On his way to winning Iowa, Mike Huckabee overtly traded on his evangelical culture war credentials. Besides marketing himself as a "Christian leader" and appearing beside a crucifix-shaped object while urging viewers to "celebrate the birth of Christ," Huckabee rallied Christian right audiences away from the media's klieg lights against the "holocaust of liberalized abortion." He has called for quarantining homosexuals, compared homosexuality to necrophilia, and cozied up to rapture ready fanatics from Tim LaHaye to Pastor John Hagee to huckster televangelist Kenneth Copeland, whose corrupt fundraising practices have earned him a subpoena from Republican Senator Charles Grassley.
Yet on issues like women's reproductive rights, immigration, and religious liberties, Huckabee is arguably more radical than George W. Bush.