A quick follow-up to my post on Huckabee's 1992 AIDS comments.
Check out the tail end of this piece in The Guardian. Rudy Giuliani was on Meet the Press this morning addressing Huckabee's comments. When asked whether homosexuality was a sin, Giuliani said that "[what is sinful] are the acts, not the orientation."
So Rudy Giuliani's response to revelations of Huckabee's whacked-out statements has been to become an expert on theology....and pretty much to agree with Mike Huckabee. This is truly creepy. Rudy Giuliani never gave a thought before this week on whether Christianity condems "the acts, not the orientation." He was a secular opponent to that kind of theological nit-picking for most of his adult life. These latest concessions are more evidence that the new Republican strategy is to sound more like Huckabee, contradictions be damned.
So the Republicans are behaving as if Huckabee is the front-runner (which he will be in the next couple of weeks.) When are Democrats going to follow suit?
Check out the tail end of this piece in The Guardian. Rudy Giuliani was on Meet the Press this morning addressing Huckabee's comments. When asked whether homosexuality was a sin, Giuliani said that "[what is sinful] are the acts, not the orientation."
So Rudy Giuliani's response to revelations of Huckabee's whacked-out statements has been to become an expert on theology....and pretty much to agree with Mike Huckabee. This is truly creepy. Rudy Giuliani never gave a thought before this week on whether Christianity condems "the acts, not the orientation." He was a secular opponent to that kind of theological nit-picking for most of his adult life. These latest concessions are more evidence that the new Republican strategy is to sound more like Huckabee, contradictions be damned.
So the Republicans are behaving as if Huckabee is the front-runner (which he will be in the next couple of weeks.) When are Democrats going to follow suit?
2 Comments:
Hostility towards homosexuals, whether open or underhanded, is an accepted Republican primary strategy. Giuliani has decided that he has nothing to win by expressing support for gay rights, while he actually has a lot to gain by making anti-gay comments like that.
That's right, Jack. Anything goes when you're convinced that your base feels a certain way about a certain issue.
In the case of Huckabee, though, I suspect that his surge in the polls has less to do with his religious conservatism and more to do with his personal charm and magnetism. He's a disarming fellow, as I've noted. And let's not forget that he first came onto the national radar because he showed sympathy for environmental causes, moderation on illegal immigration, and was even willing to distance himself significantly from the Bush administration. He gives Republicans who are fed up with Bush a way to vote for a still-very conservative candidate without voting for someone (like Giuliani) with strong ties to the current administration. And this, more than even the religious right issue, is why he'll be the nominee.
That's why I find him so politically threatening. He's the "religious-right candidate," but we know that the religious right is not pervasive enough to nominate a candidate on social issues alone. So a lot of people are voting for him irrespective of his religious beliefs, while his extremely conservative religious convictions can lie dormant. We're not going to let them lie dormant when he's the nominee, though, are we?
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