What does the failed presidential run of Mike Huckabee teach us about the standing of Evangelicals in politics today? A great deal, I think. And as I embark on two posts devoted to this issue permit me to conjure up a handy slogan. Repeat it to yourself like a mantra, meditate upon it while you're on the elliptical machine, set it to the melody of the song “Maria” from The Sound of Music if you so desire. But remember: Evangelicals are not necessarily in crisis, they are in flux.
Let’s begin with Huck. A few things about his campaign are striking, most notably how long it took Evangelicals to cotton to the former governor. He announced his candidacy on Meet the Press on January 28th, 2007. Yet it was not until the fall that he made the move from the B-List to the A-List of GOP contenders. (The turning point perhaps being his second-place showing at the "Values Voters Summit" in October)
This begs the question: why was he ignominiously relegated to the Tom Tancredo/Duncan Hunter division of the GOP for nine months? More to the point, given that there was no other Evangelical alternative on the ballot, why did his co-religionists not embrace him from the outset?
Even more to the point, why did they not embrace him when the alternatives were a pro-Choice Catholic with “issues,” a representative from a religion (i.e., Mormonism) that many Evangelicals viewed with extreme suspicion, and a Straight Talker from a Mainline denomination who once famously lashed out against the Christian Right?
Adding to the mystery is that fact that Huckabee gave Evangelicals everything that we assume they want. On the litmus test issues of abortion and gay marriage he performed swimmingly. He was also extraordinarily affable, humorously self-effacing, and at ease on the stump. He was a likable guy running for president. Americans love likable guys who run for president. Just ask John Kerry or Michael Dukakis.
Yet, Evangelicals did not warm to him until the end of baseball season. But what is most fascinating--and not often discussed-- is that even when Huck started garnering national attention, even when he acquired a reputation as a “Christly” candidate, even as football season drew to its ineluctable and regrettable close, our free-thinking Evangelical friends still did not wholeheartedly embrace him.
This last claim seems astonishingly counter-intuitive. But a glance at the following raw statistics cobbled together from entrance and exit polls indicates that more Evangelicals voted against Huckabee than for him. When my student research assistant, Andrew from Indiana, brought this to my attention, I ordered him to go back and re-check his figures. But Andrew from Indiana was on to something (though the numbers strike us both as a bit shaky):
Table 16 D: Percentage of self-described Republican White Evangelicals or Born-Agains who voted for Mike Huckabee
Arizona 15%
Alabama 48%
California 6%
Georgia 41%
Illinois 25%
Iowa 47%
Massachusetts 17%
Michigan 29%
Missouri 43%
New Hampshire 28%
Tennessee 38%
Utah 12%
By no stretch of the imagination did Huckabee rock the Evangelical vote. This is one of the great enigmas of 2008. Why did an Evangelical politician advocating the issues that supposedly obsess Evangelicals receive such a tardy and underwhelming reception? Perhaps this is a sign that something is in flux.
Jacques Berlinerblau is the Rabbi Harold White Chair in Jewish Civilization in Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior advisor to the Center for Jewish Civilization, where he was director from 2006 to June 2020. Berlinerblau has published on a wide variety of issues ranging from the sociology of heresy and modern Jewish intellectuals to African-American and Jewish-American relations.
