manage to pay a visit to, or say a word about, the church he grew up in? I mean, he's the first Baptist pastor running for president, no? I say this knowing that I sound like GetReligion's Terry Mattingly, but still...

Gordon B. Hinckley, the 15th President/Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day, died on Sunday, January 27, 2008. He was 97 years old. For 73 of those years he worked full-time for the church over which he would come to preside in 1995. Although he only served as church president for a dozen years, from the time he was called into the church’s “First Presidency” in 1981 forward, Hinckley was the principal LDS administrative figure, the face Mormonism presented to the world.

Gordon Hinckley, 15th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has died according to CNN. He was ninety seven years old. More to come....

Deacon Keith Fournier gives us a Catholic and former Democrat's perspective on Mike Huckabee. Fournier has had it with Republican attacks on the Huckster. Dismissing criticisms that Huckabee is a one trick evangelical pony, Fournier highlights Huck's strengths with a comparison to David and Goliath. Fournier:

"Oh, I know, the new line of he media is that his campaign is "running out of money". You hear it from the chattering class. What you do not hear is how, with very little spending, this candidate has stood up against the most well heeled candidates. However, while you are checking and commenting on what is in the pockets. Look down deep. There just might be five smooth stones in there."

This from John Green:

Let me hazard an answer to Mark’s puzzlement about Mike Huckabee’s well-documented fundraising woes. Several factors are worth considering. It could be, as Mark suggests, that some wealthy Republican donors have been put off by the candidate’s populist stands on economic issues. Likewise, stalwart conservative contributors may dislike his political heterodoxy. Certainly Huckabee has received extensive criticism from all manner of Republican and conservative leaders. It makes sense that he would not draw well among the usual run of GOP donors.

But the pool of campaign contributors doesn’t just include fat cats and right-wingers, even on the Republican side. Witness the funds raised by maverick John McCain and libertarian Ron Paul. Certainly past Christian conservative candidates have been able to raise funds, such as Pat Robertson in 1988 and Gary Bauer in 2000.

My guess is that the Huckabee campaign has simply lacked the basic resources needed to raise money: name recognition, time, and organization. Remember that Huckabee was virtually unknown for most of 2007 when his rivals were hitting the chicken-and-peas circuit. Then his rise to prominence was sudden, giving him little time to exploit his new fame. And he apparently had a very rudimentary finance organization—something that is crucial no matter how one raises money, whether by personal solicitation, events, direct mail, or telephone solicitation.

Such organization is especially important if a candidate needs to appeal to donors with special characteristics—like populist conservative Christians—because it is harder to locate and solicit new kinds of donors. In fact, it may have been internet fundraising from his enthusiastic grassroots supporters that has kept the campaign supplied with the shoe strings it has.

One indication of these organizational problems may be the fact that Huckabee has not applied for public matching funds from the Federal Election Commission. Matching funds are a great source of money for campaigns like his, but it requires a good bit of organization apply for them. Be all this as it may, it’s worth pondering this map of Huckabee’s donors through the end of September. It's pretty much a guide to where the evangelicals are.

In South Carolina, the more frequently Democratic primary voters said they went to church, the more they were likely to vote for Barack Obama. This represents something of a departure from New Hampshire, where he won both the most and the least frequent attenders. What I think it mostly means is that black church mobilization was working well for Obama in Palmettoland. It would be interesting to know if non-black voters (as the CNN table has it) skewed the same way when it came to church attendance, but the cross-tabs weren't posted. I'm inclined to doubt it.

In an op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post, meanwhile, Lisa Daughtry (the Pentecostal pastor who serves as chief of staff of the Democratic National Committee and CEO of the Democratic Party Convention) criticized the exit polling for not asking Democratic voters as much about religion as it has asked Republican voters. Indeed, the South Carolina exit poll did not ask for religious affiliation (as in New Hampshire and Nevada) or separate out evangelicals (only the GOP polling has done that). It could be argued that, given the disproportionate significance of race-based voting in SC, having more differentiated information on religion would have cast only minor additional light on the results. But that won't be true for many of the Super Tuesday states. Here's to hoping that the pollsters take Daughtry's words to heart.

Since the Los Angeles Times reported on MIke Huckabee's fundraising woes--staff cuts, minimal ad buys in Florida--a few days ago there's been little sign that things are picking up for him. What I've been puzzling over is why. Sure, the Washington Post described the rank and file of the religious right as "poor, uneducated and easy to command" ten years ago, but it wasn't true then and it isn't true now. If "values voters" are quite well off, thank you, why aren't they ponying up for the guy who is carrying their standard? Has this segment of the GOP coalition simply never been looked to for political contributions, as opposed to votes? Are they sinking all their extra income into their churches? Anyone for a Huckatithe?

Newsweek has an interesting interview with mega-church pastor Joel Osteen who has remained a neutral figure in the presidential election. While Osteen yields enormous power from his 40,000 plus congregation and television following, he does not believe it prudent to mix faith and politics. Osteen: "If one of the presidential candidates were to attend, they certainly deserve honor. I think we'd make an exception on that. I think we say we don't let them speak because, well, who wouldn't want to come to speak to 40,000 people here? We would introduce them and I would always put in a good word, whether they are Democrat or Republican."

Focus on the Family's new online candidate guide is must-see for anyone following religion and the campaign. As Michael Scherer points out on Time Magazine's Swampcast blog, the thing amounts to a kick in the rear for Mike Huckabee and a covert endorsement of Mitt Romney. (McCain gets serious criticism on campaign finance, though moderated by praise on abortion.) Apparently, Focus added some praise for Huckabee after catching hell for stinting on it--and that's what you'll see. In any event, this is pure three-legged-stool analysis, with Romney anointed as the only candidate on three legs. To me, however, the most interesting statement comes at the end of the Romney clip, where Tom Minnery, Focus Action's senior vice president of government and public policy, says, "Mitt Romney has acknowledged that Mormonism is not a Christian faith, and I appreciate his acknowledging that." I know of no such acknowledgment, and I can't imagine Romney making it. This can only be some fancy extrapolation from some Romney concession that Mormons do not believe the same things in the same way that traditional Christians do. Just as with Richard Land's suggestion that Mormonism be considered the fourth Abrahamic religion, this represents an effort to persuade evangelicals that Romney is acceptable because he is not flying under false (i.e. Christian) colors. Unlike the Landian proposal, however, this is, so far as I can see, dishonest. But who knows what kind of effect this will have on its target audience?

My take-away from the oh-so-genteel Republican debate last night is that we're headed for a McCain-Huckabee ticket. If the GOP is, as Beltway folks like to say, a three-legged stool, that would give them two of the three (the foreign policy and the religious conservatives), leaving Romney with the third (economic conservatives). I presume that Huckabee would take the VP nod under any circumstances, but McCain's sweet-tempered question of him (in the candidates-ask-each-other segment) about the impact of the "Fair Tax" on the poor seemed the perfect expression of an alliance in the making, with McCain sending out the signal that he too cares about the least among us. The GOP money guys will never forgive McCain for his unorthodoxy on tax cuts and campaign finance reform, but South Carolina showed that evangelicals don't hold his 2000 outburst against those "agents of intolerance" against him. With Huckabee out mobilizing the church crowd, he only becomes more formidable.

This isn’t about religion, so I will beg your pardon and tuck the bulk of it out of sight. But Gail Collins’ column in the New York Times today reminded me of one of the lasting lessons I took from covering a presidential campaign. Back in 1987 and 1988, I was the Dukakis beat reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and as is a requirement of the job, I had to write a profile of the candidate prior to Georgia’s Super Tuesday primary. And what I wrote pretty well followed the script that the Dukakis campaign had devised for the candidate—at least, I realized after the fact that I had done that.

Another interview with Obama, this one by Sarah Pulliam and Ted Olsen of Christianity Today, is worth a look. The following exchange puts the candidate more

I'm happy to be able to let you know that the latest issue of our magazine, Religion in the News, is up on the web. There's a special section, God's Own Party, dealing with electoral politics, mostly as concerns Republicans. Of particular note is Bill Lindsey's exploration of the Missionary Baptist roots of Mike Huckabee's economic populism, Phil Barlow's reminiscences of Mitt Romney as Mormon Bishop, and Charles Reagan Wilson's account of the 2007 Barbour-Eaves gubernatorial knockabout in Mississippi. Elsewhere, Andrew Walsh's cover story on religious environmentalism offers, among other things, a useful caution to those who think that evangelical support for environmental causes is something new under the American sun. And for something entirely different in the religion and politics biz, check out Ingrid Jordt's analysis of the Burmese monks' protest.

Attacks on Barack Obama's faith have intensified this week. A whisper campaign using email and robocalls has spread the rumor that Barack Hussein Obama is Muslim. David Brody of the CBN has Senator Obama’s take on the attacks. Obama:

“Basically the e-mail falsely states that I'm Muslim, that I pledged my oath of office on a Koran instead of a Bible, that I don't Pledge Allegiance to the flag. Scurrilous stuff. I want to make sure that your viewers understand that I am a Christian who has belonged to the same church for almost 20 years now. “

“This year, the attacks are already starting. Some of you may have heard about the disgusting lies about Barack Obama that are being circulated by email. These attacks smear Barack's Christian faith and deep patriotism, and they distort his record of more than two decades of public service. They are nothing short of "Swiftboat" style anonymous attacks.”

"We find it particularly abhorrent that these attacks arc apparently being sent specifically to the Jewish Community. Jews, who have historically been the target of such attacks, should be the first to reject these tactics.”

How should Muslims feel about this? Should they be upset or dismiss Obama’s sprint from Islam based on the fact that he is battling in South Carolina and not yet nationwide ? Keep your eyes posted for comments by Congressman Keith Ellison.

Beliefnet's Dan Gilgoff has an interview with Obama on religion that's worth a scan. Nothing especially new, but this answer to the "charitable choice" draws the critical distinction.

You wrote in “The Audacity of Hope” about the role that faith and faith-based programs could play in confronting social ills. Isn’t your view on that similar to George W. Bush’s?

No, I don't think so, because I am much more concerned with maintaining the line between church and state. And I believe that, for the most part, we can facilitate the excellent work that's done by faith-based institutions when it comes to substance abuse treatment or prison ministries…. I think much of this work can be done in a way that doesn't conflict with church and state. I think George Bush is less concerned about that.

My general criteria is that if a congregation or a church or synagogue or a mosque or a temple wants to provide social services and use government funds, then they should be able to structure it in a way that all people are able to access those services and that we're not seeing government dollars used to proselytize.

Today's Columbia State endorsement of Obama ties onto the candidate's MLK Day message:

He is harsh on the failures of the current administration - and most of that critique well-deserved. But he doesn’t use his considerable rhetorical gifts to demonize Republicans. He’s not neglecting his core values; he defends his progressive vision with vigorous integrity. But for him, American unity - transcending party - is a core value in itself.

So Thompson's gone. That should give Huckabee a bit of a boost in Florida, as evangelical devotees of "Law and Order" turn to reruns of "Walker, Texas Ranger."

No one except maybe John Edwards was turning the other cheek at last night's Democratic debate in Myrtle Beach, but Obama did play the Christian card:

So, I think it's important for us not to assume that we can't reach out to people of all -- of all persuasions, and I want to just take one last example on this, and that is on the issue of faith. You know, I am a proud Christian. And the...(APPLAUSE) I think there have been times -- there have been times where our Democratic Party did not reach out as aggressively as we could to evangelicals, for example, because the assumption was, well, they don't agree with us on choice, or they don't agree with us on gay rights, and so we just shouldn't show up. And when you don't show up, if you're not going to church, then you're not talking to church folk. And that means that people have a very right-wing perspective in terms of what faith means and of defining our faith...And as somebody who believes deeply in the precepts of Jesus Christ, particularly treating the least of these in a way that he would, that it is important for us to not concede that ground. Because I think we can go after those folks and get them.

In a previous post, Mark noted Huckabee’s similar performance among born again voters in Iowa (46 percent) and South Carolina (43 percent) and wondered if the religious differences among evangelicals haven’t been overstated. This is a good point: Evangelicals may be more alike than different in the context of a Republican primary.

But a look at all the contests to date suggests a more nuanced picture. Huckabee did get about the same proportion of the born-again vote in the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary, but his margin was much larger in Iowa (27 percentage points over Romney) than in South Carolina (16 percentage points over McCain). In the New Hampshire primary, Huckabee and McCain tied among born-again voters (28 percent each), while Romney outpolled Huckabee among them in the Michigan primary (34 to 29 percent) and in the Nevada caucuses (39 to 22 percent).

Surely lots of factors influenced these results, but it is quite plausible that the kinds of evangelicals in these states mattered as well. Put another way, Huckabee may have a special access and appeal to certain kinds of evangelicals and does best where they are thickest on the ground. In the nomination contests, access may be more important than appeal. Due to the penurious state of his campaign, Huckabee has had to rely on grassroots networks among evangelicals and these networks may not reach all kinds of evangelicals equally well. The more diverse the evangelicals in a state, the harder they are to reach.

In his article on the looming Jan. 29 Florida Republican primary in today's New York Times, Adam Nagorney writes, "About a quarter of the Republican voters in Florida are evangelical Christians." That seemed low to me, so I inquired of trusty fellow blogger John Green, and here's his assessment:

It does sound low. Evangelicals make up about 25 percent of the adult population in FL and since they are very Republican, they should bulk a good bit larger in the GOP primary electorate. Interestingly, they are about the same percentage of the adult population as in Iowa. So turnout is an issue and hard to predict.

Take a moment and read the text of Barack Obama's speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church today. It's as a good an argument as exists today for the unwisdom of trying to keep religion out of politics in America, and as good an example of how to get it right.

A certain amount has been made--including in this blog--about the differences among evangelicals from one part of the country to another, and between Iowa and South Carolina in particular. It's worth noting, then, that performance of evangelicals in those states, most importantly with respect to their candidate, was all but identical. White evangelicals constituted the same portion of the primary vote (better than half), and just about the same portion of them voted for Huckabee (in the mid-40 percent range). What this suggests is that the differences--for example, between more charismatic types in Iowa and more Southern Baptist types in South Carolina--just don't matter that much anymore when it comes to politics. Back in 1988, when Pat Robertson (charismatic) got clobbered in SC, they did. Check out the details, for Iowa and South Carolina.

The exit polls show that Huck more or less remains contained within the evangelical box. The Catholics in SC just had little use for him, and although there aren't many in the state (14 percent) they preferred McCain to Huck by nearly four to one--more than enough to carry him to victory. Some of Huck's populist message made its mark; he was the choice of the rather small proportion of South Carolinians who believe they're losing ground economically, as well as of the least affluent Republican voters. The problem for him, however, is that the GOP is not the party of the poor. Thompson did pretty well, and had he not been on the ballot and Huck picked up his proportionate share of Thompson's evangelicals, that would have been enough to win. It almost makes you think that Thompson will hang in as the good establishment Republican soldier he's always been at least through Super Tuesday, to keep Huck down. But regardless--and contrary to my earlier prediction--the closeness of the finish and the absence of anyone else as even a close third suggest that Huck can soldier on pretty smartly, at least in Dixie.

According to a CNN entrance poll, Hillary Clinton won among Catholics and Protestants with 54 and 58 percent of the vote respectively. Obama garnered the most votes among those who self identified as “Other Christian”, “Other Religion” , and “No Religion”. (56, 48, and 44 %) CNN interviewed 1098 voters.

This, from the AP's "entrance" poll in Nevada:

RELIGION COUNTS

About a quarter of Nevada GOP voters were Mormon, and virtually all of them preferred Mitt Romney. Overall, about half of Romney's Nevada votes came from Mormons. Among non-Mormons, he had a slight lead over Ron Paul. National polls have shown that his Mormon religion is a problem for significant numbers of Republican voters. Romney and Mike Huckabee were doing best among white born-again and evangelical Christians.

Last night, Mitt Romney appeared on the Tonight Show with Leno. Leno asked Michigan's favorite son about how faith influences voters. Romney’s response seemed to paint a rosy picture for South Carolina.

"JAY LENO: Religion seem to be an issue. I don't get why it is. I don't see why religion really matters, but does it seem like it's an issue to you? Is it something you have to address constantly on the campaign trail? Or do you find most people just

MITT ROMNEY: I think people want a person of faith leading the country. They want a person who they think, if there's inspiration needed, inspiration will be received, but I don't think they select their president or their secular leader based on which church they go to. So as I go across the country, there are probably some who feel that way, but most believe that we should be talking about religious tolerance and recognize that this is the nation that has a religious liberty that is very different than the nations we see around the world. If you're not a Shia in some places, you can't be a political leader. We don't choose our leaders that way."

We shall see…

So what will it be for Mike Huckabee in SC--the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? If he doesn't beat out John McCain for the win, the obits will start to roll in: He wasn't ready for prime time, the GOP establishment laid him low, he couldn't build out from his base of evangelicals, etc. If he does prevail, the Republican race only becomes more of a mare's nest, with Huck poised to pick up a bundle of delegates across the GOP heartland come Super Tuesday and become firmly established as a player for the duration of the campaign. On the road in Greenville, David Brody reports that Huck's stump speech is now "all about lower taxes, energy independence and talk about how middle class America is being squeezed." Meanwhile, in today's New York Times David Kirkpatrick and Michael Powell portray our hero as "poised between pulpit and podium"--working to meld a religious and secular appeal. In the South, where white evangelicals are the norm in the GOP, the question is not so much whether Huck can broaden his base beyond them as whether he can make himself sufficiently broadly appealing to what is in fact a fairly wide array of folks, ranging from establishment types to pedal-to-the-metal all-values-all-the-time voters. The final ARG poll shows McCain down and Huck and Thompson up--high volatility all around. This is a big day.

I'm in Chicago, too tied up to blog. So check out Salon's package on Huck's religion for now.

Politico's Ben Smith has this story on how Senator Clinton has worked hard to sure up the support of many Jewish voters. Smith feels this will give her a leg up in Nevada, California, New Jersey and New York.

“Like so many other once skeptical constituencies, Hillary Rodham Clinton has won over Jewish voters,” said New York Democratic Rep. Anthony D. Weiner, who has endorsed her. “She is the favorite of the community now.”

The Baltimore Sun’s Michael Hill has jumped on the “Obama’s church” bandwagon. His piece focuses on Barack's tenuous embrace as a member of the Trinity Church of Christ and the inflammatory messages of Rev. Wright. Will this help or hurt him in South Carolina pews?

Those seeking a quick respite from the presidential race should turn their attention to Justice Ginsburg’s remarks on her Jewish ancestry. It is a worthwhile insight into the role of her faith in our nation’s highest court.

I'm afraid this is must-see TV. Reactions all over the place, but this, from National Review's Lisa Schiffren, is of particular note.

What about rendering unto Ceaser that which is Ceaser's, and unto God that which is God's? Mike Huckabee is going to force those of us who have wanted more religion in the town square to reexamine the merits of strict separation of church and state. He is the best advertisement ever for the ACLU. Even if you share his ultimate views on the definition of marriage, or the desirability of abortion on demand.

The take-away from Michigan so far as religion is concerned is that more born-again white Protestants--as good a screen for evangelicals as you could want--voted for Romney than for Huckabee, according to the exit poll. How does this square with the finding in the recent ABC/Washington Post national poll that Romney's Mormonism really really dampens evangelicals' enthusiasm for voting for him. (Specifically, the differential among those evangelicals more and less enthusiastic by the prospect of the first Mormon president was minus 39 points.) The point is that just because some characteristic of a candidate makes you less enthusiastic doesn't mean you won't vote for him. Take McCain's age; maybe in China it would have enhanced enthusiasm levels, but not in the U.S. In any event, Romney's ability to more than hold his own among evangelicals, at least in a state where he's sort of known and that's suffering economically, should be of some comfort to him. Meanwhile, Huck's inability to break out of the box of super-frequent churchgoing born-agains in Northern places like NH and Michigan must be giving his folks serious heartburn.

On the one hand, there's Richard Cohen's column in today's Washington Post chastising Obama for belonging to a church that put Louis Farrakhan on its cover last year. It's guilt by association and smells strongly of Clinton oppo research and doesn't reflect very well on Cohen--but is reasonably fair game nonetheless. If your church singles out Farrakhan for that kind of acclaim, well, you've got to respond. On the other hand, here's Jonathan Raban's account of what Obama got in the way of homiletic vision from the pastor of that church, Jeremiah Wright. It''s the opposite of the Farrakhan message of exclusivist black nationalism, stressing the coming together of all humankind. What Raban appears not to recognize is that Wright hardly came up with that millennial ideal himself. In the black church it's just a recent, impressive
articulation of an African-American civil religious trope that is at least a century old--the most important articulation of which is, of course, Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream."

Update: Greg Sargent of Talking Point memo obtained this unequivocal response from Obama:

I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.

The latest polls (for example here) show Huckabee and McCain splitting the evangelical vote in South Carolina, and it seems fair to wonder why. After all, wasn't it John McCain who, after getting trounced by George W. Bush in the Palmetto State in 2000, insulted that voting bloc by calling Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson "agents of intolerance"? Yes, but that was before 9/11. Back in October, the AP's Eric Gorski wrote an important story showing how the war against "radical Islam" (aka "Islamofascism") had emerged--or was being pushed--as an issue for evangelical voters. As in Gary Bauer:"The war against Islamofascism is in many respects a 'values issue.' That may seem like an odd statement at first glance, but, as I have often said, losing Western Civilization to this vicious enemy would be immoral." Or Rick Scarborough: "It's the ultimate life issue. If radical Islam succeeds in its ultimate goals, Christianity ceases to exist."

This has now become the McCain talking point with evangelicals in South Carolina. Here from Saturday's Washington Post piece on evangelicals in SC, is McCain supporter Lindsey Graham: "'People of faith want a candidate who can beat radical Islam,' Graham said, touting McCain's war experience." And here's McCain himself, speaking on Hannity and Colmes last week: "Our evangelicals fear more than anything else this rise of radical Islamic extremism. The word isn't 'fear,' they're deeply concerned about it."

So there it is: McCain's the guy best equipped to defeat Islam--ah, make that Islamism. How many values voters will prove susceptible to that claim and tip away from Huckabee remains to be seen. The way to see it will be via cross-tabulating white evangelicals and issues on the SC exit poll. Look for evangelicals who rank terrorism first to be voting for McCain.

As South Carolina nears its 15 minutes of fame this Saturday, Politico's David Paul Kuhn highlighted conservatives’ tensions in the palmetto state. Likely republicans voters are struggling to decide whether Mike Huckabee’s religious conservatism eclipses John McCain’s strength on defense. Interviewing a married couple, Paul Kuhn showed the ideological divisions that have characterized the GOP race,

"Robert: “I like McCain’s integrity and his record.”
Beth, leaning toward Huckabee, hesitated. “I can’t describe it,” she said. “I just like what he stands for.”
Robert looked over at his wife and asked if it was “because he’s a former pastor.”
“That’s partly it,” she quietly replied, nodding affirmatively as they walked into church.”

Molly Ball's story in today's Las Vegas Review-Journal follows Obama campaigning around southern Nevada, including a visit to a COGIC congregation where the pastor did not disguise his political preference.

Obama had a full Sunday in Southern Nevada, first making a surprise appearance at a downtown black church, where he spoke at the end of the service.

Before he arrived, the pastor of the Pentecostal Temple Church of God in Christ, speaking from the pulpit, advocated for Obama, possibly breaking the law. Pastor Leon Smith told the congregation that "the more he (Obama) speaks, the more he wins my confidence, and ... if the polls were open today, I would cast my vote for this senator."

He urged them to do the same, saying, "If you can't support your own, you're never going to get anywhere. ... I want to see this man in office."

Under federal tax law, nonprofits such as churches are prohibited from endorsing or opposing political candidates. The Internal Revenue Service has ruled that the forbidden partisan activity includes speech from the pulpit that indicates the church favors a particular candidate.

The campaign said the pastor simply had made supportive statements about Obama's record. The church could not be reached late Sunday.

As Obama took the stage, the church choir of mostly red-jacketed women swayed behind him, breaking into song at the word "change," the Obama campaign's byword.

Obama spoke to the congregation of more than 400 for more than 20 minutes. He told them about his home congregation in Chicago and his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who is somewhat controversial for his black-separatist views.

The Republican campaign story in today's Greenville News leads with Huckabee denying his campaign is about religion after preaching at two services at a North Spartanburg megachurch. Distinguishing what he may believe about who gets into heaven from whom he can work with here on earth he pointed to his own campaign.

He said he has Muslims, Jews and people with other religious backgrounds who disagree with his theology on his campaign staff, and that doesn't hinder him from having a good working relationship with them.

And speaking of guilt by association, here's an email obtained by the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, apparently circulating among Michigan Republicans, tarring Huckabee with being anti-Catholic.

Politico's Jeanne Cummings, an old Atlanta Journal Constitution colleague of mine, has a good piece on Obama's version of faith-based politicking. She rightly signals his biggest innovation, the "faith forums" his campaign has organized in caucus and primary states around the country. To wit:

Just as in Iowa, faith forums are a component of Obama’s South Carolina religious outreach: his campaign set out to hold them in more than 30 counties. The events were open to all denominations — and even non-churchgoers — and the conversation focused on how faith influences people’s view on issues.

About a thousand people attended those combined events. Among them was the Rev. Joe Darby, pastor of Charleston’s Morris Brown AME Church, who attended two sessions and was struck by their stimulating nature.

When a candidate meets with minister-backers, the focus is on what “we need to do to mobilize voters. It’s more political,” said Darby. In the Obama sessions, “the discussion was more about how your faith guides you on issues. I think that puts faith in the right perspective.”

The Greenberg Center's gimlet-eyed associate director, Andrew Walsh, has noted a certain fuzziness in this blog's picture of Mike Huckabee, and we're not the only ones having trouble getting our bearings when it comes to the former Arkansas gov. Part of the problem is that Huck is rather a work in progress as a national political figure, and some the positions that once seemed to distinguish him as a different kind of Republican candidate--for example, his approach to illegal immigrants--now, in his more evolved state as a presidential candidate, are not much in evidence, so to say.

He's also the Rashomon of the field, giving different impressions depending on where he's grabbed. Thus, Max Blumenthal's piece in the online Nation, "The Real Mike Huckabee," purports to reveal the Christian wacko behind the friendly scrim. It's mostly an exercise in guilt by association, with the associate being one Jay Cole, an old and ailing Baptist minister and radio talk show host from Fayetteville who expects the imminent return of Christ. It's conventional for leftish journalists to to try hang millennialism around the neck of all evangelical politicians, and Blumenthal embraces the convention. But there's nothing much to tie Huck himself to this theological outlook, other than Cole's say so. Still, the piece is worth a read.

Then there's David Kirkpatrick's survey of evangelical support for Huck in today's New York Times. The central claim is that while the old evangelical leaders are largely lukewarm towards Huck, the younger generation is on board. Whether it's the younger generation or the grass roots is not entirely clear, but the piece offers some good reporting on state organizing efforts, with some interesting asides on efforts by the Huckabee campaign to round up conservative Catholics. In principle, Huck's willingness to stand up for the less well off in society should be appealing to Catholics. The populism may come from different religious places, but, as Michael Kazin's recent biography of William Jennings Bryan makes clear, the Great Commoner himself cultivated the Catholic working class of his day, and pretty successfully.

Today, the Religion News Service's quote of the day comes from Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family's James Dobson, who in her capacity as chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force is leading a Pray for Election Day campaign. "We need God to be involved in this upcoming election," she said. "We want him to raise up righteous leaders, both in the Congress and the president. I believe this year will determine the future of our nation."

Yesterday, leaders of the possibly growing left wing of American evangelicalism issued a protest letter to the big media outlets complaining about the fact that, in the Iowa "entrance" poll and the NH exit poll, only participants on the Republican side were asked if they would describe themselves "as a born again or evangelical Christian." Why the polls did that is not a mystery, of course. The evangelical vote is a big factor on the GOP side--and after all, in recent general elections two-third to three-quarters of evangelicals have voted Republican. Still, there's been a lot of talk about the possibility that white evangelicals are going to start looking more closely at Democratic candidates, and one way to gauge that would be to see the extent to which they are voting in Democratic primaries. (Of course, it will be important to include the cross-tab for race, since most black churchgoers also consider themselves born again.) So, to the polling gurus, a hearty second from this blog. To be sure, the news may not turn out to be so good for the evangelical left--but we'll presume that those guys are big enough to deal with something other than Good News.

By way of addenda to John's overview of the religious breakdown of the NH vote (here for exit poll data), first one note on the GOP side. Huckabee far outstripped all other GOP candidates with more than one-third of the 9 percent of Republican voters who said they attended worship more than once a week; and at 21 percent finished a very respectable third among the weekly attenders. But the total of these most observant GOP voters does not exceed the number of evangelical voters supporting him. In short, it's not clear that Huckabee made any inroads among frequent attending non-evangelicals. Unavailable cross-tabs would give the precise answer, of course.

On the Democratic side, the most striking result is Obama's plurality among both the non-attenders and the most frequent ones, while Clinton prevailed among the, ah, lukewarm. Cf. Revelation 3:16: "So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth." Biblical editorializing aside, this raises an intriguing question about how Obama managed to win the extremes. (Note that there seem to have been too few "more than weeklies" among the Democrats to register.)

"...for the definition of marriage than the state of Massachusetts," Romney's new ad states.
Implicitly, it also reminds us that there is no greater battleground for the GOP nod than South Carolina.

AP's Eric Gorski maps out Huckabee's road to victory with evangelicals in South Carolina here.

Religion figured in important and differing ways into the victories of John McCain and Hillary Clinton in this weeks’ New Hampshire primary.

On route to a five-percentage point win over Mitt Romney (37 percent to 32 percent), McCain assembled a broad religious coalition. He won pluralities of white Protestants (35 percent to 31 percent), Catholics (39 percent to 36 percent), and unaffiliated voters (38 percent to 24 percent), besting second-place Romney everywhere but especially among the unaffiliated. He edged his rivals among weekly worship attenders--and also won among those that never attend. He also finished first among those who claimed that the religious beliefs of candidates mattered a “great deal.”

McCain ran ahead or broke even with third-place Mike Huckabee in all religious groups. Interestingly—and as Mark noted earlier on this blog, self-described white “born again or evangelical Christians” divided their ballots almost evenly between the top three GOP candidates. So McCain managed to overcome the religious divisions that appeared in the Iowa GOP caucuses and are evident in national polls.

The religious differences among the top Democratic candidates were larger. Clinton enjoyed a solid advantage among white Catholics (45 percent to 26 percent) in her two-percentage point victory over Barack Obama and edged him among white Protestants as well (40 percent to 33 percent). Obama prevailed among those with no religious affiliation (45 percent to 29 percent). John Edwards trailed behind in all these religious groups, doing best among Catholics and least well among Protestants.

Most interestingly, Obama did better than Clinton among both the most and the least religiously observant voters (a little like McCain, but with less success). Weekly worship attenders voted for him over Clinton 37 percent to 32 percent, and so did those who said they never attend worship, 39 percent to 35 percent. Obama’s strong support among younger voters, who are typically less observant, many be reflected in these numbers. The religious elements of Clinton’s coalition are reminiscent of John Kerry’s in the 2004 New Hampshire primary, while Obama’s may show traces of the broader coalition he assembled in the 2008 Iowa caucuses. I’ll toss the ball over to Mark for some further reflections on this.

Klinkner’s map about the Huckabee vote and Catholics counties in Iowa is pretty interesting. It fits well with what we know about the Huckabee vote from survey data. It may tell us more about the Huckabee campaign than anything else. He won a very large majority of Iowa counties, tapping into the “Protestant majority” in the Hawkeye state. But this pattern raises the issue of the fabled Catholic "swing" vote and whether it will stay in the GOP column in 2008. These data have their limitations, of course: We don't know if Romney actually got more Catholics or not, just that he did better in Catholic counties. Another thought: Catholics report very little hostility towards Mormons compared to evangelicals. So this map may be as much about evangelical skepticism toward a Mormon candidate as it is about Catholic wariness of an evangelical candidate.

How the GOP field will fare in South Carolina, with particular reference to the evangelical vote, is the subject of this piece in CNSNews.com. The central point is that the uninformed Yankee assumption that the Palmetto State will be easy pickings for Huckabee is well off the mark. The central idea is that evangelicals there are a different breed than in Iowa--more establishment, more militarily inclined, such that other candidates in the GOP field may give Huck a run for his money with them. Back when I was covering the 1988 presidential campaign for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, I remember only too well being fooled into thinking Pat Robertson would do real well in South Carolina after his stunning showing in Iowa. So shame on me if I get it wrong again. Then there's 2000, when McCain thought he could capture the state by appealing to its military retirees and ended up getting high-lowed by the Rove attack machine and the evangelicals. How much do the latter still hold his denunciation of Falwell and Robertson as "agents of intolerance" against him? Let it also be noted that CNSNews is a creature of Brent Bozell's Media Research Center, which is to say there's a bit of a Beltway conservative spin on what it does. In short, I'm prepared to go out on a limb and say that anything can happen in South Carolina.

What stands out re: religion in the New Hampshire exit polls is the revelation that Republican primary voters who described themselves as "a born-again or evangelical Christian" divided evenly for McCain (28 percent), Romney (27 percent), and Huckabee (28 percent). That Huckabee should have gotten just over one-quarter of them, as opposed to nearly a half in Iowa--and that Romney should have polled about as well among them as he did in the rest of the population--says a lot about what makes New England different. To put it simply, New Englanders tend to rebel against using religion as a criterion for voting. As my colleague Andrew Walsh emphasizes, this attitude derives from the region's long history of Irish-Yankee conflict, out of which came a recognition that conducting electoral politics on overtly sectarian lines was not a good thing. To be sure, New Hampshire's evangelicals disproportionately threw their votes to Brother Mike. But they did not punish Romney for his Mormonism. Indeed, they were more likely than the rest of the electorate to vote for Mitt than for the Episcopalian John McCain.

Good explainer of Huckabee's use of "vertical" by Daniel Radosh on Huffpost. As I said earlier, nothing to get all in a wad about.

A few days a ago Philip Klinkner at Polysigh showed that Huckabee tended to lose Iowa's Catholic-majority counties to Romney--signaling a problem for him moving forward to states with big Catholic populations. Yesterday Reuters did a story on Huck's outreach to Catholics in New Hampshire, where there are more Catholics than anyone. It seems too little too late--but clearly something to watch out for in places like Florida, land o' Schiavo.

In making a case for Huckabee's electability, Tim Lee writes:

I think a lot of members of the liberal (and libertarian) secular elite have a weird blind spot when it comes to religion and religious rhetoric in politics. They tend to find sincere religious sentiments so alien that anyone who is conversant with the language of faith sounds nutty to them. But like it or not, this is still a predominantly religious country, and lots of voters respond well to religious rhetoric of the non-angry variety.

Limbaugh sputters about Huck, and the evangelical outpost takes exception.

E.J. Dionne riffs nicely off Hillary Clinton's line about campaigning in poetry and governing in prose to distinguish her prosaic campaign style from Obama's soaring poetry. My preferred analogy is, surprise, religious. Obama preaches while Hillary teaches Sunday School. Nor do I think the poetry should stop when the election's over. When it comes to religion in the White House, Americans can live with a preacher--indeed, they hope for a certain amount of spiritual uplift from the president. But they don't like a Sunday School teacher. Take Jimmy Carter. Please. I am inclined to think, if Hillary were elected, the comparisons with Carter would soon start up: preoccupied with details, pious, censorious, prickly, not fun.

Lisa Lerer's piece, "Religious voters flock to Huckabee," in yesterday's Politico looks at the faith-based support for Huckabee in New Hampshire going beyond the evangelical. The problem is that, by the demographics, there isn't all that much available to him. But I'd add a caveat. My information is that Huck has spent a lot more time in NH than the media has generally recognized, and a good deal of it early on was in closed-door confabs with the Granite State's modest but not insignificant evangelical community. Is it possible that a disproportionate number of them will turn out for him, bumping his numbers up from a distant also-ran third-place finish to, say, a more than respectable 20 percent showing? If McCain and Romney fight each other to a draw in the neighborhood of 30 percent each, that might make Huck the GOP's NH story. I'm not holding my breath, but stranger things have happened.

P.S. For Huckabee doing the evangelical church thing Sunday in NH, see here.

Ah, yes. In his maiden New York Times column, Bill Kristol is making the case for Huckabee. This should be taken as recognition by the "foreign policy" wing of the GOP coalition, aka the neocon wing, that they can live with Huck. And why not? He's as close to orthodox on America abroad as they could want. He, like George W., brings ignorance to the table. So what's the problem? The problem, of course, lies with the Club for Growth types in the "economic" wing of the party--those political geniuses who mostly like to find places where they can prove that they matter. They'll find a way to come around too.

The point here is that Kristol, whose experience with the real GOP deal is deep, understands that social conservativism has, since 1980, been the engine driving Republican electoral success. And none of the other GOP candidates can deliver it in a way that will impel "values voters"--evangelicals--to the polls. For true political insiders, electoral success always matters most; it's got to. Huckabee bids fair to be the compassionate conservative that W. only talked about being. Faced with the prospect of Democratic control of both houses and the presidency, the GOP establishment will, sooner rather than later, grit its teeth and put their money down on Huck. The question is: How many time can they go to the same well?

Check out David Domke's disquisition on Huckabee's use of "horizontal" and "vertical" in discussing the kind of politics he's interested in promoting. There does seem to be some evangelical-speak at work here, and to the extent that it's familiar language to evangelicals, it counts for something. But the claim that this is coded language seems a bit of a stretch, especially understood in a sinister sense. True, it would not be the first time the Huckabee campaign has flirted with subliminality in its messaging. But you go into the public square with the language that brung you, no? And Huck's point in going vertical is pretty straightforward: let's get past the culture wars and provide some uplift. Real sinister.

From the latest Newsweek, Howard Fineman's take on Huckabee's religion, and why GOP insiders are freaking out. It's the conventional wisdom, but well spun, and the CW is not always wrong.

It may be too early to write the obit for Mitt Romney's campaign, especially on the morning after his victory--little noticed to be sure--in the Wyoming caucuses; but it's not too early to think about the role of anti-Mormonism in his Iowa showing and current wobbly fortunes. In the end, this is not going to be an easy question to answer, since a range of considerations are in play, not least his imperfect record as a social conservative. Would the evangelical rank and file have come around had there not been a Huckabee to win their hearts? There's a counterfactual to ponder. My sense, though, is that the evangelical rank and file had been looking for reasons not to support "the Mormon candidate," and that had Romney simply been an Episcopalian, say, he would have had a much easier time with them. All GOP candidates for president over the past two decades have had to tug the forelock before the pooh-bahs of the Religious Right. George H.W. Bush did 20 years ago, and John McCain did last year. But Romney had to work harder at it, and caught more flak for it. He finally gave his religion speech, but from this vantage point it does look like it was too little too late. In short: no JFK moment for Mormons this campaign cycle.

Shira Shoenberg's article in yesterday's Concord Monitor shows how successful Obama has been in conveying his religious side, as a person and as a candidate. Even the evangelical pastor, who wouldn't vote for any candidate who supports abortion rights, finds him a "genuinely spiritual person." The key quote is from a UCC minister and Obama supporter: "People talk about the Christian church and think right-wing fundamentalism," said the Rev. Leanne Tigert, a pastoral psychotherapist and United Church of Christ minister in Concord who supports Obama. "Obama has really opened up an avenue for many of us 'progressive people of faith' that says you don't speak for us. We are people of faith, we are pro-choice, pro-gay lesbian equality, civil rights. . . . He's giving us a voice." Mainline Protestants have been trending Democratic in recent elections. And there are still a lot of Mainline Protestants at large in America.

This doesn't have much to do with religion, but I find myself wondering at the claims of various pundits like the much maligned Joe Klein that Obama won because white Iowans succeeded in looking past the color of his skin. It seems to me that for some of those caucus-goers, Obama's race may actually have been a plus. Take the pundits themselves: Even the likes of Bill Bennett thinks it's really cool that a black guy can pull out such a win in so lily-white a state. Why shouldn't quite a few Iowans themselves have been pleased as punch to be able to push an African American toward the Democratic nomination? Of course they liked Obama's character and message and whatever. But the assumption that only "colorblind" white folks would vote for an African American seems profoundly mistaken--after all that America has been through to lay the ghost of slavery. And how appropriate that the man himself should be a Lincolnesque figure from the state of Illinois!

Just to touch base with religion here, there's one way that Obama's race has certainly worked in his favor. In American culture, everyone assumes that black folks are religious. And in this election cyle when Democrats are supposed to don the mantle of faith, Obama has had no problem convincing people that it's not just for show. Unfortunately, the dopey entrance pollers included no question on religion for the Democratic (as opposed to the Republican) caucus-goers. So we don't know the breakdown of support among the more religious caucusoids on the Democratic side. Bah.

In the second half of David Brooks column, he asserts that Huckabee's win last night could foreshadow a fundamental change in the party. While unlikely that Huckabee will make it to the convention, Brooks feels that Huckabee breathed new life into the Religious Right. Brooks:

" A conservatism that recognizes stable families as the foundation of economic growth is not hard to imagine. A conservatism that loves capitalism but distrusts capitalists is not hard to imagine either. Adam Smith felt this way. A conservatism that pays attention to people making less than $50,000 a year is the only conservatism worth defending."

Will Thomas of Huffpost has put two and two together and discovered that Ron Paul's polling firm was responsible for the anti-Mormon (and anti-MCCain) push polls in Iowa and New Hampshire. Given that Paul is the only presidential candidate listed on the website of the firm, Moore-Information, Inc., the conclusion seems obvious. I guess we now know where some of the big Paul fund-raising dollars have been going.

As anticipated, Mike Huckabee’s victory in the Iowa caucuses was fueled by support from religious conservatives. Huckabee received 46 percent of the votes of self-identified “born-again Christians” among the GOP caucus attenders, according to the National Election Pool “entrance” poll. In addition, he won 56 percent of those who said that “the candidate’s religious beliefs matter a great deal” and 44 percent of those who said the candidate “shares my values.”

The entrance polls found that 60 percent of the Republican caucus-goers were “born again or evangelical Christians,” which is much higher than the usual estimate that evangelicals make up 40 percent of Iowa Republicans. That hints that evangelical Republicans were considerably more motivated to turn out than their non-evangelical counterparts. But the figure must be viewed with some caution: Because of the limited number of religion questions on the entrance poll survey, these respondents may include other conservative Christians, such as traditional Catholics and Mainline Protestants—and even perhaps Mormons.

In one respect, the Huckabee victory resembles Pat Robertson’s second-place finish in Iowa in 1988: Both campaigns relied heavily on grassroots activity by evangelicals. In fact, Huckabee may have depended upon such “viral campaigning” to an even greater extent because the 1988 Robertson campaign was much better funded. But Huckabee had much broader support, winning first place with 34 percent of the ballots cast, compared to second place and 25 percent for Robertson in 1988. Huckabee won 76 of Iowa’s 99 counties, while Robertson won just 14.

There's lots to say, and to be said, but let it be noted here that the two candidates who most stressed religion won the Iowa caucuses.

Check out Pat Robertson reminiscing about his days as a Republican presidential hopeful in Iowa, at the end of David Brody's report from caucusland on the 700 Club. Lest you think the old guy's memory of his come-from-behind second-place finish has faded...

On December 30, the Birmingham News published this op-ed from Randy Brinson, chair of the Christian Coalition of Alabama. It's not exactly clear what Brinson is arguing, but he seems to want to put a little space between himself and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, who has dismissed as deceptive all Democratic efforts to incorporate religion into their campaigns. Perhaps the most interesting sentence is the following: "Republicans, too, have had a great deal of difficulty with the language of faith and what the Bible teaches Christians to do beyond homosexuality and abortion." What follows is an extended take-down of Mitt Romney, but nary a mention of Mike Huckabee. It's worth recalling that it was the Christian Coalition of Alabama that opposed Gov. Bob Riley's failed effort to make the state tax code fairer for the poor. In any event, I'd say that Brinson offers a case in point of the uncertainty reigning in Religious Right circles these days.

The AP has it that pastors supporting Huckabee have been receiving intimidating letters. The letters tell their recipients that becoming politically active could jeopardize their tax exempt status.

Rick Hertzberg rings the changes on Huck, Romney, and religion in the latest New Yorker. It's a lovely soufflé of an essay, light as air, pungent, with a pox-on-both-your-houses finish.

Back in the old days, political activity hostile to a religion--Catholicism mostly--took place in the darker corners of the public square, under names that said as much, like Know-Nothingism and "underground" and "whispering" campaigns. Now they take place in space accessible to anyone with keys to click and eyes to see. For a portrait of anti-Mormonism in and around the Huckabee blog, see Thomas Burr's story in today's Salt Lake Tribune.

Huckabee has a new ad out for Iowa. The message is on Huck's pro-life background and reminds Iowans that Mike is no Mitt.
Like the "floating cross" ad, this video has a Christian symbol in the background: an ichthys. Will this ad create the same media buzz like the Christmas commercial? We shall see...

The final Des Moines Register poll puts Huckabee up over Romney 32 percent to 26 percent. Given that the Republican caucuses (unlike the Democratic ones) function simply like a primary--you cast your vote and walk away--these numbers have to be regarded as pretty good. The most telling demographic is that nearly half of all likely GOP caucus-goers describe themselves as either born-again or fundamentalist Christians. Huckabee, of course, gets the lion's share of them. This all brings me back to 1988, when Pat Robertson came in second, stunning the George H.W. Bush campaign, and requiring then-governor John Sununu to bail the v.p. out in New Hampshire. Romney is a George H.W. kind of candidate--indeed, if you'll recall his introduction of Mitt for the College Station speech, you figure he is George H.W.'s candidate. But there's no Gov. Sununu who can ride to the rescue in New Hampshire, nor does Mitt have a Lee Atwater manning the firewall in South Carolina. And the evangelicals who poured out to support Pat in '88 are a lot more seasoned 20 years down the road. In other words, I'm not looking for Huckabee to be Romneyed the way Robertson was Bushwacked.

Shira Schoenberg has been on the religion-and-politics beat for the Concord Monitor. Check out her recent stories on how New Hampshire evangelicals and others are bringing their religious commitments to bear on their primary votes -- here and here, and here.