"faith bigot?"

Will Hugh scream this one from the mountain tops?

No I guess that will be left to those of us not running for administration appointments. For the record - I'm endorsing no one and attempting in my fallen state to report the good and bad on all of the candidates with reasonable shots of winning. (Disclaimer: All Ron Paul coverage on this blog however IS intended to make the PaulPots scream like pigs.)

So let me understand this correctly if I can...

One of the candidate's faith - because it is Mormonism - is officially not allowed to even be considered (even in the privacy of the voter's own minds) per Hugh and the other trigger finger Romney zealots (no reflection on the actual candidate intended.)

BUT...

Novak can write this piece of trash and evangelicals and baptists are supposed to just take it and shut up?

And his basic argument is that because not all Southern Baptists support Huck his "religionist" creds are in trouble?

Are you kidding me?

I grew up in Southern Baptist America. ALL of my family back home (at least on my mother's side) presently attend and are active members in Southern Baptist Churches. They don't even all go to the SAME Southern Baptist Church out of a refusal to agree on certain things about the OTHER Southern Baptist Church.

Novak then delves into the waters he truly is unqualified to wade in to - comparative doctrinal differences between liberal and conservative Southern Baptist DEMONINATIONAL distinctives.

If the source for a column such as this would have been authored by either of my colleagues Dr. Richard Land or Dr. Albert Mohler it would have had a certain degree of credence - but Novak?

Novak even cites FISCAL conservative John Fund from the Wall Street Journal in an attempt to make it appear that Huckabee was "anti-conservative" in his appointments on the Arkansas Baptist Convention.

But keep in mind that a liberal to some Southern Baptists are those who argue that drums should not be allowed in the worship service, that women should be forced to wear skirts instead of pants, or that the choir robes should be blue instead of that gross funeral home color of faded purple. Yes there are deeper issues of true doctrinal liberalism that have torn Southern Baptists apart from each other - but the fact Novak couldn't nor even attempt to identify any distinctions in the column is offensive.

Novak's ultimate goal of the piece is to begin his own whispering campaign concerning Huck's "Nixonian Irritability."

Right...

The candidate who has been accused of smearing other people's religion, planting crosses as subliminal messages in his television ads, and having the audacity to utter the words "Jesus Christ" in his ad that centered on CHRISTMAS, and yet in every debate - never got rattled, never showed that "thin-skinnedness" in any interview he's done to date.

I'm not endorsing anyone in the GOP Primary for 2008 so don't read this post as a pro-Huckabee message - but Novak's piece is slimy, deceitful, and far more dispicable than anything anyone has done to Romney or his faith thus far. And they have been doing it longer, more frequently, and now much more grotesquely than anything Mitt has faced.

Closing one liner...

"How do you get Southern Baptists to argue most...?"

"Allow one of them to speak!"