I am also disappointed that the major news media has not investigated Huckabee’s background with more thoroughness. They are so concentrated on the horse race and the shifting winds of opinion that they have no time to dig up facts. There is little about Huckabee’s work as governor, as a broadcast businessman, and as a minister. What was his character? Did he act in love, or with selfishness? What did he say about other people, including Mormons, when he was a minister?

I knew people from Arkansas who were amazed that America could elect Bill Clinton, but the news media told little about the escapades that we learned about later during the Whitewater investigation. What we get is an election as a spectator sport, just another form of basketball.

The fact that Huckabee refuses to allow review of the sermons he wrote for his years as a pastor is a red flag. There are twelve years of his thoughts being poured out. What did he say? What is in the sermons that we are not going to find out until the guy with the nuclear codes briefcase is following him around?

The biggest difference is that Romney is not out specifically courting identity followers. He is also not out alienating evangelicals by saying inflamatory things about their faith. Huckabee, I think, helps drive a lot of LDS members away from himself and possibly the GOP.

I most heartily agree, as I have heard it from many LDS members, that a McCain Huckabee ticket regardless of what order it is in, would be difficult to support for many mormons.

I’m convinced there is certainly a lot of Mormon identity politics going on in relation to the Romney campaign. I’ve wondered to what extent the focus on “The Question”–and particularly perceived attacks on the LDS religion–has pushed some LDS people toward a stronger identification with the Romney campaign.

I don’t disagree with that. Originally I was a McCain supporter and will be if he is nominated. My swing to Romney was more of a mid course correction than a change in destination. It was brought about by all the anti-Mormon junk being splashed about. It was easy for me to correct the misconceptions and challenge deliberate distortions when I came across them. But the more I got into it the more I saw myself drifting away from John. His mother’s remarks finally topped it. Her bias was right up front. It to affect McCain given he was raised with it.

I can understand why many Evangelicals favored Huckabee given he is held in high esteem in his denomination. I feel that way about Romney, although I am not unaware of some of his short comings. I continue to have misgivings about Romney’s ability to take a punch and a couple of other things. However his willingness to get back up after being knocked down and go at it again impresses me. I am anxious to see how that works out for him tomorrow in New Hampshire. Doggedness is a must-have trait for any president. It is what I admire about President Bush.

Huckabee’s comment about politics being a full contact sport resonates with me. Appropriate shots across the bow are part of the rules of the game. But personal shots at Mormons and religion changed all that for me for both McCain and Huckabee. It would be like attacking one’s family. You just don’t do that unless the spouse is a former president. Huckabee’s cranking up of the “Don’t We All Hate Mormons Together?” machine told he could not be an honorable president. I still feel that way. Evangelicals who bought into it tells me a lot about them too. But I have to say most just don’t know enough about Mormons to form an unbiased opinion.

On the Evangelical side, I’ve decided that there is really more good news there than my first reaction took into account. While the religious identity politics that Huckabee made so prominent in his appeal in Iowa were very blatant, he still got less than half of the self-identified Evangelical vote (at least according to the CNN entrance polls). Romney got about a fifth of that vote. Not bad, I think given all the circumstances. Even Romney’s campaign almost seems to have acknowledged that what they underestimated was the turnout of the Evangelical voters, not necessarily the split of the vote. Among the Evangelical voters, there was a big component of identity politics, but how much of it was primarily anti-Mormon is impossible to gauge.

That being said, the fact that Huckabee seemed all too willing to use the anti-Mormon card (and refusing to disavow the tactics of some of his supporters), however, says much more about the candidate himself than the Evangelical voters.

That Huckabee and McCain seem now to be engaged in a tag team punching match against Romney, only magnifies this “negative” about Huckabee given the things that have come out of the McCain campaign since early on. As such, I think a McCain-Huckabee ticket would be particularly difficult for LDS voters to get behind.