Mike Huckabee Concedes Social Conservatives Are Opportunists with Zero Integrity

[Content Note: Social conservatism; war on agency.]

So, Professor of Bible Bigotry and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee did an interview with Fox News pundit Todd Starnes on his podcast earlier this week, and addressed the giant honking elephant in the campaign of how evangelical leaders have largely failed to endorse or even support him, despite the fact that he is himself an ordained evangelical minister and constantly touts himself as evangelical presidenty man #1.

"A lot of them, quite frankly, I think they're scared to death that if a guy like me got elected, I would actually do what I said I would do, and that is, I would focus on the personhood of every individual. We would abolish abortion based on the Fifth and 14th Amendment. We would ignore the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage decision."

Huckabee said that, as a result of his presidency, evangelical organizations would no longer be able to galvanize their supporters and fundraise.

"A lot of these organizations wouldn't have the ability to do urgent fundraising because if we slay the dragon, what dragon do they continue to fight? And so, for many of them, it could be a real detriment to their organization's abilities to gin up their supporters and raise the contributions, and I know that sounds cynical but, Todd, it's just, it is what it is," Huckabee said.

Wowwwwwww.

So, I don't believe for a moment (nor does anyone else on the globe, probably) that the reason Huckabee isn't getting more support from conservative evangelicals is because he would be TOO SUCCESSFUL. I'm fairly certain the reason he's not getting more support from conservative evangelicals is because he's run for president before and didn't get anywhere and won't get anywhere this time, and they're pragmatic enough not to waste their time on a loser.

But I'm fairly delighted that Huckabee just plainly stated what anyone who has ever read a dozen accounts of "sanctity of marriage" sloganeers being caught cheating, or heard stories of anti-choice protestors ushering pregnant daughters into the clinic they picket, or encountered stats about how hotel porn rentals go up when a conservative Christian convention comes to town, or any one of a number of other rank hypocrisies already knows: The leaders and activists of the social conservative movement don't adhere to the rules they want to impose on everyone else.

They're mendacious blowhards, who exploit people who hold a certain set of restrictive beliefs in order to raise lots of money and live very well indeed off the donations of true believers. (Who themselves largely don't follow those rules, either.)

And if they actually got what they wanted, what would they do then? Not only because it would suck for them to live with those rules, but also because the cash would dry up.

It's funny—in a perfect bit of projection, it's social conservatives who routinely accuse me (and other progressive activists) of generating faux outrage and demanding to know what we'd do if ever we got everything we wanted.

"Retire in bliss" is my answer. And the fact that they expect it to be something else is indicative of their own furtive goal, which is not to win but to remain in perpetual battle.

I don't imagine they think Huckabee is the guy who could slay the dragon, but I definitely agree with him that they don't want that dragon slayed. They want that dragon resting atop a mountainous pile of gold coins, sleeping soundly, but still breathing life into the power of its own menace.