PrintJanuary 16, 2008
Did Huckabee just Self Destruct?
Speaking before a group of supporters on Monday night, Mike Huckabee said something rather shocking:
"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution 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 rather than try to change God's standards,"Andrew McCarthy at NRO puts it succinctly:
Huckabee is made to order for the Left: his rhetoric embodies their heretofore lunatic indictment that we’re no better that what we’re fighting against. Let’s “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards”? Who needs to spin when the script speaks for itself? Where has Huck been for the last seven years? Does he not get that our enemies — the people who want to end our way of life — believe they are simply imposing God’s standards?It doesn’t matter that Huckabee was apparently referring to amending the Constitution to ban abortion and gay marriage. The idea that the Constitution should be amended to reflect the religious beliefs of any group is so far beyond the pale that it may very well drive most secular Republicans and even some evangelicals away from his candidacy. This is the price Huckabee is paying for pandering to evangelicals and setting himself up as a “Christian leader.” Eventually, he was going to go too far in order to excite his base. Well, his base may be pleased but he very well could have lost most of the rest of the party then and there.
Much will depend on how much play this will get in the media. But since the story is sweeping the internet, there is a possibility it will migrate into the mainstream media. If that happens, Huckabee will have some explaining to do.
