I’ve read this story three or four times this morning and I still don’t see why Drudge is fronting it with a banner headline. It’s about a speech/sermon that Mike Huckabee delivered in 1998. He delivered the speech/sermon in Salt Lake City, but if that’s a reason to give it the banner treatment at Drudge, then that’s a suggestion that Baptist ministers should stay out of Mormon country. That would be absurd. If this next line is the problem, then so are most sermons delivered in most evangelical churches.

“The reason we have so much government is because we have so much broken humanity,” he said. “And the reason we have so much broken humanity is because sin reigns in the hearts and lives of human beings instead of the Savior.”

There’s a lot of spiritual common sense in that paragraph — sin leads for example to broken families, which leads to fatherless kids, which leads to out of control kids, which leads to crime and drugs and whatnot. This, by the way, is a powerful small-government argument against libertinism, though not necessarily against responsible libertarianism.

Drudge’s banner headline screams that Huck wants to “take America back for Christ.” Well, Huckabee was a pastor at the time, and that line is just an expression of the Great Commission. This is not a call to “take America” by the sword or by force or by any means necessary, it’s a statement that the church needs to get off the pews and out into the world to do some good. Huck reinforces that by saying that if the church was doing a better job, government wouldn’t have to be so big. I hate to break it to Drudge, but that’s true, and it’s not an indictment of America, it’s an indictment of the church for not doing its job. If that’s controversial now, then we’re headed for even more problems and acrimony then we currently have.

I’m no fan of home run hittin’ Huckabee, but Drudge seems to be screaming religious intolerance with that headline.

Update (AP): I agree with Bryan that Drudge is making a big deal out of what amounts to boilerplate, but I can’t resist noting this detail tucked away at the end of that old story:

Other books given to reporters at the convention Sunday included a how-to boycott book aimed at the Walt Disney Co. by Richard D. Land titled Sending a Message to Mickey: The ABC’s of Making Your Voice Heard at Disney. The back cover features an outline of the famous mouse’s round ears and the words: “He who has ears, let him hear.”

The other book was Mormonism Unmasked by R. Philip Roberts, who examines the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Looks like an interesting read.

Update (AP): Like MK says, if Drudge is looking for religio-speak in politics, he doesn’t need to go back 10 years — or to the Republican Party — to find it.

Update: Huckabee was still governor when he made the comment that Drudge fronted. Nevertheless, as a minister what he said isn’t out of line. People have become way too sensitive about this sort of thing imho.