February 1, 2008 | 8:37 am

Why Huckabee will bomb in big cities

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow me on

He might be a favorite of evangelicals, but former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has said some things that scare other Americans, particularly those oh-so-coveted swing voters.

Zero percent—that’s a bagel—of New York Jews favored Huckabee over the other Republican front-runners in a mid-January poll by Siena College. And a completely unscientific search here in Los Angeles didn’t yield better results. (Huckabee’s press office did not respond to a request for info on any Jewish volunteers in California; Greenfield also was unaware of any supporters.)

Here’s how Jacques Berlinerblau, the author of “Thumpin’ It,” explained that phenomenon to me:

“Jews have been conditioned to play it close to the vest and keep their religious sentiments to themselves,” said Berlinerblau, an associate professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University. “It is so viscerally in our cultural DNA, I don’t think we are very comfortable with public faith-and-values talk. Especially when it is coming from a Christian spokesperson.”

I know what you are thinking: Jews aren’t typically considered swing voters. True, but if the Republican nominee is John McCain, we will most certainly see more Jews vote Republican than if the nominee is Huckabee or Mitt Romney or, heaven help us, Ron Paul. The same can be said for those who consider themselves an amalgam of liberal and conservative political opinions.

The question then becomes: What happens to the evangelical vote if the nominee is not Huckabee?

February 1, 2008 | 8:08 am

Obama on reaching evangelicals

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

You know it is a religion-laced campaign season when only days before Barack Obama got on the phone with reporters for Jewish publications to reiterate that he’s not an anti-Semite, he spoke with Christianity Today about his faith and why he thinks evangelicals can trust him.

I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn’t ‘fall out in church’ as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn’t want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals.

There is one thing that I want to mention that I think is important. Part of what we’ve been seeing during the course this campaign is some scurrilous e-mails that have been sent out, denying my faith, talking about me being a Muslim, suggesting that I got sworn in the U.S. Senate with a Quran in my hand or that I don’t pledge allegiance to the flag. I think it’s really important for your readers to know that I have been a member of the same church for almost 20 years, and I have never practiced Islam. I am respectful of the religion, but it’s not my own. One of the things that’s very important in this day and age is that we don’t use religion as a political tool and certainly that we don’t lie about religion as a way to score political points. I just thought it was important to get that in there to dispel rumors that have been over the Internet. We’ve done so repeatedly, but obviously it’s a political tactic of somebody to try to provide this misinformation.

1 Comments — Leave your comment