In the Post's article, religion is the central theme of pro-Huckabee homeschool advocates. Here the Post reveals the efforts of a homeschooling Mother named Julie Roe (bet they chose her for her familiar name: Roe) who has stumped for Huckabee by making homemade buttons and making numerous phone calls.
Julie Roe, an early believer in Mike Huckabee, worked with what she had... With no buttons, no yard signs and no glossy literature from his nearly invisible Iowa campaign, she took a pair of scissors and cut out a photograph of the former Arkansas governor. She pasted it on a piece of paper, scribbled down some of his positions, made copies and launched the Huckabee for President campaign in rural Hardin County.
So, why Huckabee? (My emphasis added throughout).
Huckabee's name is no longer a mystery to Iowa's Republican voters, in large part because of an extensive network of home-schoolers like Roe who have helped lift his underfunded campaign from obscurity to the front of a crowded field. Opinion polls show that his haphazard approach is trumping the studied strategy of Mitt Romney, who invested millions only to be shunned by many religious conservatives such as Roe, who see the former Baptist preacher from Hope, Ark., as their champion.
But, even the Post contradicts this religious basis only a few paragraphs later.
While early attention focused on Romney and other better-known and better-funded opponents, home-schoolers rallied to Huckabee's cause, attracted by his faith, his politics and his decision to appoint a home-school proponent to the Arkansas board of education. They tapped a web of community and church groups that share common conservative interests, blasting them with e-mails and passing along the word about Huckabee in social settings.
It was the endorsement by prominent national home-school advocate Michael Farris that helped propel Huckabee to a surprising second-place finish in the Iowa straw poll in August. And it was the twin sons of a home-school advocate in Oregon who helped put Huckabee in touch with television tough guy Chuck Norris, who appeared alongside him in an attention-getting TV spot and on the campaign trail.
Sorry, Washington Post. It isn't really Huckabee's religion that the homeschoolers are excited over. It is the fact that he handed homeschoolers a big plum when he was Gov. of Arkansas. It isn't the religion of the matter as the Post tries to make it seem, but just good old fashioned politics.
Huckabee has given the homeschoolers power and they are paying him back for that past support of their cause. It's just that simple.
Yes, Huckabee is of the same basic religious background of the great preponderance of homeschooling parents, but if Mitt Rmoney had handed the homeschool lobby such a choice state job in Massachusetts, HE would have gotten their notice just like Huckabee did.
In reality it has little to do with religion. After all, how many pundits or supporters of other candidates have you really heard say they won’t vote for someone based on their religion? Hardly anyone and certainly no one in the chattering classes!
Yet, here we have the Washington Post fanning the flames of religious bickering. Why is that do you think?
The answer is, of course, to divide and conquer the GOP candidates. If the MSM can hurt both Romney and Huckabee at the same time with the religious angle, so much the better to help their favored Democrat candidate win at a later date.
Get the factions to bicker and they won’t be united later. It’s an ages old strategy and the MSM is trying their hearts out to employ it.
