National Right to Life general counsel James Bopp, Jr. has a piece attacking Huckabee over at National Review Online that stands out to God-o-Meter for two reasons. For Bopp, Mitt Romney’s top outside advsor on “life issues,” whacking Huckabee is nothing new. But God-o-Meter can’t remember the last time a Romney advisor publicly called Huckabee out for campaigning as a ‘Christian Leader.’ Secondly, don’t these kind of attacks usually come from the left?
Here’s what Bopp writes in an otherwise old-saw piece warning that Huckabee will undo Ronald Reagan’s conservative coalition (social conservatives, economic conservatives, foreign policy conservatives):

But the social-conservative coalition is also put at risk by Huckabee’s campaign tactics. Most social conservatives are religious conservatives — evangelical Christians, practicing Catholics, Mormons, and Orthodox Jews. They are united in their desire to have people of faith in public office and their strong belief in the sanctity of innocent human life and traditional family values. But in taking their faiths seriously, they also have profound theological differences. These theological differences have been set aside in the public square as religious conservatives have joined together to support candidates who reflect their values.
By emphasizing his qualification for office as a “Christian leader,” the Huckabee campaign, however, has implicitly, and some of his supporters have explicitly, promoted a religious test for office. This threatens to tear this religious coalition apart. And if evangelical Christians legitimize a religious test for public office, they will pay the heaviest price. The liberal elites have long sought to drive people of faith from the public square. They view Mormons as a curiosity, like Christians on steroids, but they loath and fear evangelicals. If a religious test is legitimate for public office, then the Democrats will drive evangelicals out of our democracy.

Is God-o-Meter the only one who thinks this logic convoluted? On the one hand, Bopp chides Huckabee and his evangelical backers for establishing a religious test for public office. On the other, Bopp declines to see the danger here as the violation of the constitutional ban on religous tests. Rather, he warns that liberals will use the establishment of such a test to drive evangelicals from the public square. Huh? God-o-Meter understands that it’s in Romney’s best interest to blame everything on the liberals. He is, after all, trying to win the Republican primary. But it’s getting to be more and more of a stretch.

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