God 'Hearts' Huckabee: Or So Huck Says

Mike Huckabee is beating the political odds—running at the front of the Republican pack in Iowa and looking more and more like a GOP winner.

The former Arkansas governor and Baptist pastor is also attracting some unwanted scrutiny of his beliefs, some of it self-inflicted.

A few days ago, for example, Huckabee came awfully close to calling himself "God's Chosen Candidate." That's a handy conceit for any politician, but we submit that Huck is just the latest in a long line of ego-driven political leaders who think that God is on their side. (Exhibit A: Former GOP candidate and TV preacher Pat Robertson.)

News flash: This is terrible theology and very bad politics.

But readers can make up their own minds. Here's the transcript from a recent talk to students in Lynchburg, Va., home of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

STUDENT: Recent polls show you surging… What do you attribute this surge to?

HUCKABEE: There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people. (Applause) That’s the only way that our campaign can be doing what it’s doing. And I’m not being facetious nor am I trying to be trite. There literally are thousands of people across this country who are praying that a little will become much, and it has. And it defies all explanation, it has confounded the pundits. And I’m enjoying every minute of them trying to figure it out, and until they look at it, from a, just experience beyond human, they’ll never figure it out. And it’s probably just as well. That’s honestly why it’s happening.

Come to think of it, using God to bolster your own political fortunes helps explain why the wingnut websites keep referring to the ACLU, liberals and especially Democrats like Hillary Clinton as "Satan." Hillary's a woman, after all, responsible for taking an unholy bite out of the apple in the Garden, and—here we go!—the decline and fall of humankind.

But how will Huck explain God's grand plan for him should he happen to lose in Iowa or in some other early state? And what happens if it's God's apparent will that Hillary or Barack Obama or John Edwards or any other Godless Democrat gets elected?

We suggest that Huck and his holier-than-thou supporters back off the "God-speaks-directly-to-me-but-not-to-you" pronouncements. We doubt that his pipeline to the Divine is better than any other mortal man's (or woman's).