It’s no surprise that Mike Huckabee was urging a group of Michigan pastors yesterday to mobilize their supporters for him like only a fellow pastor could, as reported by The Washington Post:

“I don’t presume that you automatically support me because of a common faith,” Huckabee told a group of more than 100 conservative pastors. “I know I have to earn that. But I also recognize that there is a unique kind of opportunity. For a long time, those of us who are people of faith are asked to support candidates who would come and talk to us. But rarely has there been one who comes from us.”
Huckabee’s comments were the latest attempt by the former Baptist preacher to rally support from social conservatives by advocating a larger role for them within the GOP…
“Many of us who have been Republicans out of conviction . . . the social conservatives,” he told reporters, “were welcomed in the party as long as we sort of kept our place, but Lord help us if we ever stood forward and said we would actually like to lead the party.”
….At the Michigan pastors’ meeting, he encouraged them to “mobilize people of like mind and spirit” by tapping their e-mail lists and phone lists. That strategy helped him in Iowa, where about 80 percent of his voters identified themselves as “born again” or “evangelical.”

But given that Huckabee’s strategy–and his success so far–is based on his faith-based connection to evangelical pastors and the conservative Christian rank and file, it strikes God-o-Meter as a tad disingenuous that he’s increasingly calling foul over the media’s questions about his religious beliefs:

…Huckabee complained Saturday in Grand Rapids that debate questions about his faith are of “an unconstitutional nature,” since the Constitution forbids a religious test for potential officeholders.

God-o-Meter knows the Constitution forbids religious tests for candidates. But till now, it doubted whether Huckabee knew as much. When he tells pastors they ought to support him because “rarely has there been [a candidate] who comes from us” and because it’s important for candidates to speak “the language of Zion [as] a mother tongue and not a recently acquired second language,” isn’t Huck calling for the establishment of a religious test? He can’t have it both ways. If he wants to uphold the Constitution, he should start campaigning like it.

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