Joe Carter responds to National Review's endorsement of Mitt Romney for president.
I'm a bit more impressed with Romney than Joe is. But what's most disappointing is to see what critics call the Right Wing Noise Machine--Hugh Hewitt, National Review, the Drudge Report, Powerline, etc.--go after Huckabee with such reckless abandon. It's often a case of a conclusion in search of a story. Yes, some good questions have been raised, but the bias against Huckabee and for Romney is at a simply extraordinary level.
Just so there's no confusion on my own position:
I'm supporting Mike Huckabee. But if Romney, Thompson, or McCain were the nominee, I would gladly vote for each of them in the general election. (Romney would be my second choice.)
I would probably hold my nose and vote for Giuliani, who is pro-choice.
(I don't mean to stir up the RonPaulians, but he has zero chance of being elected and I don't know that I could vote in good conscience for such extreme isolationism in foreign policy during the War on Terror. Christians should care about justice and safety not only for the unborn but for the born as well. Even if the Iraq war was a colossal mistake, it would be an even bigger mistake to withdraw all our troops immediately.)
I could not in good conscience vote for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Someone like Lee Irons (who, as my linkage can attest, I greatly admire) thinks abortion is an irrelevant issue (and hence he can support Obama); but Lee is just factually wrong on this count. Furthermore, though I know it is anathema to Emergent folks to say such things, I believe the conservative worldview shares more presuppositions with the Christian worldview than does liberalism--especially concerning the sinfulness of man (and hence the need for the decentralization of power) and the objectivity and transcendence of moral values. Whether "conservatives" correctly put the worldview into practice is a story for another day. . . .
Finally, I know there are some who believe that evangelicals should not publicly endorse candidates, and I'm sympathetic with that position--especially for pastors and leaders of ministries. But for myself, since I do support a particular candidate, I think it's helpful just to lay my cards on the table so you can adjust your "bias detectors" accordingly!
Update: As more than one commenter has pointed, I incorrectly referred to Ron Paul's policies as isolationism instead of, more accurately, non-interventionism. I was thinking of military isolation, but I know we need to use words according to their common, understood parlance. Sorry about that. For those who argue that the Iraq War was a colossal error leading to many losses of life--please go back and read what I actually wrote first.
Update 2: By the way, not to sound like a belly-acher, but I hope some commenters can try to be a bit more gracious in interacting with the content of this post (among other things, my post was called disgusting and disgraceful). Ron Paul may be a fine Christian man, and my heart may resonate with his small-government libertarianism, but I made two fundamental assertions: (1) he has no chance of winning the general election, and (2) his foreign policy would immediately result in an enormous loss of human life and a major loss in the War on Terror. Nothing posted below has caused me to doubt for a moment either of those propositions. (I should note as a general rule that assuming the worst in others, combined with assertsions-sans-actual-argumentation, rarely persuade me!)
