A Tale of Two Stories

Wednesday: Mike Huckabee gets his panties all in a wad because people have the unmitigated temerity to keep asking him about his religious beliefs all the time.

Today: Huckabee Plays the Religion Card

[P]art of his rise in Iowa is attributable to something rather less appealing: playing the religion card. The other major candidates -- John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson -- either never figured out how to use it or had the decency to refuse to deploy it.

Huckabee has exploited Romney's Mormonism with an egregious subtlety. Huckabee is running a very effective ad in Iowa about religion. "Faith doesn't just influence me," he says on camera, "it really defines me." The ad then hails him as a "Christian leader."

I don't know what Krauthammer was smoking when he penned the phrase "egregious subtlety," but wev.

Huckabee wants it both ways—he wants to run ads saying his faith defines him and call himself a Christian leader (!!!) and publicly attribute his surge in popularity to a miracle, but doesn't want anyone asking him about the issues intimately associated with politically active conservative Christians, like creationism being taught in schools. Tough shit on a platter, buddy. I frankly can't believe he's got the gall to whinge about it—or maybe it's just blind stupidity, given that the complaint merely serves to highlight his hypocrisy.

Considering that the other big story percolating about Huckabee is his having paroled a serial rapist who moved on to murder, one would think he'd be happy if the press stuck to asking him whether Jesus rode dinosaurs.

[H/T to Holly in Cincinnati.]