Huckabee on Christian Conservative Leaders

Via World Magazine:

Prominent Christian leaders have been slow to embrace Huckabee, and [Gary] Bauer told WORLD that his primary concern is the candidate's electability in the upcoming primaries.

In a private meeting with supporters after his speech, Huckabee expressed frustration over Christian leaders' reticence to back him: "It's a little bit like a soldier who goes to war and his own army won't give him the supplies he needs to win."

But evangelicals at the conference handed Huckabee a huge win over the weekend: In a straw poll conducted by the FRC, Huckabee garnered 51 percent of those who voted on-site, swamping every other candidate. Romney trailed in second place with 10 percent of the on-site vote. (The FRC allowed online voting as well, and Romney edged Huckabee by 30 votes in the overall tally.)

In my opinion, there is a demonstrable rift between the so-called "Christian Leaders," and the Christians they are presumed to be leading. That rift is essentially that the aforesaid leaders are pursuing pragmatism, whereas those who are not leaders are pursuing principle. The leaders are openly skeptical of Huckabee (for unprincipled reasons, I might add), but nevertheless the voice of those attending the Values Voter Summit handed Huckabee a resounding amount of support.

Huckabee Gaining National Steam

According to a recently released Rasmussen poll, Gov. Huckabee has reached double digits in national polling for the first time. Huckabee receives 10% of national support for the Republican nomination. This may look like a small number, but the indication is that Huckabee is trending upward on a consistent basis.

Consider, for example, an important fact: there are at least some conservatives who, having previously written Huckabee off, are beginning to give him a second look. There is a growing swell of frustration with the pragmatic attitudes being adopted by conservative "leaders." The tide seems to be turning a bit as person after person abandons the pragmatic deception, and turns back to principled thinking. If that happens more, the other candidates will begin to lose some of their support as some of their less than happy supporters warm to Gov. Huckabee's princpled conservative campaign.

One example of conservatives who are beginning to warm to Huckabee is the tripartite endorsement from Christian bloggers Justin Taylor, Joe Carter, and Matthew Anderson. Having previously bought into the pragmatic notion of electability, these three have now come out in support of Mike Huckabee. They write:

For several months we have admired the scrappy campaign of Gov. Huckabee but believed it would be a wasted effort to support him with our time, energy, and finances. We bought into the notion that he could never get the GOP nomination since conservative voters would not support him. And the reason we were told conservative voters would never support him is because he could not get the nomination. To quote John Piper (from a different context), "It’s like the army being defeated because there aren’t enough troops, and the troops won’t sign up because the army’s being defeated."

We can no longer sit idly by and allow the campaign of a worthy candidate and an honorable man to flounder for lack of support.

So far, Huckabee has been able to avoid the negative attack politics that permeates the process. As he gains steam, however, I would not be surprised to see the other candidates and their supports begin to take attack shots at him. That would be a true indicator that Hucakbee is not only a threat, but a major threat.