Ah, yes. January...the season where snowflakes fall, the temperature drops...and politicians like Mike Huckabee start in the spin cycle after being outed for their dominionist connections and statements.
Not two weeks ago, Huckabee publically announced he wanted to change the Constitution to change the US to the Republic of Gilead de jure.
Now that links to some of his scarier connections (like to "Watchmen On The Walls" linked folks who want to strip all non-dominionist Americans of their US citizenship and have us interred as "illegals", or to neopente dominionist cult leader Bill Gothard who actually operates facilities for literal paramilitary "God Warriors") are out...well, it seems Huck is doing quite a bit of backpedaling, especially after he literally compared America with Nazi Germany not two nights previously.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat
What follows may well be the shortest post I've ever done here (which I know some of you will be grateful for :D)--under the theory that a picture says a thousand words, and a stream of pictures at 30 pictures per second (which is NTSC standard) is probably more effective still.
Anyways, it would appear that in the Big Debate on 24 January, someone called ol' Huck on his call to essentially restart dominionist Con-Con campaigns, and Huck did quite a bit of backpedaling about six minutes into the video below:
For those who don't wish to sit through that--and I can't blame you entirely--the transcript of the relevant portion is available:
Williams: Governor Huckabee, a Bush administration official said that your use of faith in your campaign gave him a "queasy feeling."
Your response to that.
Huckabee: I would say that would be his problem, not mine. My faith does not give me a queasy feeling. It gives me a solid core from which I'm able to live every day.
I don't wake up every day and have to look at a poll to decide what I believe. My faith grounds me, it gives me a sense of direction and purpose.
I don't try to impose it on other people. And I certainly would never use the auspices of government to try to push my faith.
But for me to run from it, impossible. It's who I am. And so if it gives some people a queasy feeling, then they'll have to deal with it.
The fact is, this country has always been a country where people were able to respect people who had faith. And frankly, we ought to be able to respect people who don't have any.
I mean, I don't feel like a person has to share my faith to share my love of this country. But if a person hates me or dislikes me because of my faith, I'm not sure if they understand what it means to truly be an American, where we can live with each other no matter how different our faith is, but at least we have that understanding that historically faith has been an important part of who this country is.
Most Americans believe in God. As I've often said, if you want a president that doesn't, you'll have to pick somebody else.
Unfortunately for Huck...this effort at "whitewashing" his links to dominionists and the fact he is increasingly seen as the Great White Hope of the neopente-dominionist wing are rather doomed to failure.
Even during the spin cycle, the dirt keeps coming out of the laundry
Despite this particular load of spin...Huck has a lot more dirty laundry that is going to be a lot harder to whitewash.
First among these are that Huckabee literally called for the opposite to happen--that he actually wanted to change the very foundational document of the country to get "the Constitution more in line with God's Law" because he felt it was important to turn the US into a less-kind, not-as-gentle version of Nehemiah Scudder's America.
If that were all, it'd be bad enough. But there's lots more in that pile, trust me. We have dirt here that would make Mike Rowe (of TV's "Dirty Jobs") cower in terror.
Among the dirtier bits include Huckabee's links to Bill Gothard (including being a faithful Gothardite himself) and his network of Assemblies pastors backing him in Washington state (of which at least one, Joseph Fuiten, is linked with the "Watchmen At The Walls" hategroup--yes, the same folks who preach a neopentecostal-dominionist version of Holocaust revisionism as an excuse to execute progroms against LGBT people and even murder them).
That's bad enough. There's still some stinky articles in here, though.
One of the bits of news that our own Troutfishing is starting to touch on is the fact that Mike Huckabee's policy advisor is a Christian Reconstructionist--and apparently of the really radical sort of Christian Reconstructionist at that, the sort that would be happy bringing the joys of Taliban-era Afghanistan to the States--destruction of "pagan" monuments (bye-bye, Statue of Liberty; it was nice knowing you), public stonings, women being consigned to being "Breeders for Christ", bringing back that old institution of $800 slaves (based on conversion from the rates per shekel noted in the Bible and converted to modern troy silver prices), the whole lot.
Oh, and on that stuff with Fuiten (you know, the Assemblies regional head who wants to deport non-dominionists as "illegals" and who literally announced at a "Watchmen At The Walls" two-minute hate that he was at war with secular America)...well, it seems Huckabee might be a bit more than a mere sympathiser, and the not-terribly-legal practice of neopentecostal megachurches being essentially de facto Huckabee headquarters may be rather a bit more spread than Washington state.
Fredrick Carlson reports on how a fairly major political engine mostly concentrated in neopente dominionist churches--the "Patriot Pastor" network, based originally out of World Harvest Church in Columbus, OH (an Assemblies-daughter which has been very closely linked to some of the voting irregularities in Ohio in 2004 and with Ken Blackwell's failed gubernatorial bid in 2006) but with branches now pretty much nationwide--is essentially stumping in every state that these cells exist in for Huckabee. (Of note, one state they are particularly active in is Texas--the location of the largest "Patriot Pastor" network outside of Ohio. The size of the network per capita is probably similar to that in Iowa, which Huckabee did manage to win. This is one reason I've kept saying "Watch Texas".)
And it seems that Huckabee's latest foot-in-mouth incident (and dropping of a very dirty sock therein) seems to have occured at one of these "Restoration Meetings"--specifically the meeting of the Florida Renewal Project (the state "Patriot Pastor" group) which featured such lowlights as David Barton (of "Wallbuilders", a particularly infamous dominionist group which promotes what amounts to "dominionist American historical revisionism"), AFA heads, "neopente dominionist-Zionist" John Hagee, and more.
In the veritable powwow of neopente dominionist and neopente-dominionist-friendly leaders in Florida, Hagee literally managed to invoke Godwin's Law and--I am not making this up--literally accused all of non-dominionist America of being card-carrying Nazis and "soft dominionists" not pushing for the Republic of Gilead of being "good Germans":
In a speech to the Florida Renewal Project Monday night, which in an unprecedented move was live streamed on the American Family Association's Web site, Huckabee compared America to Nazi Germany. He first implored the audience to renew their "commitment to Christ" and "to our nation, to its heritage, as well as to its future," adding "do we expect the seculars [sic] to do it? Do we expect the unbelievers to lead us, and if so, how will they lead us and where?" He then engaged in an extended description of his visit to the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem with his 11- year-old daughter, who asked, "why didn't somebody do something?" Huckabee, who has called abortion a "holocaust," then issued a dire warning:
... I pray that no father ever stands over the shoulder of his own daughter and after her witnessing the decline and the fall of a great nation, writes, and sees her write these words, "why didn't somebody do something?" You see, I believe the reason we're here is because we are the somebodies. And we're to do the something and if we don't, who will? And if we don't act now, when will it happen, and will it be too late? You leave this conference with this haunting question, and pray that no one would ever ask of you or of me, why didn't somebody do something.
You read that right. Huckabee thinks if the "seculars" are allowed to rule America, our country could suffer the same fate as Nazi Germany. A resounding insult all around from this "Christian leader."
Well, I guess that would explain why he plays so well with Fuiten (who promotes Holocaust revisionism and wants to deport all us "secularists" after we're stripped of citizenship), certainly. :P
Your job: Don't let them whitewash this. Keep it in the news. Don't let them try to stealth. Keep the lights on.