Huckabee's rise puts focus on religious rhetoric
By Ben Harris and Ami Eden
 
(JTA) -- Mike Huckabee was a barely known former governor of Arkansas when he attended an October house party on his behalf at the home of Jason Bedrick, New Hampshire's first Orthodox Jewish state representative.
"He is truly a uniter and not a divider," said Bedrick. "This is a country that needs some healing in addition to leadership. And of all the candidates in all the parties, he is the only top-tier candidate that can provide that."
To boot, the New Hampshire lawmaker added, Huckabee is pro-Israel: He has visited the Jewish state nine times and he favors the establishment of a Palestinian state -- in Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
Bedrick may see Huckabee as the perfect fit for the White House, but for many American Jews the thought of a staunchly pro-life, ordained Baptist minister as president is a major cause for alarm. 
Huckabee in recent weeks has been facing increased scrutiny over his use of religion on the campaign trail. At one recent campaign stop he declared, “What’s wrong with our country, what is wrong with our culture, is that you can’t say the name Jesus Christ without people going completely berserk.”
Even as critics have sought to paint Huckabee as religiously intolerant, the former Arkansas governor has portrayed himself as the embodiment of a new breed of evangelical Christian voter, one who sees not only a religious imperative to stake out conservative positions on social issues like abortion and gay marriage, but also in some instances to take more liberal stands on race, taxes, poverty, immigration and the environment.
He has employed populist rhetoric in slamming the establishment of his own party, challenged its general embrace of free trade and recently criticized the Bush administration's "arrogant" approach to international diplomacy.
The combination of Huckabee's rapid rise -- the latest surveys show the candidate leading nationally and in several key states, including South Carolina and Florida (the Ledger went to press just prior to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses) -- his religiosity and his willingness to buck conservative political orthodoxy has some observers describing him as a refreshing development with the ability to transcend the bitterly partisan atmosphere in Washington.
Others see him as a threat.
Huckabee has faced tough criticism of late not only in some liberal corners, but also from several prominent conservative commentators, including George Will, Robert Novak, Charles Krauthammer and Ann Coulter.
Some observers say, American Jews will find it impossible to get past Huckabee's conservative Christian faith and rhetoric.
"The more liberal Jews find out about his core values of Christianity, the less they'll like him," says journalist Zev Chafets, who wrote ,a cover story on Huckabee for The New York Times Magazine.
Chafets, the American-born Israeli government spokesman turned journalist, told JTA that "there's no doubt that Huckabee is a Christian conservative in the mold of Falwell or Pat Robertson, speaking politically… He's a fundamentalist." 
In 1998, Huckabee told a Baptist convention to "take this nation back for Christ" and said that he "got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers -- that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."
Also in '98, Huckabee signed on to an advertisement in USA Today supporting "biblical principles of marriage and family life," one of which stipulates that the "wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ." 
During a debate earlier this year, Huckabee said he did not believe in evolution. Later in the summer, at the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit in Washington, he bemoaned the "holocaust of liberalized abortion," drawing criticism from the Anti-Defamation League over his use of the H word. 
Several observers and Jewish communal leaders from Arkansas, however, reject such efforts to paint Huckabee as a dangerous extremist, even as they stressed that they would never vote for him. 
"Jews have nothing to fear from Huckabee," said Jerry Tanenbaum, a supporter of the Union for Reform Judaism from Hot Springs, AK, who says he would never vote for Huckabee. "I never found him in Arkansas to be particularly invasive with his religion on other people's rights." 
Rabbi Eugene Levy, the religious leader of Temple B'nai Israel, a Reform synagogue in Little Rock, and a big fan of President Bill Clinton, offered a similar take.
"I would never vote for him, but I'd love to have dinner with him," the rabbi said, describing Huckabee as "very open and accommodating." 
Huckabee has received kudos from some liberal commentators for raising state taxes to improve schools and roads in Arkansas, and refusing to block the children of illegal immigrants from accessing government services.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Reform movement, said recently that in theory he has no problem with a man of deep religious conviction pursuing public office. But Yoffie and Rabbi David Saperstein, the head of the Reform movement's Religious Action Center in Washington, both expressed deep discomfort with Huckabee's comments about the Christian nature of America. 
"That kind of language from a political candidate is not acceptable, from him or anybody else," Yoffie said. 
Huckabee, whose campaign did not respond to several requests for an interview with the candidate, clearly has some work to do with Jews who see his past statements as exclusionary.
In a September interview with The Jewish Week of New York, he said that such comments should not alarm Jewish voters. 
"What it means is that you wouldn't have children going hungry at night," Huckabee said. "You wouldn't have women having the daylights beat out of them by abusive, alcoholic husbands." 
That kind of emphasis on the social justice imperatives of his faith might not be enough to win Huckabee support among liberal Jews. But even those who swear they could never support his candidacy nevertheless see something refreshing about a religious man who cares more about the poor than preventing gay couples from marrying. 
"The real reason for Mr. Huckabee's ascendance," Frank Rich wrote recently in The New York Times, "may be that his message is simply more uplifting -- and, in the ethical rather than theological sense, more Christian -- than that of rivals..." 
In fact, some of the harshest criticisms of Huckabee have come not from liberals worried over the separation of church and state, but conservatives upset over his record as governor, especially on taxes and immigration.
Huckabee was slammed, too, for his lack of foreign policy expertise after he told reporters earlier this month that he had not read a declassified intelligence report on Iran's nuclear program, even though it had been a major national news story.
He opposes withdrawing from Iraq before the country is stable and generally supports a hard line on fighting Islamic extremism. But in a recent article that he wrote for Foreign Affairs, Huckabee said the Bush administration suffers from an "arrogant bunker mentality." He also hinted at a softer approach to Iran that includes aggressive diplomacy and incentives for better behavior.
Despite being a fairly unknown quantity in the Jewish community, Huckabee opted not to attend a presidential forum in October organized by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), citing scheduling conflicts.  
The executive director of the RJC, Matt Brooks, issued a Dec. 17 statement saying that candidates should be "mindful of not imposing their religious beliefs on others" and that "questions involving theology have no place on the campaign trail."
Huckabee supporters like Bedrick, however, see not a cause for fear but for celebration. It was in secular Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that Jews fared the worst, Bedrick noted, while Christian America has historically been the most welcoming place for Jews. 
"As a Jew, frankly, I do feel quite comfortable living in an America that is a Christian nation, or I should say, a country that is primarily Christian," Bedrick said.
"In between the establishment clause and the free exercise clause, there's a lot of room for people to have their faith and express it publicly. And I have no problem with that."

CALLOUT: 
Some observers say, American Jews will find it impossible to get past Huckabee's conservative Christian faith and rhetoric.

"As a Jew, frankly, I do feel quite comfortable living in an America that is a Christian nation, or I should say, a country that is primarily Christian.”
Jason Bedrick, New Hampshire State Rep.