The Political Whore

Here’s a sneak preview of my Next President series installment coming out in Wednesday’s issue. This time it’s three GOP candidates fighting on the far right of the party:

When Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee began their longshot candidacies for the president, it is unlikely they thought they would be forever tied together in history for simply, and wordlessly, raising their hands.

But their footnote in American history is indeed a joint entry. Tancredo, Brownback and Huckabee, after all, are the three Republicans who raised their hands at a Republican debate in May when moderator Chris Matthews asked, “I’m curious, is there anybody on the stage that does not agree, [does not] believe in evolution?”

The blogosphere lit up in outrage and disbelief. One Democratic strategist said the trio made the Republican Party appear to be “a front for the Flat Earth Society.”

The (un)funny thing is that Tancredo, Brownback and Huckabee have a majority of Americans on their side. A USA Today/Gallup Poll taken shortly after the debate found two-thirds of the respondents believed “creationism, the idea that God created humans in their present form within the past 10,000 years, is definitely or probably true.” That was more than the 53 percent who said evolution was definitely or probably true.

All three candidates offered varying degrees of clarification in the wake of the debate, essentially parsing a position that doesn’t completely deny evolution but requires the hand of God in explaining human development.

They’re all anti-gay marriage. They’re all against abortion. Huckabee is even a Baptist minister.

So why aren’t any of these three competitive in Florida, the land of the Defense of Marriage Act and Terri Schiavo interventions?

It appears that times have changed.

Pick up your copy of CL this week to read the rest of the series, or check back here and I’ll post a link as soon as we have it up on our website. (And thanks again to illustrator Joseph Di Nicola for the great depictions of all our candidates in this series.)

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