At the Values Voter Summit, held this past weekend in Washington, Mike Huckabee gave a speech that confirmed his status as the best orator among the Republican presidential candidates. "The audience seemed ready to follow this presidential long shot into the lion's den," writes Rich Lowry. What struck me about the speech was not just that it gripped the audience, but that it was more explicitly religious than what Huckabee normally offers on the stump.
Consider: "I come today as one not who comes to you, but as one who comes from you. You are my roots." Those roots are religious, as Huckabee indicated in his next sentences, which dealt with his years as a Baptist pastor."I'm very tired of hearing people who are unwilling to change the Constitution [to ensure the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman], but seem more willing to change the holy word of God as it relates to the definition of marriage."
"We do not [have] the right to move the standards of God to meet new cultural norms. We need to move the cultural norms to meet God's standards."
"I think it's important that the language of Zion is a mother tongue and not a recently acquired second language." In context, Huckabee was referring to the kind of mother tongue a presidential candidate should have. And which he then proceeded to display, invoking the stories of Daniel and Goliath, of Elijah and the prophets of Ba'al; of Jesus stopping the storm in the Sea of Galilee; of Jesus opening the eyes of the man born blind so that he could see; of Jesus, with little to work with, feeding the 5,000 and having leftovers; of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.
Huckabee, who speaks without benefit of a speechwriter, engaged in some religious identity politics, which is not without its problems. The on-site straw vote confirmed his primo status among the social conservatives (most of them evangelicals) attending the summit. Huckabee is clearly hoping that how the values voters regarded him is representative of how the party's social conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere will regard him when the primaries take place. And note this: In 2004, weekly chuch-attending evangelical Protestants made up 22.8 percent of the Bush coalition - more than any other religiously defined group.
A postscript: Huckabee's speech also illustrates why Mormonism remains a problem for the Mormon candidate, Mitt Romney. Our politics seem now to require that presidential candidates do some religious identity politicking, which includes some reference to faith or a "faith journey." But how - being a Mormon in a country with a substantial percentage of its citizens opposed to electing a Mormon because they object to Mormonism - would Romney do that? This is the conundrum doubtless being weighed in the Romney inner circle. One thing's for sure: Romney could not take to the podium, as Huckabee did at the Values Voter Summit, and say, "I come today as one not who comes to you, but as one who comes from you."
Of course, Romney could authentically speak about Zion, though not in the way Huckabee meant it.
