Its all Sarah Palin all the time in medialand and the blogosphere. But my friend and colleague Bruce Prescott has a report on Mike Huckabee's early campaign organizing that should give everyone some pause.
Ethics Daily is reporting that about two months ago around 40 Conservative Christian leaders gathered near the airport in Dallas to plot the political overthrow of President Obama. The meeting was convened by Evangelist James Robison.
In another article, Robert Parham chides these leaders for calling their plot a "prayer meeting."
30 years ago, James Robison convened a meeting like this and the result was the election of Ronald Reagan as president.
30 years ago Mike Huckabee quit seminary to assist Robison and his coterie of conservative clergy in their efforts. Later, he parlayed his connections to become governor of Arkansas. Now, Mike Huckabee is running for President of the United States.
For the past two years Huckabee has been courting the far out religious conservatives who think democracy is heresy and want an American theocracy. Some of those at Robison's recent meeting in Dallas are undoubtedly in that camp. Most of them, however, are simple Christian Nationalists who are opposed to the first amendment's disestablishment clause and want to impose conservative Christian morality on all society by force of law. The latter group appears more moderate to the public and has a larger audience within the conservative Christian community.
This entry is cross-posted from the Mainstream Baptist weblog.
Last time, Huckabee got just about all of the endorsements from Religious Right leaders that mattered, although mainstream reporters and academics managed not to notice, announcements on the Huckabee campaign site and press releases not withstanding. He even got the belated endorsement of James Dobson. As it happened, the Religious Right vote was divided among McCain, Romney and Huckabee because the Religious Right, brittle stereotypes not withstanding, does not vote as a bloc, and never has. The sole exception over many election cycles was 2004, when George W. Bush had no GOP primary challengers.
But the lesson here is that Huckabee did surprisingly well and may do so again.
Reporter Brian Kaylor in the article Bruce Prescott references, names a number of significant conservative Christian leaders and political operatives in his article:
Southern Baptist leaders attending the meeting included: Richard Land (president of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission); Richard Lee (pastor and the editor of The American Patriot's Bible); John Meador (pastor of First Baptist Church of Euless, Texas); and Paige Patterson (president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary).
Others at the meeting included: Tony Evans (a megachurch pastor in Texas); Father Joseph Fessio (founder and editor of Ignatius Press); Craig Groeschel (pastor of LifeChurch.tv); Miles McPherson (a megachurch pastor in California who spoke at the 2008 Republican National Convention); Johnnie Moore (a vice president at Liberty University who defended the school's decisions to have Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich as recent speakers); Tom Mullins (a megachurch pastor in Florida); Doug Napier (legal counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund); Dino Rizzo (a megachurch pastor in Louisiana); Dave Roever (an evangelist who prayed at Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally); Mark Rutland (president of Oral Roberts University); David Stone (a megachurch pastor in Kentucky); and Stu Weber (a megachurch pastor in Oregon).
Several conservative Christian leaders highly active in politics attended the meeting, including: Stephen Broden (a pastor and Republican politician in Texas); Keith Butler (a pastor and Republican politician in Michigan); Maggie Gallagher (a conservative columnist who received tens of thousands of dollars for her work from the George W. Bush administration); Jim Garlow (chairman of Newt Gingrich's organization, Renewing American Leadership); Harry Jackson (pastor of Hope Christian Church in Washington, D.C.); Gene Mills (executive director of the Louisiana Family Forum); and Tony Perkins (president of the Family Research Council).
If past is prologue, people who ought to know better will forget all this and it will be deja vu all over again.