Huckabee: “What’s wrong with our country, what is wrong with our culture, is that you can’t say the name Jesus Christ without people going completely berserk.”
December 21, 2007 7:08 am Christian Right and GOPPaul Vitello, Small Town Cheers Huckabee’s Embrace of Faith - New York Times, December 21, 2007
DIKE, Iowa — He came to town this week dressed in a dark pinstriped suit and cowboy boots, advocating lower taxes, death to the Internal Revenue Service and restoration of the words “Merry Christmas” and “Jesus Christ” to the American lexicon.
And Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister who rose to the first tier of Republican presidential candidates on the strength of his Christian bona fides, was received by supporters as he returned to Iowa this week like the second coming of Santa Claus.At rallies, they posed their red-sweatered children on his knee for photographs, as if he were the man in the red suit at the mall. They gave him standing ovations when he said the words they wanted to hear.
“I know this is probably a very controversial thing, but may I say to you, Merry Christmas!” Mr. Huckabee told an audience of 200 in Marshalltown on Thursday morning, as the crowd rose to its feet.
Clearly delighted over a controversy set off by a recent campaign advertisement in which he says “what really matters” this time of year is not the presidential campaign but “the celebration of the birth of Christ,” Mr. Huckabee has missed no opportunity in his speeches to his core supporters of evangelical voters to utter those words, underlining the Christ part.
“What’s wrong with our country, what is wrong with our culture, is that you can’t say the name Jesus Christ without people going completely berserk,” Mr. Huckabee told a crowd in Dike, a tiny farm town about 80 miles northeast of Des Moines, where people also stood to applaud.