After yesterday’s debate:
Immediately after the debate, in which he wasn’t questioned about the remark, Huckabee apologized to Romney. The timing of the apology suggested that he might have done so in the debate, had it come up.
“I said, ‘I would never try … to somehow pick out some point of your faith and make it an issue,’ and I wouldn’t,” Huckabee said in a postdebate interview on CNN from the debate site, a public television studio in the suburbs of Des Moines.
“I’ve stayed away from talking about Mitt Romney’s faith,” Huckabee said. “I told him face to face, I said, ‘I don’t think your being a Mormon ought to make you more or less qualified for being a president.'”
Huckabee’s apology was politically smart and spiritually wise. Spiritually, he was doing as Jesus advised – reconcile and seek forgiveness. Politically, he was ending something that could only hurt him.
Apologies galore are owed Huckabee, however, especially for the double standard with which he is being treated. Journalists ask him over and over about religious issues related to Romney’s Mormon faith. It is time they either stop or start asking Romney questions – like this one: “Gov. Romney, do you believe Mother Teresa was a Christian?” According to his church, the answer would be no since she wasn’t part of the “true” church.