The GOP's Time For Choosing

Mike Huckabee would make the party more like Europe's Christian Democrats

by Henry Olsen - January 6th, 2008 - Opinion Journal (Wall Street Journal)

Mike Huckabee's stunning victory in Thursday's Iowa caucuses does more than change the GOP nomination race. With a platform explicitly grounded in his Christian faith and a populist economic message, Mr. Huckabee offers the Republican Party a new political narrative, light years removed from the limited government principles governing the GOP in the Reagan and post-Reagan era.

People who are like Mike Huckabee, at least the intellectual leaders of his movement such as Rick Santorum and Michael Gerson, call Reagan Republicans "immoral losers".

To me they have missed a major part of the bible's teaching. Jesus chose NOT to become one with government and take on the mantle of King of the Jews. Repeatedly the bible emphasizes that God has granted man free will. To merge the church and state more closely, to empower the state to dictate morality, rejects the concept of God granted free will. God may allow you free will but the goons of the Christian Democrat state will fix that oversight and assure that the power of the state will be used to make you behave as they see fit.

That is the problem with Huckabee and his followers, they think God granting us free will is a mistake. They are going to fix that whether God approves or not.

Is this what Christianity has become?

How does this differ from the intolerance of Islam's demand that you convert or be beheaded? Ann Coulter made a joke about forcing Muslims to convert and there were two reactions in the world. Traditional American Christians laughed as they saw it as a sarcastic riposte to the Muslim's serious intent to force conversion. It was not considered to be something any true Christian would consider. Muslims and some on the Christian left were outraged. In truth, they thought Ann was serious because they did not consider it to be unacceptable to actually do it. Amazing. Ann is condemned because these people took seriously something she mocked.

Freedom and liberty are heart and soul of the American Dream. This article goes in to great detail about the inferior economy of nations that have adopted this new "Christian Democrat" model that Huckabee and some evangelicals are touting. It is not the inferior economic results that I find intolerable. It is the inferior freedom and liberty.

There used to be a famous quote, "I do not agree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it." Today, fewer and fewer Americans care about the freedom of others, and in the process they are assuring their own freedom will come to an end.

Huckabee's political view is antithetical to everything the Republican Party has stood for during its 150 year history. As for me, I would preferr Huckabee and the social conservatives who embrace his government based Christian Socialism leave our party and form their own.

I choose freedom.