Stealth Endorsement Or Open Attack?

Via Sullivan, this Focus on the Family candidate guide is something to behold.  How far out do your views on the Iraq war have to be for you to believe that Mike Huckabee is somehow insufficiently supportive of it?  Responding to a statement that Huckabee made that “we broke it, we have to fix it,” one man on the candidate guide video declares in disbelief, “We didn’t break Iraq.   Saddam Hussein broke it!…To say that we broke it, we have to fix it, rings a bit hollow.”  This is crazy stuff.  No wonder Huckabee can’t gain any traction on foreign policy, even when he repeats the party line on the war, “Islamofascism” and takes a position on the Palestinians far more extreme than Likud’s.

The Romney video states, quite inaccurately, that Romney has acknowledged that Mormonism is “not a Christian faith.”  He has done no such thing, and every informed observer knows that he hasn’t.  Viewed one way, this is a transparently pro-Romney deception aimed at putting the religion question to the side.  Then again, considering the target audience, the Romney campaign could reasonably complain that Focus on the Family has injected anti-Mormonism into its campaign video in a direct attempt to undermine his candidacy.  Whatever the intent was, the effect of this video will be to remind the audience that Romney is not a Christian, which is probably exactly the opposite of what his campaign wants to see from such organisations.  Huckabee’s people are trying to spin this as an endorsement of Romney, but if it is it is one of the most poorly-worded endorsements ever.