Hunter Baker's blog
Posted at 11:48pm on Jan. 25, 2008 Make Mine McCain.
By Hunter Baker
Re-published as a diary . . .
Some of our esteemed Redstate contributors have made formal endorsements this year. I've held off, not because I hate the field, but because I liked different things about different candidates.
Rudy performed a miracle in New York.
Huckabee has turned fewer dollars into more results than anyone in modern electoral history.
Romney is an obviously decent man, a top notch practicing capitalist, and loves America despite America's ambivalent attitude toward his church.
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Posted at 2:33pm on May 15, 2007 Remembering Jerry Falwell
By Hunter Baker
Jerry Falwell is dead. Like Dick Nixon, they can't kick him around anymore.
For that matter I can't kick him around anymore. Neither can the rest of the Christian community. How many of us for the last three decades have prefaced a statement of our religious commitment with a disclaimer that we aren't like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson?
These men stepped out front early and they took an incredible amount of fire. Some self-inflicted. A lot of it because members of the fashionable class hated them and hated what they stood for.
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Posted at 5:46pm on May 3, 2007 Oh No, Mitt. You Hosed Reagan's Economic Policies!
By Hunter Baker
YouTube just keeps biting Mitt Romney.
Check out this compilation where Mitt embraces the pro-choice position (including by throwing out the old "I knew someone who died from an illegal abortion" bit), distances himself from the Reagan economic record ("I was an independent during those years. I'm not trying to go back to Reagan."), and blathers on about the glass ceiling.
The Reagan bit hits at about 2:30 on the video.
EGAD.
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Posted at 11:24am on Apr. 19, 2007 On $400 Haircuts and Populist Candidates
By Hunter Baker
Read this piece from Iowa where voters react to Edwards and his $400 haircut.
Here's a lovely slice:
“If I charged $400 for a haircut, they’d come after me with white coats,” said Leo Fier, who has been cutting hair for 49 years at his shop in DeWitt, Iowa.
And then this:
“That’s impossible, $400,” said Don “Dutchman” Braafhart, who runs Dutchman’s Barbershop in Davenport.
I gotta tell you, this story isn't helping with the Breck Girl image Edwards has and it doesn't help with the anti-poverty message, either. (HT: Drudge)
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Posted at 5:16pm on Mar. 28, 2007 Is Hugh Hewitt a Secularist? (Condensed Version)
By Hunter Baker
I have a feeling my other version was too long and the front page a little too active to let this piece have it's full sway, so I'm putting it a shorter version on the blogs. The occasion for this blog was Hugh Hewitt's grilling of Erick Erickson over Erick's insistence that religion can be relevant to a political campaign:
Historically, there is plenty of precedent for considering a candidate's religion and it hasn't been such a terrible thing. Jefferson was nobody's idea of an orthodox Christian. He was the perfect picture of a deist, believing in morality and punishments and rewards in the afterlife, but not in the specific Christian revelation. New England Clergy who were members of the Federalist party raged against Jefferson's lack of correct faith. They preferred Adams, who was also not a picture perfect Christian in theology, but who was more favorable to religious establishments. Tellingly, Jefferson's supporters felt the need to deny the attacks on his Christianity.* Despite the religious controversy, Jefferson did defeat Adams and won the presidency. He required no rule against debating religious convictions of a candidate to do so.
John F. Kennedy was another example. In order to keep the Democratic party's southern support base intact, he had to deal with the issue of his Catholicism by taking it up directly with the people, as he did with Baptist ministers in Houston. Kennedy insisted he would be the president and not a proxy for Rome. Work it out for yourself whether that was correct theologically for a Roman Catholic, but Kennedy didn't hide behind some kind of insistence that his faith was off limits.
In interviewing Erick Erickson, Hugh Hewitt wanted to compare caring about Mitt Romney's religion to caring about someone's race. The entire line of argument is wrong-headed. The left has enchanted us into thinking about everything in terms of categories and how wrong it is to consider categories. On the face of it, Hewitt is right. Certainly, it would be illogical and malicious to refuse to consider voting for someone based on the surface reason of their race or religion. But there is a second layer to the inquiry. If a white candidate's beliefs about the world, about government, and about culture were significantly impacted by his race, then I think it's fair ground to know exactly how. If it leads him to believe in some kind of white superiority, then it's worth taking into account when voting. The same is obviously true of a disciple of Louis Farrakahn, in which case we are considering his race AND religion. I do not say such persons have no right to run for or hold office. I am saying WE have to right to ask such persons questions and to withhold our vote from such persons.
Would anyone willingly relinquish that right?
The point Erick made repeatedly in the interview that Hewitt treated as though it were no point at all is that there is very little public knowledge about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a Ph.D. candidate in religion and politics, I know a great deal about some of the ways Mormons have been terribly mistreated in American history, but I know very little about their actual theology. I'm an evangelical Christian with great sympathies toward the Catholic Church. My theology certainly affects my view of politics and I think I would be a cad to take the position that if I were running for office no one would have a right to ask me about it and wait to hear what I would say. I would assume that equal respect for a Mormon would be to assume that his religious beliefs are not purely private but actually have some impact on what he thinks, believes, and does.
To hold otherwise is to become a secularist who says that religion is only private and doesn't matter in the public square. I don't think Hugh Hewitt has come out in favor of secularism before, but maybe that's his new position. Religion is private and doesn't matter a whit to politics. Is that what you think, Mr. Hewitt?
No, Erick Erickson had the correct position. It's okay to be curious about the Mormon faith. It's okay for Mitt Romney to face questions about how his faith impacts the other areas of his life, including his political life. There's nothing unconstitutional or immoral about it. This is the process that will make the Church of Latter Day Saints a part of the fabric of American religious, political, and social life. Just being open to engagement is the key.
*The part about Jefferson's backers defending him from attacks on Christianity is telling because it denies the claim that the founding generation wasn't much concerned with the Chrsitian faith. Jefferson couldn't come straight out with it and hope to still be elected.
Posted in Blogosphere — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:37am on Mar. 26, 2007 Free Trade with Cuba
By Hunter Baker
It's appropriate in light of Congressman McCotter's front pager. I wrote the following for the Chattanooga Times-Free Press back in 2002:
Only Castro would benefit if trade embargo were lifted
Hunter Baker Commentary
Shall we lift our current trade embargo with Cuba and begin doing business with the world's longest reigning dictator?
Let's review.
Ninety miles off the south Florida coast of free America sits one of the least free nations in the world: Fidel Castro's Cuba. Although his revolution 40 years ago was supposed to build a utopian paradise in the island nation, the people of Cuba simply exchanged the bad deal they had with Batista for a much worse one under Fidel. From purgatory to hell in one easy step.
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Posted at 12:14pm on Mar. 23, 2007 Does the Romney Candidacy Track with the Romney Book?
By Hunter Baker
Last week, Hugh Hewitt was giving us updates on how A Mormon in the White House was doing at Amazon. He's stopped giving updates. I figure I'll do my part.
The book is sitting at #257, far below R. Emmett Tyrrell's The Clinton Crack-Up about an ex-president, which is sitting at #31.
Posted in 2008 — Comments (26) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:52pm on Mar. 22, 2007 Forget About Me! How's Mitt Romney?!!!
By Hunter Baker
I'm turning into a full-time Hewitt critic, but as someone who has often enjoyed reading his blog in the past, I simply can't take the continuing infomercial quality of his endorsement of Mitt Romney and the way every conversation comes back to Romney somehow.
Today, he began a post talking about Rudy Giuliani's profile in Time Magazine and the theme of maturity. At the end of the post after a nice snippet from the Time story, we get this:
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Posted at 4:45pm on Mar. 18, 2007 Hewitt Watch (MUCH UPDATED)
By Hunter Baker
Whereby I point out more annoying and opportunistic behavior by Hugh Hewitt (GET YOUR COPY OF A MORMON IN THE WHITE HOUSE TODAY!!!):
I have a theory that Hugh Hewitt now determines what he will write about by the criterion of whether it will give him an opportunity to prop up Mitt Romney's campaign.
He starts a recent post talking about speechwriting and subtly transitions to how candidates have to be able to carry a speech. Unsurprisingly, he judges Romney to be the best speaker among Republican candidates. Giuliani is "a close second."
Wait for your next cue coming soon!
Update: Commenters want to know what I have against Hugh Hewitt. I'll tell you.
I've been reading Hugh's blog for several years now and have listened to his show on the rare occasions I've been in the right place at the right time. My problem is that I think he foregoes any quasi-journalistic responsibility to his audience to comment dispassionately and tell it like it is. I think he decides what he's going to prop up, as he did with the Miers nomination, and then will twist and contort however necessary to make his case. In short, he engages in on-line lawyering rather than analysis.
The sin is compounded by his effort to hold others to a standard he himself does not accept. Thus, he wants to grill interviewees according to the highest standards of consistent analysis and integrity. He further wants to dog the MSM for their lack of objectivity, of which he seems to have little to none.
That's my beef. Take it up if you like, commenters.
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Posted at 11:49am on Mar. 14, 2007 What It Is, Is Fascism . . . (Dungy Dogged by Gay Activists)
By Hunter Baker
S.T. Karnick has the scoop on a brewing pot of controversy involving Tony Dungy and an award dinner held by a Christian policy organization in Indiana.
The Indiana Family Institute (analog to the Georgia Family Council where I was once Director of Public Policy) invited Dungy to receive an award for his family ethics. Karnick gives more detail about the story, but what I found particularly compelling was this summation by Karnick:
Posted in Culture — Comments (18) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:47pm on Feb. 23, 2007 The Good Olbermann
By Hunter Baker
I was just listening to Keith Olbermann do his daily hour with Dan Patrick on the radio. Today, they discussed the contributions of former Seattle Supersonic and Boston Celtic Dennis Johnson. As a teen obsessed with sports in the 80's, I listened with great interest.
The thought struck me with force as it has in the past:
Keith Olbermann is not a windbag when he talks about sports. He displays real insight and amazing depth of perception.
Posted in 2008 — Comments (19) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 6:29pm on Feb. 21, 2007 Tim Hardaway and the Big Hate
By Hunter Baker
Every living American probably has received their instructions by now:
"Tim Hardaway has checked out of polite society. He is not to be rehabilitated by any means. Besides, he is about five abject apologies away from being nearly apologetic enough. He has sinned against our new god who is named Tolerance. A sin against tolerance is worse in its social stigma than theft, extortion, insider trading, perjury, and spousal abuse. The Tolerance taboo is broken by hating. The penalty for breaking the taboo is to be hated. A hate for a hate as the good Book says in a socially relevant and proper interpretation."
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