Huckabelievers: Don't find yourself Huckstered--his excuses are weak

It seems like every time Huckabee opens his mouth about Mitt Romney and the Mormon Church recently, he needs two or three excuses to explain what he said, why he didn't say something else, why he waited so long to say it, etc. It seems like if someone is always needing excuses for it, it might be a bad sign about what he seems to be talking about. And unfortunately one of the things he has talked about lately is that he was concerned about one of Mormonism's doctrines.

And it seems the larger religion of which he is an active part, evangelical Christianity, is also quite often coming up with excuses about why it is that even mentioning a candidate's religion in a political campaign is appropriate, much less their dubious stance toward these other ideologies. They particularly attempt to justify why some of them oppose members of those groups in primaries in their own party, often causing the democrat to win as a result.

These groups as I mentioned sometimes respond to what little scrutiny they receive about the issue with the concern that Mormons, belonging to a church named 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' since its inception in 1830, are not Christian. But would this concern fly about a Jewish candidate? Evangelical attitudes seem the same toward a number of other groups to which the 'not Christian' label wouldn't ever apply, including Judaism and Islam, with slams on new-ageism, paganism and whatever 'ism they can think of on top sounding extremely similar.

If I had to guess it is just an instinctual response to anything that presents ideological competition for these religions to scare their faithful into action. And the use of preaching is a much wider mechanism for interaction with the flock. Billy Graham participated in a documentary alleging that discount stores were threatening the souls of unsuspecting budget shoppers. But the fact is that preaching at the pulpit is an effective way to clarify any threat from any evil, in this case against threatening candidates, and pointedly do so when the collection plate goes around also helps I imagine.

And but it is important to distinguish that using this threat as an excuse is baffling because, unless candidates are really running in a race of religion and there is not actually a wider body of political philosophy that unifies conservatives, Mormon candidates pose no loss of political power as would perhaps a pro-choice candidate.

Thus the fact that they believe there should be some kind of showdown when a candidate is among the less tolerated groups highlights the fact that some factions on the right DO think that it is perhaps not really a political contest but a religious one. The larger party, which does not feel this way, should of course be careful giving any such sanction--after all this is one of the spectres the left waves to attract voters away from our party. We would bring that spectre to life if we indulged such excuses.

Thus holding the religiously intolerant to account to avoid these problems will have wider implications than just this election. But this election itself will make it much harder to turn a blind eye, particularly recent attention to statements made by Mike Huckabee a 'religious conservative' and former preacher himself. If those like Huckabee continue to make ridiculous statements about Mormons, eventually they will attract enough of this negative attention to party infighting that no one will ever forget that crazy cousin party leaders keep trying to hide in the political family.

I think Huckabee was relying on just this practice of turning a blind eye to evangelicals' issues when he made recent statements about Romney's faith. Probably many heard about it; I did, and I don't follow the whole sad saga of GOP primaries closely. But others, and not just Mormons or their friends, found Huckabee's recent claims dubious. He said that he was inclined to be tolerant and fair toward Romney and Mormons personally, but that he was concerned that Mormons held the view that Christ and Lucifer were brothers. Just concerned, that is all.

Right. I am at best skeptical here. Without a better explanation than that, this 'concern' makes much more sense as a deliberate slander on Mormons in general and Romney in particular as his rival. I am sure that Huckabee and his people are somehow aware of how easy it is to stir up this animosity and fear among those who are so inclined toward Mormonism, and rather than to choose a high profile moment to rise above it, he instead jumped in the fray.

So that's the reason just being concerned about Mormonism, doesn't wash. If Huckabee were actually interested (even concerned) about this issue, he wouldn't have had to raise it with Romney himself in the context of a national political election.

Any average, every-day Mormon has some kind of an answer to this question, precisely because it has been asked so long and so often by similar detractors. Any church representative of average learning or expression could give a fairly basic explanation of their thinking that all beings living or otherwise are siblings on the spirit level. Basically anyone that has a name--Lucifer, Jesus, Sally, Arnold, anyone--is the spirit brother or sister of any other, because all of us call God 'Father.' That doesn't speak to whether Sally or Arnold are spiritually identical, even humans have the equivalent of some kind of half siblings, so their is plenty of conceptual room for an understanding that the belief that having a common father can make brother and sister of various spirit entities in a way that even if not consistent with their personal views of God or the human soul, few people would find 'concerning' if explained in this way.

Thus it would be very easy for someone to understand at least how Mormons themselves feel about this issue without the necessity creating some strange association of Jesus Christ with the devil at the national level to besmirch a candidate in a GOP primary. It is very easy for any basically intellectual person to get the whole story on this issue without raising it in this type of debate.

I also doubt the validity of his second excuse, that Huckabee felt compelled to make this statement about Mormon doctrine because he feared silence would imply acceptance. Somehow, though, most high-status members of the GOP, such as Reagan who has spoken warmly of the Mormon church at BYU, and George Bush senior who welcomed Romney to speak on this topic at his library (and both who have met amicably with Mormon church leadership), have been able to avoid coming down on either side of the issue. No one was confused that these presidents might be closet Mormons if they neglected to speak harshly on one of the church's possible doctrines. The last four presidents, actually, have been extremely positive about Mormons in general without feeling obligated to endorse or even mention any specific doctrine or other.

Nothing really makes sense here except Huckabee's eagerness or at least willingness to make some kind of cheap shot to access ambient negativity toward Mormonism among his potential supporters. The GOP continues to allow this, and this is perhaps why they often give excuses of their own that don't wash. There seems to be the belief that in general Mormons are an expendable group and no hardened secular politician will grieve for them if they are out of the party. They are consolidated in western states we don't need, etc.

Even if GOP leaders were to think such states of affairs are unfortunate, they must use the excuse for inaction that doing anything is hopeless, because it is obvious that evangelicals among them tolerate Mormonism less than losing political control. But if the GOP were willing to talk about this problem in the open, the obvious either or fallacy in their thinking would emerge: Mormon conservatives should not just be assumed damaged goods for risk of angering evangelical constituents; in fact, appealing to the reasonable among evangelical groups would clearly benefit all parties. These Mormon candidates (at least the conservative ones) would actually wield that power in a manner more highly favorable to many evangelical political objectives, more so than even the statistical average among their evangelical brothers, and definitely more so than the resulting democrat they may help into office.

In fact it is easy to point to elections that Mormons win, in a wide variety of states. And they are particularly able to win in states when a large contingent of out of state religious conservatives doesn't come around with their usual anti-Mormon tracting. So this would be an easy one: leave your proselyting for your missionaries--the Mormons do. Not one of the members campaigns for any candidate as part of their church affairs, they wouldn't risk their tax exemption among other things.

But there is the state of Mormons and then their direction. As they are, Mormons are an increasingly untapped leadership resource, that if the GOP continues to automatically rule out, will be a big waste. Mormons are the MOST Republican of ALL GROUPS (Yes of course I know that there are exceptions--even one in ten is a very strong conservative trend though that ten percent represent a large number of people). In the 2000 election, for example, about 90% of the voters in Utah cast for Bush. It was the third election in a row in which the democrat came in THIRD (remember Perot?) in that state. I would think that the party faithful would think this tendency made the Mormon component of conservatism to be desired and cultivated rather than thrown to the dogs.

Mormon percentage of the population could even grow and even out among the states. A presence within the party that is enthusiastically supportive of both party candidates and principles you would think that the GOP would cultivate and emulate rather than automatically subject it to capricious abuse to keep them from running or worse voting.

Another GOP excuse might be that they don't really know any very well on the east coast, but surely Mormons are pretty creepy, right? I think we need to go no further than two words: Mitt Romney. In fact, Mormon Republicans are like Romney, among the most user-friendly conservatives around. They don't tend to have quite as many skeletons in the closet that will come out on election eve like that DUI that everyone hoped would just go away. No MAJOR behavioral and character flaws like some of the conservative ideological leaders have been embarrassing the party with. (And though Rush Limbaugh has been making many of these points like a champ, this one he has avoided, for obvious reasons).

I am not saying that Mormons are perfect--they aren't. And in fact a fair criticism of Mormons (that I will even admit to myself) tends to be of their hypocrisy because of their high standards. We do have a pretty long and strict list of behavior and character restrictions, and so of course we will have a hard time living up to all of them. The fact that Mormons are not perfect is fair and I won't argue (even though it really is obvious and thus unhelpful)--but for GOP leaders looking for candidates to prop up, it is at least somewhat handy that Mormons have these high aspirations in the first place. They tend to at least limit the amount of say substance abuse, womanizing, or gambling that any GOP candidate or intellectual will obviously get rubbed into his face.

So what I am saying is that although true, the excuse by anyone that Mormons don't live up to their own standards 100%, having those standards at all allows GOP leadership some amount of comfort that a Mormon candidate, increasingly a higher and higher percentage of the true-believing conservatives out there, won't end up with some horrible failing to sabotage them at the last minute, or the first minute for that matter.

It is so hilarious to watch the likes of Chris Matthews, with obvious tedious frustration that there is little to smear Romney with. ('Moderate' candidate fans, like those for Guiliani and McCain, just wait until after the primary to see the big party the media has pulling them down because of their personal lives, and I hope you will be happy to at least have gotten rid of Romney). But for now, I think assuming that he won't be the candidate and they have to use all their dirt now, Matthews keeps running shows with his own excuse that he has nothing to smear him with: Who IS this Mitt Romney? What do we REALLY know about him? (He tries to sound as if he hasn't actually been trying REALLY HARD to get to know Mitt Romney, at least to dig up some amount of dirt on him).

But more importantly for the party, even if Mormons must remain a necessarily untapped resource for conservatives for whatever excuse that well they just seem oh-so-unsavory, there are those eager to point highlight the situation and say that it represents wider superstitious bigotry on the right, to the detriment of all conservatives and the GOP, even though the left are no great fans of Mormons themselves.

My feeling is that at least one of these people is going to eventually get sick of using tired excuses and someday decide to do something about the tanking Mormon candidates get from those in their own party. When this is addressed we will not only have some increasingly better candidates to run, but we will honestly, without excuses, be able to say that we stand up for freedom of religion, and that we value a candidate's faith but don't evaluate it in the voting booth. What the evangelicals are doing would change that and no one will be happier than the democrats.