Huckabee And Reconstructionism

Hugh Hewitt - who insists that amending the constitution to ban all abortion and strip gay couples of all legal protections are "mainstream conservative positions" - also claims, contra Bainbridge, that

Professor B's tortured string of cites never delivers anything remotely connecting Huck to "reconstructionism," and implying otherwise is just imagination.

Check out Brink Lindsey's post here. In December, Huckabee had a non-imaginary fundraiser in the Dallas home of one Dr. Steven Hotze, who was on the host committee. Hotze is a major reconstructionist. Here's a quote from a section of a manifesto signed by Hotze in 1986:

We affirm that the Bible is not only God’s statements to us regarding religion, salvation, eternity, and righteousness, but also the final measurement and depository of certain fundamental facts of reality and basic principles that God wants all mankind to know in the sphere of law, government, economics, business, education, arts and communication, medicine, psychology, and science. All theories and practices of these spheres of life are only true, right, and realistic to the degree that they agree with the Bible.

Reconstructionists want to amend the Constitution to bring it in line with Biblical precepts. Sound familiar? since Huckabee has used almost identical language, this isn't guilt by association. It is context for what Huckabee means - and the signals he is sending to the hard-core Christianists he is appealing to in South Carolina and elsewhere. Here's a clip from Rick Scarborough, another hist committee member at Hotze fundraiser, and a self-described "Christocrat:"

Scarborough fought Huckabee in the Baptist wars of the last decade. But their differences do not obscure their commonalities. Once you have dedicated your life to fundamentalist religion, once you have insisted that nothing - let alone politics - can be independent of absolute Biblical judgment, documents like the Constitution are indeed secondary. They have to be amended to be brought into line with the authoritative truth. Nothing can interfere with that authority - nothing.

I don't think people have really understood the logical consequences of the fundamentalist psyche. There is nothing more antithetical to the principles underlying traditional conservatism. Eventually, the complacent Republicans will realize the tiger they are riding. Huckabee is charming. The charming ones are often the most dangerous.