Mike Huckabee's big Mistake?

I often rant on here how religion is so misreported by the MSM. THe Mike Huckabee Campaign is a prime example. It gets worse because thousands of bloggers repeat the same mistake.

One hears the term "evangelical" used way to much to lump millions of people together. People get the wrong impression to say the least. There was a interesting news story that the media largely failed to pick up. That is how Huckabee was and still is daling with the Pentecostal and other Evangelical divide.

In 1988 Pat Robertson of course ran for President. Today often to many people see him as the then choice of the religious right and religious value voters back then. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. For reason that are alluded to in the below post many Baptist voters were not going to vote for a Pentecostal or Charismatic.

I thought this was a good post by a man that understands the "religious vote" and who had worked in the White House for Bush. Overall it is a good read and tells what is really going on. Go read Mike Huckabee’s Big Mistake. Let me excerpt this part:

Two year ago, when Mike Huckabee should have been meeting with every evangelical leader of influence in the country, his people were rejecting overtures. A consultant for Billy Graham was told, “Not interested.” Another went to Mitt Romney. The former political consultant to Alan Keyes was ignored. She went to Duncan Hunter and talked him into running for president. Was it ignorance or arrogance? Was it an inexperienced team in place that doubted themselves and so feared newcomers as a threat? A presidential campaign must suck up every volunteer and well intentioned offer like a vacuum cleaner. Staffers only benefit from the rising tide. You won’t have a job anyway if your man isn’t elected. Or was it a strategic decision? More likely the latter. Not much happens by accident and surely the governor would be curious, “Why aren’t we meeting with Richard Land? Can’t anyone get me an invite to Bill Hybels?”
The result was tragic. Judge Paul Pressler, the controversial organizer of the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptists Convention, went to Fred Thompson. And so did many other Southern Baptists. Enough to lose South Carolina.

Rightly sensing that Charismatics and Pentecostals were the key to Iowa, Huckabee, a Southern Baptist, told Pentecostal congregations, “My church was more like yours than a typical Southern Baptist.” It was music to their ears but as most evangelicals know, Pentecostals will vote for a Southern Baptist but not the other way around. Huckabee was courting disaster and he needed hundreds of surrogate evangelical and Southern Baptist leaders of influence out there to help keep the herd of cats together.

Nowhere did all of this matter more than in the northern counties of South Carolina, where Baptists and Pentecostals have had a long history. For years Baptists had suffered under the influence of the Pentecostal PTL Empire, headquartered a few miles across the State border, and they resented PTL for defining so much about their own faith and culture. Inroads in those counties by Thompson were deadly to the Huckabee effort.

It is a good read and please read his whole post. Huckabee can still recover. Now I am not taking sides in this theological or cultural battle between these two groups. However I think it shows how the MSM again missess the real story. A story that was often picked up and well covered by the religious press.