Day Two: Huckabee - Dobson = Still Chugging

TAPPED, “Christian Right Grassroots Give Dobson the Finger”

TAPPED blogger Sarah Posner writes her latest entry about Mike Huckabee and his shot at the Republican nomination for the President of the United States. More specifically, she focuses at Huckabee’s continual rise and hitherto success without the support of some powerful names within the conservative Christian political movement, namely James Dobson. Then, Posner describes the new coalition of supporters within the Christian right that Huckabee has created around himself to replace the spot left unfilled by Dobson and some of his compadres.

Posner seems almost pleased with Dobson’s new “irrelevant[ce],” while at the same time warning her fellow left-wingers that Huckabee’s new coalition might form a cohesive and effective force in the primary season and perhaps even into the general election.

As a Huckabee man for the last year and a half, I can recall my surprise when I first heard that Dobson and company had rejected Huckabee at the 2007 Values Voters Summit. Only a year before that, I had first heard Huckabee speak at the Summit of September 2006, long before the tumultuous primary season began. I overheard two elderly women share sentiments about his speech: “I sure wish he would run for President!” Since that realization struck, I’ve stood behind Huckabee and am quite pleased by the various major supporters he’s managed to accrue thus far on the campaign trail.

Posner concludes almost sardonically, as if lamenting the continued survival of “the evangelical right.” She seems bitter about what she claims is “excessive media attention” given to the Christian right, and she hints with a belittling attitude at the evangelical right’s mission “to restore America, its government, and its culture to ‘biblical values’” (underlining not found in original, but quotes present).

Though the conservative evangelical community has in recent years blundered rather heavily and not always been consistent, to Posner I say but one thing: “Long live the Christian Right, and God bless America!”