Mike Huckabee’s Crackup, David Frum, and Religion in Politics
01 December 2009 | By LowellB in Editorials, Lowell, Politics, TN BlogI am cross-posting much of this entry with Article VI Blog, where I also hang out. As I said there, I am offering just a few quick hits:
Mike Huckabee, Convicts, and Religion
Anyone not living in a cave for the last 48 hours knows that Maurice Clemmons, the murderer of four police officers in Seattle, was once in state prison in Arkansas – until Mike Huckabee commuted his sentence. Huck has been running away from that decision and attempting to spread the blame to others involved in processing Clemmons through the legal system. It’s been suggested that Huckabee’s faith played a huge role in his clemency decisions as governor. The man himself has not yet addressed that question, probably because he doesn’t want to touch it.
That’s understandable.
Consider: While Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee issued 1,033 pardons, twice as many as the prior three Arkansas governors combined. Just as a point of comparision, Mitt Romney did not issue a single pardon while Governor of Massachusetts. I have a hunch that Huckabee, as a potential 2012 presidential candidate, is now . . . toast.
David Frum Thinks The Whole GOP Religion Situation Is Terrible
At least that’s what he seems to be saying here. Frum, who’s unhappy with religious conservatives generally, sees the Manhattan Declaration’s failure to include Mormons as yet another example of Evangelical bias against that faith. Well, the Declaration was authored not just by Evangelicals but also Catholics and Orthodox Christians, something Frum doesn’t seem to grasp. Also, as I noted here, the Declaration is a doctrinal trinitarian document. Mormons and other heterodox Christian faiths could not have signed it (to say nothing of Orthodox Jews), so the document’s drafters didn’t even invite them to sign. There are political reasons to quibble with the Declaration’s narrowness, but to this Latter-day Saint it doesn’t look like a slap at Romney or Mormonism.
Meanwhile, this writer at the Frum Forum plows ground that have already been plowed ad nauseam. An atheist, he thinks Romney’s religion is fair game:
Devotion to Mormonism, which is completely outside of the American mainstream, requires a certain level of commitment. To what extent will Romney’s faith influence his decision-making? I ask that question of devoted evangelicals and judge them accordingly, and I will do the same of a Mormon. And I am not going to apologize for that.
This is not a stunning insight. In fact, it is a very tired argument, and it always seems to come from the Left. Move along, folks, nothing here to see . . . . (And thanks to our Article VI reader Mary Lynn, who told us about this piece.)
And Finally: The Romney Religion Question, Studied Once Again
This recently-published study reaches some intuitively unsurprising conclusions:
Our results do, however, indicate that there is something Romney’s supporters can do to assuage concerns about his Mormonism. People who objectively know a lot about Mormons — that is, those who scored 100% on a short quiz on facts about Mormonism — were much less likely to be bothered by the claim that Mormons are not Christians. In contrast, respondents who claimed they knew a lot about Mormons, but who actually did not, were bothered most of all by claims about Mormonism. . . .
In other words, our study suggests that Romney’s supporters would do well to encourage those who are troubled by his faith to become better informed about Mormonism.
Such a discussion would likely help Romney: Information helps and ignorance hurts his chances. More important, it would help broaden religious tolerance in America.
Well, whats not to agree with there?
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