Much of the national leadership of the Christian conservative movement has turned a cold shoulder to the Republican presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, wary of his populist approach to economic issues and his criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But that has only fired up Brett and Alex Harris.
The Harris brothers, 19-year-old evangelical authors and speakers who grew up steeped in the conservative Christian movement, are the creators of Huck’s Army, an online network that has connected 12,000 Huckabee campaign volunteers, including several hundred in Michigan, which votes Tuesday, and South Carolina, which votes Saturday.
They say they like Mr. Huckabee for the same reason many of their elders do not: “He reaches outside the normal Republican box,” Brett Harris said in an interview from his home near Portland, Ore.
The brothers fell for Mr. Huckabee last August when they saw him draw applause on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” for explaining that he believed in a Christian obligation to care for prenatal “life” and also education, health care, jobs and other aspects of “life.” “It is a new kind of evangelical conservative position,” Brett Harris said. Alex Harris added, “And we are not going to have to be embarrassed about him.”
IMHO, Mr. Huckabee is being used as a red herring to force the religion issue. To underestimate the strength of Evangelicals as a political group can be a very costly mistake. I believe that he is the ‘threat’ to the other candidates to make sure that they address issues important to American evangelicals
Governor Huckabee may be the candidate many of us Traditional Catholics have been praying and hoping for–one who is both pro-life and pro-traditional family as well as willing to use government to better the lot of the poor and working classes.
But the liberal Mass Media seems determined to avoid any mention of this angle of the presidential election story. Gov. Romney also falls in this category (he got health care insurance for all started in Mass.)
These two candidates blow to bits the carefully nurtured and fraudulent liberal media bias and stereotype that pro-lifers (whether Evangelical or Catholic) care only for life before birth.
I think Brian is right, and I’m glad for it.
I think deaconjohn is also right — can you imagine the landslide a pro-life pro-family moderate Democrat would win this election by????
Not that the democrats would have him… and the GOP doesn’t want him either. He may just be the perfect candidate….