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Banned
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I've come back here tonight to post on this thread because it is my hope that, for the voters and politically influential among the 65 million, mostly American buyers of CNP founder, Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" literary series of rapture scenarios, the presidential candidacy of Mike Huckabee will turn out to be the high water mark of their influence on AMerican politics and on AMerican foreign, domestic, and judicial appointment policies.
IMO, this is the most lacking group of republican presidential candidates to emerge in my lifetime, and maybe longer. I know that most non-christian evangelical, republican supporters must also look at Huckabee's emergence as a viable candidate with alarm, though they be loathe to ever admit here that it is of any concern.
This disconnection and incoherence....so many American focused on bringing about conditions in Israel so that they mesh with biblical interpretation as fed to them by these politicized evangelical leaders, is the alpha to the omega of the islamo-fascist biblical opponent that they have conjured up to mesh with their pop religious "rapture ready" delerium.
Huckabee is their standard bearer, and due to the pathetic nature of the rest of the field of candidates, here he comes. The prideful pompousness of the non-rapture believing republican supporters would leave them silent on the sidelines, watching the absurdity of all of this, with the rest of us, except for the fact that they also subscribe to the waging of war against the islamo-fascist "other" which they so sincerely and cooperatively helped the rapturist assemble, hype, and demonize.
Absolutely amazing to watch, research and write about, if it wasn't really happening, consequences and all, in real time:
Quote:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20...e_connections/
Jan. 18, 2008 | Mike Huckabee, the former Baptist preacher turned Arkansas governor and now Republican presidential candidate, has deep connections to some conservative Christians with radical political ideas. As Salon's Mike Madden details <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/18/huckabee2/">here</a>, while Huckabee talks up his experience visiting Israel in response to questions about foreign policy, <h3>he is also campaigning with the support of prominent figures who see Israel as the site of a coming Armageddon.</h3> Huckabee's connections within the evangelical movement also extend to leaders whose focus is on the United States; a number of those leaders are working to transform the United States into a Christian nation governed by what they see as biblical principles. On Monday, as Salon columnist Joe Conason <a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/01/18/huckabee/">notes</a>, Huckabee seemed to hint that he shares at least some of that vision. "It's a lot easier to change the Constitution," said Huckabee, "than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards."
Ideas like the ones some of Huckabee's supporters hold stem from two radical doctrines, reconstructionism and dominionism. As Conason writes, these ideas come down to "the notion that America, indeed every nation on earth, is meant to be governed by biblical law." Additionally, they stem from a belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, then betrayed by secular humanist liberals who created a myth of separation of church and state in the 20th century, leading the country to immorality and godlessness, and that the United States must be taken back by Christians. Some of the proponents of this idea are unashamed about using the word "theocracy" to describe their goal. The most radical among them -- including two of the movement's leading lights and progenitors, R.J. Rushdoony and his son-in-law Gary North -- advocate a return to the practice of stoning as a method of execution, and expanding this death sentence to the crimes of homosexuality, blasphemy and cursing one's parents....
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With the exception of Huckabee's clearly non US best interersts policy positions on Israel, this article indicates that almost all of the rest of Huckabee's views on relations with the rest of the world are....unknown.
Quote:
http://www.cfr.org/bios/13301/
...Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Huckabee, who has taken nine trips to Israel in past 35 years, calls himself a “steadfast supporter” of Israel. On his campaign site, Huckabee pledges that as president, he would “ensure that Israel has access to the state-of-the-art weapons and technology she needs to defend herself from those who seek her annihilation.”
In October 2007, Huckabee said he believes a Palestinian state should be created (Yeshiva World), but that it should be moved away from Israel. He named Egypt and Saudi Arabia as possible locations.....
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Quote:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...-for-huckabee/
November 19, 2007, 11:01 pm
Evangelical Help for Huckabee
By David D. Kirkpatrick
Mike Huckabee, the Republican presidential candidate and former Southern Baptist minister, is getting help from Tim LaHaye, the Christian conservative organizer and co-author of the apocalyptic “Left Behind” novels.
“America and our Judeo-Christian heritage are under attack by a force that is more destructive than any America has faced” since Hitler,Dr. LaHaye and his wife, Beverly, wrote in letters sent to lists of conservative Christians in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. “Defeating the radical jihadists will require renewed resolve and spiritual rearmament by the evangelical pastors in America.”
The letters were distributed in part through an e-mail list maintained by Mrs. LaHaye’s organization, Concerned Women for America, to encourage pastors to attend two-day conferences held in each state (free, including meals and a hotel room). Mr. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, is the only candidate speaking.
All events are held by nonprofit charities. The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the inclusion of only one candidate raised “red flags” about an impermissible political endorsement. But David Lane, the events’ principal organizer, said he had invited all the candidates.
A campaign spokesman said Mr. Huckabee had read some of the “Left Behind” novels and enjoyed them.
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Quote:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-bl...y_b_81467.html
Is Huckabee Rapture Ready? And Why Did He Free A Born-Again Rapist? A Confidant Speaks
Posted January 14, 2008 | 05:19 PM (EST)
....Cole was no more kind to Muslims. "If you think communism's bad, just think what the Islamics are doing," Cole warned. "Those people have no -- they're just not human. They're just not human."
On the campaign trail, Huckabee has ventured some opinions that dovetail at least loosely with Cole's. Discussing Romney's Mormon faith with a reporter while stumping through Iowa, Huckabee asked darkly, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus is Satan's brother?"
Huckabee routinely warns of the threat of "Islamofascism" at campaign rallies and is perhaps the first major presidential candidate in American history to essentially call for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Huckabee <a href="http://www.jrtelegraph.com/2007/10/gov-mike-huckab.html">declared</a> during a New Hampshire fundraiser in October that a Palestinian state should only be established outside of biblical Israel, possibly in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, according to the Jewish Russian Telegraph. He reiterated this position during an appearance on Face the Nation in November.....
....Israel and the Apocalypse
Huckabee's advocacy of forcibly transferring the Palestinians to other Arab nations reflects his close association with some of America's most prominent End Times theological proponents. Among Huckabee's leading evangelical backers is Pastor John Hagee, head of a Pentecostal congregation in San Antonio, Texas, with 18,000 members, and the executive director of Christians United for Israel, a national lobbying group that organizes against a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis and in favor of a military strike on Iran.
Hagee's zealous support for Israel is kindled by his belief that Jesus will one day return to "biblical Israel" to usher in a kingdom of Heaven on Earth. "As soon as Jesus sits on his throne he's gonna rule the world with a rod of iron," Hagee told his congregation in a sermon this December. "That means he's gonna make the ACLU do what he wants them to. That means you're not gonna have to ask if you can pray in public school... We will live by the law of God and no other law."
Huckabee made a pilgrimage to Hagee's Cornerstone Church just one week after the pastor's anti-ACLU jeremiad. During the first of two sermons Huckabee delivered there, he was greeted with a thunderous standing ovation. The candidate returned the sentiment, hailing his gracious host, Hagee, as "one of the great Christian leaders of our nation."
Huckabee has also welcomed the endorsement of Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the bestselling Left Behind pulp fiction series, which tells of the coming apocalyptic battle between followers of Jesus and forces of Satan. Paige Patterson, president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where Huckabee once studied (he dropped out to work for a televangelist), is an outspoken believer in End Times theology as well. Patterson is one of the chief organizers of the right-wing takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Just as his surge in the polls began, Huckabee addressed the student body of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in November. There, he assured his enraptured audience that his sudden rise had nothing to do with his "easy-going" style. "There's only one explanation for [my surge] and it's not a human one," Huckabee insisted, inspiring gales of applause from the overflow crowd. "It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people."
Huckabee made his remarkable statement in response to a question from a student -- not a reporter. Political reporters with access to the candidate have so far shied away from asking him pointed questions about his theological beliefs. They have been especially reluctant to ask Huckabee how he thinks the world will end or how his Messiah will return. Consequently, the image of Huckabee as a transcendent, post-partisan politician has prevailed. He remains the affable, bass-playing Republican counterpart to Barack Obama, not the sectarian ideologue who sought the counsel of fringe characters like Cole.
Huckabee has burnished his likable sheen by replacing the ornery clergymen who propelled his early ascendancy in Arkansas politics with a cast of telegenic evangelical celebrities. His new boosters include Chuck Norris, a B-level action movie star who has converted to evangelical Christianity and become a fixture at Huckabee's side on the campaign trail.
Cole, for his part, told me he has not spoken to his old friend "Mike" in six months. "He's so busy it's an impossibility to get to him," Cole said. "I've been meaning to call him." Now 78 years old and afflicted with terminal heart disease, Cole has been left behind.
Yet back when Huckabee launched his preaching career in 1980, he went straight to Cole for assistance. "He's actually known me longer than I've known him," Cole said of Huckabee. Cole, who had operated a missionary supply organization that established Christian television and radio stations in the Third World, said he helped the young Huckabee when he started his own television show in Arkansas. Huckabee's show, Positive Alternatives, which first aired in the cities Pine Bluff and Texarkana in 1980, became his vehicle for statewide recognition. By 1989, with Cole's support, Huckabee had become the youngest-ever president of the 500,000-member Arkansas Baptist State Convention.....
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Quote:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...704662,00.html
Jesus Christ's Superstar
Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008 By JAMES PONIEWOZIK
<img src="http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2008/0801/a_atunedin_0128.jpg">
....Many voters first met Huckabee through the campaign spot in which he traded lines with action star Norris. The ad did more than defuse the humorless-preacher stereotype; it also spoke to Huckabee's base. To a general audience, Norris is a camp figure. But, notes Daniel Radosh, author of the forthcoming book Rapture Ready!, about Christian pop culture, Evangelicals know Norris as the author of a popular spiritual memoir and co-author of two Christian western novels. To the public, appearing with Norris says Huckabee doesn't take himself too seriously. But, Radosh adds, "within the Christian culture bubble, it's a way of saying, 'I'm one of you.'"
Ironically, Huckabee may benefit from media stereotypes. To people who think of evangelical leaders as Bible thumpers, a pastor playing Devil with a Blue Dress On on bass is like a dog walking on its hind legs—though rock bands are common in modern churches. <h3>"In New York and L.A., there's this complete ignorance about what Evangelicals are really like,"</h3> says Alexandra Pelosi, a documentarian (and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's daughter) who made the HBO movie Friends of God, about evangelical culture. "When I visited megachurches, the pastors were all making Napoleon Dynamite references."
A cultural divide shows, too, between Huckabee's base voters and the evangelical leaders who endorsed other GOP candidates. Adam Smith, editorial director of Relevant, a magazine for young Christians, says Huckabee's engagement with the pop world speaks to younger Evangelicals. "Most of our readers don't really see a demarcation between mainstream culture and 'church culture,'" he says.
Huckabee's greatest pop-culture weapon, though, may be the late-night shows. His humor is easy, wry and self-deprecating, but it's also strategic. Some Huckabee positions—on abortion, the so-called FairTax, immigration, aligning the Constitution with "God's standards"—would alienate some voters. But his joking reinforces his cultivated image as the conservative who's "not mad at anybody." And his dry irony—the lingua franca of pop culture—allows him to sandwich actual answers on awkward issues with his jokes. If he's lucky, viewers won't notice, or mind, the difference.
On a recent Colbert Report, Huckabee riffed to Stephen Colbert on Senator John McCain's vow to pursue Osama bin Laden "to the gates of hell." "I will charge hell with a water pistol if necessary," Huckabee deadpanned, as if to one-up McCain. How about outsourcing jobs? "As long as it isn't mine." Then Colbert asked if he believed that evolution was a farce. "It's all a farce," Huckabee said, in his usual dry tone. Ha ha! How droll! Except ... um ... he doesn't believe in evolution.
Having a foot in both worlds likewise allows Huckabee to play both media darling and media outsider. When he ran into controversy over a Christmas TV ad, he could blame it on a secular-culture "war against Christmas." When he pulled a negative TV ad yet showed it at a press conference, he explained the apparent hypocrisy by saying the skeptical press gave him no choice but to show it to them. Yet he's also a more ubiquitous presence on newscasts than the HeadOn commercials. He's running against, and on the backs of, the media.
Any crossover effort can have limits. Entertainer-preacher Huckabee could simply end up being the best-liked candidate among people who will never vote for him. But he has already become the political embodiment of the megachurch approach: <h3>get people in the door with rock or cappuccino or stand-up—but get them in the door. "Religion and politics and show business are all about attracting people,"</h3> Pelosi says. The big question is whether Huckabee can keep his lyrics from drowning out his music.
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Last edited by host; 01-18-2008 at 12:20 AM..
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