He might be a favorite of many evangelicals, but former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has said some things that scare other Americans. The problem is not that he's talking freely about his faith – that's something all the candidates now find necessary – but that he seems to genuinely believe what he says. Here's how that is playing out with one important community of voters.
Zero percent – that's a bagel – of New York Jews favored Huckabee over the other Republican front-runners in a mid-January poll by Siena College. And a completely unscientific search here in Los Angeles didn't yield better results. (Huckabee's press office did not respond to a request for info on any Jewish volunteers in California; Greenfield also was unaware of any supporters.)
Jacques Berlinerblau, the author of "Thumpin' It," explained that phenomenon to me this way:
"Jews have been conditioned to play it close to the vest and keep their religious sentiments to themselves," said Berlinerblau, an associate professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University. "It is so viscerally in our cultural DNA, I don't think we are very comfortable with public faith-and-values talk. Especially when it is coming from a Christian spokesperson."
I know what you are thinking: Jews aren't typically considered swing voters. True, but if the Republican nominee is John McCain, we will most certainly see more Jews vote Republican than if the nominee is Huckabee or Mitt Romney or (he's still in it) Ron Paul. The same can be said for those who consider themselves an amalgam of liberal and conservative political opinions.
This article also appears atThe God Blog.
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