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REYNOLDS |
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I Will Not Be Voting for Huckabee
by John Mark Reynolds [author,
academic] 8/16/07
I like Mike Huckabee.
I think he has done well in all the debates.
I will not be voting for Mike Huckabee in the California primary.
Why?
There is an old rule in talk radio. If your friends like your show, then it is no good. It talks more than your equally eccentric friends to make a good radio show.
The kind of people who want to talk on the radio are by their very nature . . . different. Most of us don’t get up in the morning thinking we have something to say that other people want to hear. Talk radio people do.
Contributor
John Mark Reynolds
John
Mark Reynolds is the founder and director of
the Torrey Honors Institute and Associate Professor
of Philosophy at Biola University.His
personal website can be found at www.johnmarkreynolds.com and
his blog can be found at http://scriptoriumdaily.com.
[go to Reynolds index] |
Given that (as Plato would say) “like attracts like,” unusual people tend to have unusual friends.
It is true in blogging as well. The kind of post that my friends like here at Scriptorium (indeed my favorite posts) almost always have the lowest “page reads.”
That is fine on this blog. We are not “in business” and don’t have to care how many readers we get.
That is not true of talk radio and it is not true of elections.
In both fields “weird” types (people with the skills to be on talk radio and political junkies) have to persuade people to listen or vote who are not like they are.
Don’t look now but most people have no idea that anything happened in Ames Iowa, including lost of people Republicans will need in the fall.
Mike Huckabee agrees with me on most every issue. He is smart and he was a good governor of a small, but important state. I like his theology and I like his marriage.
I like Mike.
So what?
Come November if the Republican Party cannot count on my vote it has already lost. Every Reynolds in my line since Abraham Lincoln saved the Union and freed the slaves has voted Republican in a Presidential election. That is a fact.
We are not the audience for November. If I were electing the President of Biola (though we have a great new one) out of this crop of candidates, Mike would be the guy. If we were electing the next leader of the Pro-Life Caucus, then Mike would be the guy.
But to get the last Supreme Court vote to over turn Roe versus Wade, we need a man that can get a few votes in pro-choice America. Mike is not that guy.
We need to persuade the kind of voters who live in places like Massachusetts and California that traditional values are not intolerance and that free markets are not about greed. We need to convince young voters like many of my students that the War in Iraq is not lost.
We need a smart candidate with a proven track record of attracting votes outside of our traditional values world.
Mike Huckabee is not that guy. He has no proven track record of appealing to voters not already in the fold. We don’t need someone who can preach to the choir, we need the equivalent of C.S. Lewis who can talk to people who hate choir music.
Mike Huckabee is not that guy. He is the kind of guy who ends up as Vice President, but he is not the person to save pro-life Senators and Congressmen in trouble in Blue States.
I like Mike and that means he is not the guy.
Who could be? We need someone who is for our values, but can win the votes of people who are not just as we are. We need someone who can appeal to non-political junkies and people who do not go to Church on Sunday.
We need someone who can win not just place second for a “moral victory.” Second place next November will not be a victory for morality.
Who is the guy?
Right now that is either Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney. ExileStreet
copyright
2007 John Mark Reynolds
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