Turning from God's Middlemen

Mike Huckabee is splitting evangelicals along caste lines.

Check it:

Much of the national leadership of the Christian conservative movement has turned a cold shoulder to the Republican presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee, wary of his populist approach to economic issues and his criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. But that has only fired up Brett and Alex Harris.

[via NYTimes.com]

This is what good populism should do, something that John Edwards — more because of his place on the political spectrum than because of his ability as a politician or his views — never has. Mike Huckabee is connecting on a deep, broad level with a large group of people who feel their leaders' views falling out of step with their own.

It shows the extent to which the Pat Robertsons of the world were able to piggyback pro-business conservatism atop evangelical faith and sell the whole thing to millions of conservative Christians as a set of holistic political and moral principles. A complete worldview basically, not simply an ethics or a politics. Whether that exact worldview was shared by the entirety of the religious right when it was winning elections for Reagan and Bush 2 or if it was just the best fit at the time can never be clear, but Huckabee has certainly exposed a rift now, one that cuts along caste lines.

(I say "caste" because the leaders of the religious/political right — the remnants of the Christian Coalition/Moral Majority —aren't just all rich white men, putting them in an economic class above their followers. They've also set themselves up as God's middlemen, making themselves the high priests, the law-givers.)

What Huckabee has given middleclass, middle-of-the-road conservative believers is a third way between liberals and the pro-God/pro-business of their presumptive demagogues. That doesn't make Huck's way the right way and it doesn't make him the right candidate (he scares me to death), but we live in a deeply pluralistic society whose political system masks the diversity of its people. The more candidates like Huckabee and Ron Paul (and Edwards, though he hasn't found the cleavage point the other two have) that can ignite people's passion against what Edwards somewhat tritely calls the status quo, the better it is for America.

... and also for Democrats, if one of these wedge candidates ends up running as an independent.