Saturday With Mike Huckabee

Jay Bush has a great report of a Mike Huckabee meet 'n greet he attended on Saturday in Nashville (Saturday With Mike Huckabee), as do Adam Groves , and Bill Hobbs . Each of these reports reflects that Huckabee is a political talent who can connect with Conservatives, but more importantly, who can connect with "Independents." And he's not much of a bogeyman.

Indeed, the worst thing (to Conservatives and most Americans) you can say about Huckabee--his poor rating with Cato and Club for Growth, may endear him with "moderate" Republicans and shouldn't be too big of a stumbling block for Religious Conservatives, with whom a commitment to both supply-side economics and balanced budgets resonates.

But Huckabee's positive impression on these Tennesseans is interesting in light of the hubbub among Lefty bloggers about this weekend's NYTimes article poking at Religious Conservatives and their effort to find a candidate. The cabal-ish caricature of Religious Conservatives is an important ingredient in "fringing" The Religious Right.

Jay relays this story from the Huckabee event:

Huckabee recalled a meeting he had with former Surgeon General and then Arkansas Director of Health, Jocelyn (sic) Elders at the request of [then-President] Bill Clinton. Elders had called on pastors to "end their love affair with the fetus" and to "stop moralizing" from the pulpit. At the time, Huckabee, a former pastor himself, was president of the Arkansas Baptist Association. Clinton had sought Huckabee's counsel about the political impact Elder's comments would have among evangelicals and asked that he meet with her. After spending an afternoon with Elders, Huckabee, apparently so shocked by the experience, said he went home and told his wife it was time to "get in the game and get our uniforms dirty."

Yes, the Left's often-successful creation of a bogeymovement (Religious Conservatives) effectively diverts attention from people like Joycelyn Elders, M.D.