Saturday's Iowa Rethug straw poll could be a make-or-break time for two candidates ardently wooing the same Rethug Christian right - Sen. Sam Brownback and former Gov. Mike Huckabee. Iowa has more evangelical Christians, proportionately, than any State outside of the South. Both men, who favor Genesis (the Book, not the band) over evolution, are low on money and need to finish second or third in the straw poll in order to maintain any movement.
The struggle has turned increasingly nasty between the two, with a Huckabee supporter recently e-mailing two Baptist Brownback supporters telling them to switch their support to Huckabee because he's a fellow Baptist. Brownback is a convert to Roman Catholicism. Ah, yes, you can always count on the Rethugs to revert to the lowest common denominators of fear and emotion in the course of the campaign! Willard "Mutt/Muff/Mousse" Romney's Mormonism has already been made an issue in Rethug evangelical circles (see Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land). Will Giuliani's free-wheeling form of Catholicism be next up?
(Photo: Sen. Brownback and Gov. Huckabee in friendlier times.)
