Huckabee Christmas Ad Draws Criticism

The recent TV ad run by former Gov. Mike Huckabee in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Iowa features the candidate in front of a Christmas tree with Silent Night playing in the background. Although the ad suggests that the primary candidates should cease their bitter attacks during the holiday season, its directed appeal to Christians has been seen as divisive and inappropriately sectarian by some critics, including the Catholic League of America, as the Associated Press reported yesterday. Huckabee dismissed the criticism as reflecting an unreasonable insistence on political correctness, a charge not often levied at Catholic League President William Donahue.   

In addition, the extended but clearly not friendly candidate profile in the most recent New York Times Sunday Magazine includes remarks by Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, that could be read as slyly interjecting comments designed to play to bias against Mormonism. Huckabee has subsequently denied such a motive led him to ask his NYT interviewer, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?". 

JFB