It seems what we have a real humdinger coming out of Team Huckabee:

"It was a wise move on his part," said Chuck Hurley, a pro-family Christian activist and former Iowa legislator. "He is a gifted speaker and I would guess he will have mollified some people's concerns. But the more people investigate the beginnings of the Mormon church, the more uneasy they will be, and there's nothing he can do about that." Empahsis mine.

This is from the Des Moines Register article that Rett posted a couple posts down.

Something the Des Moines Register seems to have failed to cover was this: Hurley gave this quote the same day Huckabee accepted Hurley's endorsement. Huckabee accepts this line of talk.

Huckabee is more interested in gaining votes by refusing to say Mormonism is not a Cult (which it clearly is not)...

Huckabee has been asked about this view that Mormonism is a cult. He dodges and dances. “If I’m invited to be the president of a theological school, that’ll be a perfectly appropriate question,” he says, “but to be the president of the United States, I don’t know that that’s going to be the most important issue that I’ll be facing when I’m sworn in.”… Link

[In other words yes, he thinks it is. How difficult could it be to say no?]


...and his wife is making the case that God has his hand on his campaign over others...

Janet Huckabee also admitted she is "very disappointed" in the National Right to Life's decision to endorse Thompson over her husband. "Mike has been a true Right to Life person,” she said. “He's marched in the Right to Life parades for 13 years. He's just been a big supporter pro-life legislation, and it was disappointing to him."

"God's a big God," Huckabee continued. "If he wants us to continue to go and to fight the giants, we'll do that. You remember Jesus feeding the 5,000 with two fishes and five loaves. So, we're multiplying our money. Every dollar spends like a thousand and every prayer we get is like a million bucks."

[Why does this remind me of a TBN telethon?]

Frankly this does little to help the GOP. If it does help Huckabee, it will be at Romney's expense short term, the party's expense long term. This isn't an Evangelical party, it's not a Catholic Party and it's certainly not a Mormon Party, It's the party of people with Conservative ideals. With Huckabee we become the party of "Born Again" salvation, mixed with a little populism, liberal fiscal policy and nanny statism. That is not a winning game plan against Dems, short term and long term. They already beat us on the liberal part, and we become a party of a single religion is truely limiting.

Do I disagree with Evangelical theology? You betcha. It's completely contrary to what I believe. Do I feel the need to say it disqualifies one from office? Nope. Even if it could help my candidate in the short term, it hurts our party and society in the long term to exclude people based on a religious test.

Apparently though, this type of strategic exclsusivity is on the minds of Huckabee supporters:

That wasn't enough for the Rev. Frank Cook, pastor of Union Park Baptist Church in Des Moines, who remains unconvinced that Romney would make a good president.

"He was doing the Potomac two-step around the issues that concern many evangelicals," Cook said. "Most evangelicals, including myself and my church, agree with Governor Romney's stand on most moral issues in our country. Our objection with his candidacy is not so much with his public stance as it is with how the Mormon faith has tried to disguise the tenets of their faith." Link

In other words, Huckabee is moving up because he is attracting supporters like Rev. Cook who want a Evangelical vs. Mormon game. And unfortunately, he seems all to happy to play that card of bigotry.